Joint Operations Around Manchester and in South Yorkshire, is the latest volume in a series of books by Robert Pixton, covering the lines across the Pennines, especially those of the former Great Central. This volume looks at the joint lines that once served the area from Lancashire to Yorkshire, serving heavy industry and providing an intense passenger service in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The lines and services declined on many of the branch lines and some of the cross country lines by the 1950s, heralding there final demise in the early 1960s, as a result of the Reshaping of British Railways. Today there are still a few important corridors crossing this area of the north of England, which have become increasingly important in recent times as roads become more congested and bus services are cut back.
Compiled at the instigation of the ‘Old Comrades Association' of the 1/6th Battalion of the West Yorkshire regiment, this is a typical no-nonsense history of a down-to-earth unit that saw active service, suffered heavy casualties, and rendered sterling service in some of the very worst fighting seen on the western front during the Great War. With a laconic foreword by General Plumer, in whose 2nd Army the 1/6th West Yorkshires served at Ypres and Passchendaele, the book gives a full account of the battalion's service which, in addition to third Ypres, included action at Nieuport, on the coastal tip of the trenchlines, and on the Somme at Thiepval. After enduring the great German offensives in the spring of 1918, they took part in the Allied counter push, moving from Cambrai to Valenciennes before the Armistice brought the war to an end. With a range of photographs of officers, men, and aerial shots of trench warfare, this volumw has a particularly fine and extensive selection of trench maps as well as Rolls of Honour, decorations etc.