An unashamed plug for a new book, published last weekend on 15 June by the Caradon Hill Area Heritage Project, with the lion's share of the profits being ploughed back into local heritage projects.
The Lost Years of the Liskeard and Caradon Railway is the culmination of four years' research into the story of this remarkable mineral line connecting the Caradon mining area to the port of Looe - but with the focus on the little-known period of operation by the Great Western Railway.
The GWR's investment and involvement in the Caradon line was far more extensive than previously thought - and it is now apparent that the company's influence extended well beyond the hitherto accepted 1917 temporary track lifting in the Great War. The Caradon Branch of the GWR was the source of disputes over property and plans, unpaid rents for the trackbed, unspoken water supply arrangements involving mines and fishponds for the locomotives, tenants in a condemned house, and a near lawsuit about a cow that had fallen off a railway bridge.
The book contains a wealth of illustrations, many taken specially by Scoggan of AditNow, and who, along with CHAHP Project Officer Iain Rowe, has been heavily involved in the field research.
'The Lost Years of the Liskeard and Caradon Railway' is a full-colour 146-page softback publication available exclusively through the Bookshop Liskeard, priced £12.00 plus post and packing. (The Bookshop Liskeard, 2 Barrass Street, Liskeard, Cornwall PL14 6AD, tel 01579 342112 or www.thebookshopliskeard.co.uk)