Former Press Association football reporter Adrian Curtis has left behind a 30-year career covering the game to launch his own railway publishing company.
Curtis reported on Chelsea Football Club for PA from 2004 to December last year before making the move into publishing magazines about his other great love – British Rail diesel locomotives.
The former sports reporter has just posted a first-quarter profit from his new venture editing and publishing three bi-monthly and quarterly subscription magazines: Classic Diesels & Electrics, Western Power and Diesel-Hydraulics Illustrated.
Curtis, who has also written several books on railways, said: “The first three months have been fantastic and have vindicated my decision to quit football reporting after 30 years.
‘It is not the game it once was from a reporting point of view and sitting by a computer re-writing stuff from websites was not my idea of football reporting, when compared to the 80s.
“The move to multi-media platforms, while I can see they are the way forward, was not the reason I came into the profession. I wanted to write not point a video camera at proceedings and upload.
“The decision to begin my own business has been a success from the word go but then I have had a reputation as a writer in the railway field since 1997 – something not many people even knew about.
“I will be finishing and publishing a football book, based on my 30-year career, entitled ‘Any Chance of a Quick Word’ sometime later this year or 2012.”
Curtis began his career as a news reporter on the Scunthorpe Star in the early 1980s, before moving to Angling Times.
He has since worked for and edited, Match and Shoot football magazines, and covered the game of football as a sports reporter for the Mail on Sunday, London Evening Standard, and the Press Association.
He has also freelanced for most of the country’s tabloid and broadsheet newspapers during the last three decades.
His love of railways and Western Class 52 locomotives in particular, has seen him write numerous articles for the railway press, including Railway Magazine, Traction and Railway World.
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