Railway library

In my local library, the stock of railway books have been reduced to just under half a shelfs worth. According to friends, a similar thing has happened across the country. Apparently modellers prefer to ask on teh interweb rather than look in proper books full of paper and words.

But this is not true everywhere.

There is only one current copy of "The Writers and Artists Yearbook" in the West Midlands and it's at Acocks Green Library. That's why I was in there on Tuesday with my co-author researching literary agents for our novel.

We started looking for the book in the reference section. It wasn't there, in fact it's kept behind the desk to stop it getting pinched, but what there was were 4 display cases containing Gauge 1 models of rolling stock. This seemed odd as you don't normally get such interesting an high quality display items in a library. Especially one in a scruffy suburb of Birmingham.

While looking for the book I then noticed a shelf marked "Books about railways" and then another one. And another. And another. In fact loads of the things. They went along the wall I was looking at and then around the corner and along the next wall too. Loads and loads of the things. Is this where railway books migrate for the winter I wondered ?

The answer was found in a label on top of one of the bookcases: