Steve Bartlett is a fourth generation railwayman, with railways in his blood. His father was Swindon Works trained, becoming a Western Region District Running & Maintenance Officer, his grandfather also worked at Swindon Works in Great Western days and his great grandfather was a station master at Staverton in Devon for twenty five years from 1898 to 1923. As a young teenager the author recorded the last days of Western Region steam, before joining the railway in 1966. He then spent almost forty years working in rail operations and managing timetable planning, locomotive and train crew diagramming before finally working on West Coast Route Modernisation.He now researches and writes about the latter days of steam, mainly on the former Great Western, specialising in locomotive depots, their allocations and operational duties. He lives in Nantwich in Cheshire and is married with two grown up sons and five grandchildren.