A photograph of a rail accident at Tapton Junction in 1919. Picture: Middleton Press.A photograph of a rail accident at Tapton Junction in 1919. Picture: Middleton Press.
A photograph of a rail accident at Tapton Junction in 1919. Picture: Middleton Press.

Dramatic railway accidents and lost stations caught on camera in fascinating pictures of trains through Sheffield, Chesterfield and Rotherham

A new book gives readers the chance to take an armchair journey by train from Chesterfield to Rotherham via Sheffield, featuring scores of previously unpublished photographs.

The 96-page volume, by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith, features 120 images tracing the route from Derbyshire into South Yorkshire, taking the opening of the Sheffield & Rotherham Railway in 1838 as its starting point.

There are pictures of Sheffield’s Attercliffe Road station which closed in 1995, photos of horse-drawn carriages lined up outside the city’s Midland Station instead of taxis, and even documentary evidence of dramatic rail accidents from yesteryear.

Vic’s West Sussex-based Middleton Press has produced more than 400 albums in the same style as part of a series called 'Ultimate Railway Encyclopaedia'.

There are volumes on the Hope Valley Line, Ambergate to Buxton, Buxton to Stockport, and the Woodhead line gets its own album too.

Chesterfield to Rotherham via Sheffield is published on December 5, priced £18.95. Copies can be ordered direct from the publisher, with free postage. Visit www.middletonpress.co.uk or call 01730 813169.