Gresley and his Locomotives

The story of Gresley and his locomotives is a well-trodden path. But our view of his achievements is a blinkered one because it fails to recognise all the other people who played a part in his work. As the leading American aviation engineer Paul S Baker wrote in 1945 the day of one-man engineering is long gone. You might as well print the organisation table of the engineering department when trying to assign credit for a particular design'.

To Gresley must go great credit for many of the LNER's achievements, but those around him have faded into obscurity and are now largely forgotten even though their contributions were immense. To redress this balance, the author has explored the lives of Gresley and his team and sought to uncover a more expansive picture of these events. This in no way diminishes Gresley's accomplishments, which are immense by any standards, but builds a more authentic view of a dynamic period in railway history.

The book draws upon many sources of information, some of it previously unpublished. This has helped present a fascinating picture of all that happened and all that was achieved, often in the most difficult of circumstances, by a very gifted team of engineers and their exceptional leader.

250 colour and b/w illustrations, weight diagrams

About the Author

Tim Hillier-Graves was born in North London in 1951. On leaving university he served with the Royal Navy seeing wide service on land and sea. For much of this time he specialised in weapons development projects, specifically missiles and heavyweight torpedoes, and worked alongside BAe, Marconi Space and Defence Systems and McDonnell Douglas in the process. In support of this work he undertook prolonged periods of study and research at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham.

Late in his career he changed specialisms and focussed on Human Resource Management and outsourcing, then as an Assistant Director took on responsibility of housing for military personnel. He retired in 2011 to concentrate more fully on writing and has had a number of books and articles on the Navy, railway engineering, aviation and military history published since the 1970s. All the royalties from his books have been and will be donated to Cancer Research UK in memory of his many relatives and friends who have succumbed to these illnesses.