Former Doncaster Rovers chairman and rail buff releases new railway book

The new book focuses on locomotives designed and built by renowned engineer Sir Nigel Gresley in Doncaster, which became icons on the railways of Britain in the golden era of steam.

The book, Gresley’s A4s, follows John’s publication Ryan’s Express, which focused on the huge model railway he has lovingly built at his Cheshire home.

The new book focuses on Gresley’s A4 locomotive class and pictures the steam icons at major centres on the East Coast Main Line, including Doncaster, Darlington, York, King’s Cross station, Peterborough, Grantham, Newcastle and Edinburgh Waverley.

It features more than 300 colour and black and white images.

In the mid-1930s, eminent locomotive engineer Sir Nigel Gresley produced plans for the A4 Class Pacifics, which were specially built to work a new high-speed express, the ‘Silver Jubilee’.

From the start, the class caused a sensation and immediately secured the admiration of the general public.

Photographs of every locomotive in the LNER and BR periods are included. Over a dozen A4s feature in a chapter dedicated to the 1946 renumbering, which lasted only two to three years, making pictures of them particularly rare.

Also, images taken during the twilight years in Scotland are included. The surviving engines are seen at several locations in the country – Aberdeen, Glasgow and Perth.

A number of images are from the lineside at various points, or wayside stations and water troughs. Some class members have been photographed at sheds when being serviced, or under repair at workshops.

Many of the famous trains worked by the A4s are presented, such as the ‘Silver Jubilee’, ‘Coronation’, ‘West Riding Limited’ and ‘Flying Scotsman’, then later the ‘Capitals Limited’, ‘Elizabethan’ and ‘The Talisman’.

The class members were often selected to head special trains and there are several examples of this in Gresley’s A4s.

John, who was born in Doncaster in 1950, attended Doncaster’s Danum Grammar School and then went to Nottingham University where he obtained a Degree in Chemistry.

From 1978 to 2002, he was owner of the Transform Medical Group and between 1998 and 2013, he was chairman of Doncaster Rovers.

During his time there, he led Rovers from the Football Conference to the Football League Championship, besides winning a number of cups.

His autobiography Dare to Dream – On Life, Football and Cosmetic Surgery was published in 2010.

He has built one of the largest O gauge layouts in the UK, housed in a specially constructed shed at his mansion in Over Peover – which the layout is named after.

He first became interested in model railways at the age of five when his father took him to see steam locomotives hurtling through Doncaster railway station on the East Coast Main Line.

At Christmas 1955, he acquired his first train set a Hornby-Dublo three-rail Duchess of Montrose.

Other train sets were acquired and layouts constructed - all OO gauge - until the fascination for the larger O gauge took control.

This was in the early 1980s and when, a little later, success and finances became available, all his OO gauge locomotives and rolling stock were sold or swapped for O gauge models and he began constructing one of the largest layouts of its type in the country.