As the British Rail years drew to a close and the new era of rail privatisation dawned, John Hillmer set out to record photographically the entire railway scene in Wales, and this remarkable and wide-ranging book is the result. Every Welsh station that was open at the end of 1995 – the last year in which BR operated a fully nationalised and integrated system – is chronicled and pictured, and signal boxes, sidings, yards, locomotive depots, stabling and re-fuelling points are also covered, together with summaries of passenger services and freight flows, and locomotive classes and DMU types then in use.

With maps, some 450 carefully captioned photographs and supporting text, and notes on railway developments in Wales since the advent of privatisation, this Gazetteer provides a unique ‘snapshot’ of the country’s rail network, and a comprehensive record that will prove of immense value to both today’s enthusiasts and tomorrow’s historians.

John Hillmer is a railway photographer and author of many years’ standing, and a regular contributor to The Nostalgia Collection’s ‘British Railways Past and Present’ series. He lives in Wilmslow, Cheshire.