Amazon.com description: Product Description: Steaming into the Firing Line: Tales of the Footplate in Wartime Britain is a set of compelling original short stories based on and around the railways of North West England during the Second World War. Humorous and moving, the collection tells the tale of a group of railwaymen during the latter days of the memorable age of steam. Readers will quickly warm to the book’s characters as the tales unfold; stories of the day-to-day lives of drivers and firemen, their colleagues and their passengers, during this particularly challenging time in British history. Author Michael Clutterbuck is himself the son of a railwayman from that era. His closeness to the subject, and firsthand experience of the type of life many of the characters would have led, is clear from the detail and realism evident throughout the book. By no means just for steam rail enthusiasts, Steaming into the Firing Line offers an insight into the Second World War from an unusual and interesting vantage point.