For those of us who like pure railway Victoriana, here's a wonderful example. Joseph Beattie of the London & South Western Railway was an excellent engineer, though some of his ideas were often ahead of their time. Here we see one of his seventeen 'Falcon' class of 2-4-0s, in this case No. 81 'Herod'. Photographed at Exeter circa 1870 it was built at Nine Elms in 1865 and withdrawn in 1890.

© Steve Armitage Collection