The Somerset & Dorset then and now - Mac Hawkins

Of all the lines which fell under the Beeching Axe, the Somerset and Dorset, which rolls through some of the most beautiful countryside in Britain, was perhaps the best loved. The unique variety of rolling stock and scenery was recorded in its heyday by the great railway photographers of the age: men like Ivo Peters, Derek Cross and Dick Riley. Nearly three decades after the line's closure, another photographer returned to the haunts of his predecessors to document what remained of this once-proud railway.;Calculating the precise location from which the originals were taken, Mac Hawkins has recreated the shots: wading through knee-deep water, hiring fork lift trucks and even suspending himsef from a mobile crane to simulate the view from a long-demolished signal gantry. The resulting 160 pairs of "then and now" photographs form a record of the passage of time, and should be appreciated by local historians and lovers of the English countryside alike.