From: "William Aldridge" <bill@tppl19.freeserve.co.uk>

To be published early next year, in hardback format, will be a new book containing photographs and operational details of the London Transport's CDS/Service Vehicle Fleet. The book will not just a glorified fleet list, but delves back to the reason why many of the vehicles were fitted with specialist equipment and how CDS was organised and operated. [The authors have managed to contact the original management team of CDS in an attempt to ensure that published material is factually correct but undoubtedly more knowledgeable readers may find some of the material to be incorrect on some points].

With access to the LT archives, many photographs will be taken from official records, and while excellent for the modeller, they give little sense of occasion. The authors are trying to locate working photographs from other sources and hope that the standard similar to picture 150 shown here. In many cases official photographs will be used, simply because they are of very high quality and in some cases are the only record of a particular type of vehicle.

The other aspect of the photographic section that will be emphasised is of men working in conjunction with the service vehicles, for instance close up shots of linesmen repairing the tram/trolleybus overhead or erecting poles, or permanent way men repairing railway track, or breakdown trucks attending to broken down vehicles. In turn will lead to another part of the text where we explain what the vehicles and men did.

Click on picture [JK4] for an enlarged version

The manuscript is almost complete, but the authors would appreciate any reminiscences from the era 1939 to 2000 on any aspect of the CDS operation. While the draft is around 80,000 words, the publisher will probably remove some of the material to enable the book to sell at a affordable price. To compensate for this, pictures will have relatively long captions to give vehicle and body details removing some of that information from the text. That is one reason why we seek a wide selection of photographs to enhance this book.

If you have any pictures that could be used in this forthcoming publication, please call William on 0161 439 1349 [evenings]. Where necessary he will call you back to save your phone bill.