Ninth in the 'Railway Holiday' series, the present volume deals mainly with the fascinating broad and narrow gauge railways of Portugal, in the form of a guided tour with the author. The narrow gauge lines in the north are well documented and, with the increasing pace of modernisation on the braod gauge lines, these metre-gauge lines remains the enthusiasts' mecca, with german built 2-6-0 T locomotives of 1886 and husky Mallet tanks, all spotlessly clean. The broad-gauge railways are adequately dealt with however.
The tramways of Porto, Coimbra and Lisboa deliberately receive scant mention, since the reader is well reommended to read the LRTL publicatiion 'Tramways of Portugal' by J.H. Price to learn of the fascinating charms of these systems. By contrast, however, the unique Sintra-Atlantic tramway is dealt with in some details as part of the author's journey.
Surprisingly, the first three of the ten chapters take the reader through North-West Spain as the author travels from Madrid to Galicia and then southwards to Porto to start his journey through Portugal. These chapters include the new developments on the RENFE narrow-gauge and, whilst interesting and useful, are hardly pertinent to a railway holiday in Portugal since one can easily spend the normal holiday in that delightful country alone. The rewiever personally disliked the pseudo-present tense in which the book is written, but the text is essentially readable, giving the reader the necessary historical and geographical knowledge to make the holiday a success. The photographs are excellent giving a wide visual review of the CP railways and five appendices, on general CP statistics, broad and narrow gauge steam locomotives details, diesel and electric locomotive data and portuguese railway terms, provide valuable background knowledge to the traveller and railway student. A bibliography and index are included. (D.F.R.)