NAMIB NARROW GAUGE Tapa dura - 1982

(Kempton Park: Janus Publishing, 1982) 062005915X. 8vo; original brown rexine, lettered in gilt on spine; pictorial dustwrapper; pp. (ii) + 154; plates; plates; excellent technical drawings of locomotives and rolling stock, plus maps of the railway lines. Dustwrapper somewhat edgeworn. Very good condition. "This detailed account of the birth of narrow gauge railways in South West Africa, their struggle against geography and the tribulations of War, and in some cases their supplanting by lines of a wider gauge, is the result of some twenty years of research by the joint authors. Much of what is told survives in written form nowhere else, for documentation of the narrow gauge in Africa, unlike Britain, has never been strong. Probably the world will never see again a situation where the narrow gauge train was the only means of movement, for carrying water, for a funeral, for a weekend picnic, for the Government's officers to do their business. These lines which spread through the deep gorges… Leer más