Book review; 1950's steam in colour

I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of this book at much less than cost price off Trademe a couple of weeks ago. Now Derek Cross needs no introduction (fortunately) as a photographer of a railway system long since gone, so I was very interested to see just what had shaken out of his collection.
The answer is, I'm not quite sure. Given that colour photography was in ifs infancy in the 1950's and you couldn't just change film etc, the photos themselves show just how good he was as a photographer by getting the best out of a very difficult medium. I think that the down side might be in the actual selection of pictures. Some are very nice and useful, but others are just odd (A picture of the band playing on the station platform at Glenhope during the 'last' train on the Nelson section? The only use would be to reveal how truly poor men's fashion and haircuts were in those long gone days. And I'm sure that its Danial Craig smoking a cigarette wearing a trench coat on the platform beside them). There is also two of a branch line train on the causeway at Riverton. The same train at virtually the same shot, and both 3/4 views. Was there nothing else left in the box?

Overall I'll have to give this a 'Not quite there' quite honestly. There are not quite enough useful shots to give a man modeling ideas. If you can pick it up cheap, all well and good but there are other Steam era books I would buy before this one.