Philip Horton was born in Bath in 1947 and was educated there before leaving to go to university. He developed an early interest in two rather disparate subjects: natural history and railways. Both have stayed with him, the first as a career, the second as a hobby.
He has had numerous articles published on a wide range of railway-related topics over more than 30 years. Latterly, he has been a regular contributor to the magazine Narrow Gauge World. It is, however, only since his retirement that his first book: Volume 1 of his ‘Beeching Legacy’ series: ‘The West Country’, based on his travels in the 1960s, was published by Silver Link in 2010. Four more volumes followed, which cover the whole of Wales and southern England respectively. A second edition of Volume 1 is about to be published.
Three of his books: The Last Years of BR Steam Around Bath (no. 64), Rails to the Yorkshire Coast (no. 86) and The East German Narrow Gauge (no. 101) have appeared in Silver Link’s Nostalgia Collection.