Although Canton depot in Cardiff has a long history going back to steam days, this book illustrates its time as a diesel locomotive maintenance depot from 1964 until its closure in 2004.
There once were several locomotive depots in Cardiff, with Cathays providing locomotives for the many branch lines emanating from the city, East Dock depot providing shunters for Cardiff’s extensive docks, and Canton providing locomotives for mainline services and the many freight trains that originated in the city.
With the elimination of steam in the 1960s, Canton became Cardiff’s only depot and was responsible for servicing both shunting and main-line passenger and freight diesel locomotives, many of which are illustrated in this book.
Published in September 2023 by Amberley Publishing and written by Martin Bray, this soft-cover book measures around 16.5 cm x 23.4 cm, and has 96 pages and 200 colour photographs.
It has a published price of £15.99, but at the time of writing, it can be purchased for £14.39 from Amberley Publishing and for £15.97 from Amazon.
The introduction provides a brief history of Canton during the 40 years up to its closure, and an insight into the depth of maintenance capable of being carried out at the depot, but fails to say anything about its previous years as Cardiff’s main maintenance depot.
There is no contents list or individual chapters, but the book is arranged in a sequence of photos illustrating individual classes, with the photographs following in numerical order.
The images below are typical of many in the book, where the two photos on the left-hand page have identical captions and give the briefest details of where and when the locomotive was built and when the photo was taken.
Throughout the book, most captions omit any details of where the photos were taken, leaving the reader to assume that they were all taken at Canton Depot.
As in the previous illustration, the photo at the bottom left has an identical caption to that at the top right, and with at least six Class 37s in the top right photo, the reader must assume which locomotive the caption refers to.
As in the example below, many pages have three photos per page.
The lower two photos on both pages also carry identical captions. Unlike most photographs in the book, the photographs on the left add extra information about the work being performed on them.
By the time the reader has reached the later parts of the book their interest will have waned as the captions repeatedly state xxx was built by yyy during zzzz.
Although the pages below are from near the end of the book, the photos on the right-hand page perpetuate the author’s habit of using identical captions for different images.
The first thing that stands out about this book is that it fails to mention that Canton Depot is in Cardiff.
There is also a complete lack of background to the history of the depot, or how it was chosen to be the area’s main maintenance depot.
The introduction states that during the period covered by the book, the depot maintained a fleet of Class 03, 20, 25, 46 and 56 locomotives, but other than the Classes 25 and 56 there are no images of these classes.
It also states that the depot now maintains a fleet of Class 08/09, 60, 66, and 67 locomotives, but the reader is left in the dark as to how many of each type of locomotive were allocated to the depot.
The book also includes photographs of Classes 20, 26, 31, 33, 47, and 50, but does not state whether these were part of the depot’s allocation or were simply visiting for maintenance.
Throughout the book, there are repetitive and non-informative captions, many near-identical photographs, and no description of the depot’s history.
For these omissions and the other negative comments, the book can only be recommended for anyone wishing to extend their library of railway books or with a specific interest in Canton depot. As such, it can only merit a rating of 2.5/5.
The book is available to purchase from Amazon and from Amberley Publishing.
We would like to thank Amberley Publishing for providing us with a copy of the book for review.
Responses
A shame about the problems highlighted. It seems to be mostly concerned with the maintenance work and to downplay the running shed side of the operation, though to be fair a pretty food photographic record of that cumulatively exists. I can confirm, by the way, that all of the photos in this review are taken at Canton.
A feature of working there (I was a guard in the 70s) was that the walking route between the traincrew booking-on lobby/locker room area and the running shed was through the maintenance shed, and traincrew, running, and maintenance stores were inside that building with the counter on the main shop floor. The booking-on lobby was conveniently located for the carriage shed and dmu maintenance/fuelling point, but a little less so for the loco running shed and storage roads.
The loco running shed was a adaptation of the ‘northlight’ steam through shed.
I see that the author has his own rather idiosynchratic website, at: https://www.martinbray-ukloco.com/welcome.htm