TO most railway travellers, stations are noisy, smelly and draughty places which have to be endured until the train arrives to whisk them on their way.

But if you look at stations through Paul Atterbury's eyes, you will soon become aware of a different sort of place: a place that provided livelihoods for countless employees for generations and which helped shape our nation.

Paul Atterbury - he's one of the experts on the BBC's antiques Roadshow - is a railway enthusiast par excellence.

He knows his stuff, as can be witnessed in Tickets Please! (David and Charles, £25, ISBN-13: 978-0-7153-2414-1).

Chock-full of colour photographs and period monochromes, this is not just a book for the enthusiast. This is a general history of 250-plus pages with something for absolutely everyone.

There are chapters on station architecture explaining some of the influences used by the Victorian designers as they sought to impress their potential customers and get them on board their trains.

Enjoy the detail in the ironwork wrought by the craftsmen in metal, or the work of the horologists who created beautiful clocks for lovers to tryst under at some of the nation's great railway stations.

Historic postcards are used to depict the railways in double page Wish You Were Here! spreads dotted throughout the book.

A couple more pages are devoted to comic postcards, one from as early as 1904.

There are plenty of photos of locomotives too, including one of the elegant Adams radial tanks that saw out the last of their days on the Lyme Regis branch, standing next to its corrugated engine shed at Lyme.

Other chapters cover women at work, stationmasters, signalmen and passengers.

The section on London termini includes a spectacular colour picture of Cannon Street station in 1958 featuring West Country class loco Whimple and a skinny Hasting's line diesel multiple unit.

Local interest includes a photo of summer flowers invading the platform at Toller station on the Maiden Newton to Bridport line three years before its closure in 1974.

Then there's the extravagant decorative brickwork at Bishop's Waltham terminus in 1959 and Merchant Navy class pacific No 35012 United States Lines at Wareham station with a push-pull train in the Swanage branch bay platform.

Other southern inclusions are Daggons Road station at Alderholt, now a private house, and the restored overall roof at Bournemouth station, "now back to its 1888 splendour".