This is the first academic book to study railway enthusiasts in Britain. Far from a trivial topic, the postwar train spotting craze swept most boys and some girls into a passion for railways, and for many, ignited a lifetime’s interest.
British railway enthusiasm traces this postwar cohort, and those which followed, as they invigorated different sectors in the world of railway enthusiasm – train spotting, railway modelling, collecting railway relics – and then, in response to the demise of main line steam traction, Britain’s now-huge preserved railway industry. Today this industry finds itself riven by tensions between preserving a loved past which ever fewer people can remember and earning money from tourist visitors.
The widespread and enduring significance of railway enthusiasm will ensure that this ground-breaking text becomes a key work in transport studies, and will appeal to enthusiasts as much as to students and scholars of transport and cultural history.
- ISBN10 0719065666
- ISBN13 9780719065668
- Publish Date 31 March 2008
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 14 February 2012
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Manchester University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 328
- Language English