As electricity became more widely used to power and light Britain’s towns and cities a number of municipal boroughs built their own power stations. In the early years these were inevitably fed by coal, of which the UK had a plentiful supply. In the 1960s and early 1970s the government embarked on a programme of constructing new power stations. The majority of these were constructed with direct rail-connected on-site coal handling facilities and thus was born the Merry-Go-Round, or MGR, coal train. The book features a UK panorama of a wide variety of coal trains on the move, with previously unpublished images from across many years and locations.

'If you like heavy freight traffic, then this book will be of interest to you.' -- Railways Illustrated Magazine

Mike Rhodes hails from Preston and became interested in both road and rail transport from an early age. He has published several books and has been photographing buses since 1974.