AN EASTCOMBE man has published an article featuring railway photos he snapped over half a century ago.

Alan Postlethwaite’s piece, Stroud’s Golden Valley, illustrates the local Great Western Railway line that he photographed in the mid-1960s, including all the intermediate stations and halts between Stonehouse and the Sapperton tunnel.

The 17-page article appears in Issue 9 of GWR and BR(W) history periodical Western Times, published by Transport Treasury.

During the 1960s, Alan captured the evening mail train to Gloucester, comprising a van tacked on to a push-pull ‘auto’ train.

He also photographed a funeral train of dead engines emerging from Stroud’s goods yard enroute to a scrapyard in South Wales.

The Brimscombe banker tank engine is additionally shown by its engine shed shortly before being replaced by a mighty class 9F with 2-10-0 wheel arrangement.

Alan has lived in Eastcombe since 1972, working as a project engineer for the Central Electricity Generating Board in Barnwood in Gloucester and latterly for National Power in Swindon.

He took early retirement in 1992 to write nine railway books.

Published by Sutton Publishing, Haynes Publishing and The History Press, they feature Alan’s photographs taken during the final decade of Britain’s steam railways - his passion of youth.

Alan is additionally a keen modeller and has also published more than 60 magazine articles on railways - Stroud’s Golden Valley being the latest.