Welcome to British Railways Illustrated Volume 4 No.7. Edward Thompson's efforts at standardisation were subject to protracted field trials. and the results copiously and assiduously written up. Thompson's detrac-tors (there are a few...) point to this as weakness, an unsure designer, bereft of confidence, looking over his shoulder and covering his back, as Gresley's cherished products were unjustly and wantonly ditched. Others, far more sanguine, see these tests objectively - Thompson was merely being professional, for the world after all had changed by 1945 and the days of The Great Man, of whatever company, driving all before him by sheer force of will and personality, had gone. Britain and its institutions were increasingly run by committee, report, investigation and procedure. It was a time above all of consensus, and the dawn of the Corporate State was at hand. New developments had to aired. Whatever, the results of the tests are wrought into a fascinating period insight in That's Progress - a fine outng, moreover, for a set of photographs demonstrating the progression (on the LNER, in this case, but a universal one, nonetheless) from 0-6-0 to 2-6-0. Diesel Dawn this month really has more to do with 'steam sunset', for It concerns that difficult and troublesome period, the changeover from steam to diesel traction. In this case on the Western Region which sought a scrambled end to steam in an effort both to be the first Region on BR where the dirty, noisy things had been extirpated, and to get it over with by the end of the year - 1965. The account, by someone perfectly placed to note all that went on, contains a few heresies, for the romance and the lure of steam soon faded amidst the daily grind of ailing locomotives - diesels failed through men's unfamiliarity with them and steam failed and fell to pieces through neglect. The point really being made is that steam by the last couple of years - officially unloved, unwanted, often decrepit and always in a state of filth unimaginable even in a field of endeavour long used to a bit of dirt - had gone so far down the road to ruin that even some of its best friends were fed up with it, and wished it gone. Bentley to Bordon is yet another Southern branch which seemed to lead a life of exemplary anonymity. The day to day of these southern English branches (or any steam worked branch, really) is now becoming impossibly remote, and it requires something of a wrench even to imagine again, after all this time, fussing tank engines suddenly appearing through hedgerows to make a dignified passage of some deserted country lane. Amongst the most cumbersome looking engines ever to plod their way around a colliery branch was the LMS G3 7F 0-8-0, the 'Austin Seven', so named for no obviously good reason. The tale of these lonesome, lumbering beasts is a sad one and one of the unfortunate outcomes of the Midland ascendancy on the LMS. Rather than a modernised, updated and beefed up 0-8-0, a sort of 'improved super-D', what the LMS got was a 4F 0-6-0 stretched rather too thin, like the last of the butter (margarine more like - and I mean the 'real' margarine of the 1950s) on too many rounds of toast. Revolutionise the Toton - Brent job, the G3 didn't but was it - Unnecessary and Perverse?