In the 1890s, the people of north-west Scotland grew tired of Government Commissions sent to consider a railway to Ullapool. Despite rock-solid arguments in favour of such a railway, neither government nor the big railway companies lifted a finger to build one. Against the recommendations of its own advisers, the Scottish Office dismissed the project as 'a quite impossible proposal'. In 1918, history repeated itself with another Commission and another failure to build the railway. 'Drivel' is...
R. E. L. Maunsell's engineering career started in Ireland, where he graduated to the post of Chief Mechanical Engineer of the GSWR. He crossed to England just before the outbreak of the First World War to take up the same post on the SECR, where his first new design, a 2-6-0, was selected as a post-war standard class for Britain's railways (for at that time nationalisation was first seriously canvassed). With this design Maunsell introduced modern concepts to the locomotive practice of railways...
Collector's item, landmark in the history of the tour guide, snapshot of Britain in the 1860s - Bradshaw's Handbook deserves a place on the bookshelf of any traveller, railway enthusiast, historian or anglophile. Produced as the British railway network was reaching its zenith, and as tourism by rail became a serious pastime for the better off, it was the first national tourist guide specifically organized around railway journeys, and to this day offers a glimpse through the carriage window at a...
Inter-city rail travel is one of the dominant facts of modern life. In the wake of the railway renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s, new train stations from the US to Japan must respond to increasingly complex challenges, as high-speed trains become more and more common and the next generation of magnetically levitated trains approaches. The state-of-the-art examples featured in Modern Trains and Splendid Stations are analyzed from several perspectives: as generators of urban renewal; as new archi...
Passenger and Merchant Ships of the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern Railways
by David R P Guay
The untold history of the maritime branches of two giants of early-twentieth-century Canadian railroads. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and the Canadian Northern Railway, two giants of Canadian rail transportation, each operated maritime shipping ventures during the early twentieth century. Numerous vessels, including sidewheel, paddlewheel, and propeller steamers, tugboats, and barges, helped to build and serve these railways. Passenger and merchant ships sailed the West Coast, the Grea...
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Stock Book
by Peter Cooper
A Regional History of the Railway of Great Britain (Regional History of the Railway of Great Britain, #5)
by Di Gordon and Donald Ian Gordon
Francis Frith's Dorset Revisted (Photographic Memories)
by John Bainbridge and Francis Frith
This work discusses the history of the Severn Valley Railway (SVR). In just over three decades, the SVR has graduated from relative obscurity to great prominence in British railway preservation. The SVR is a standard-gauge line running steam-hauled trains between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth, a distance of 16 miles. SVR preservation dates from 1965, when a group of railway enthusiasts formed the Severn Valley Railway Preservation Society with the aim of reopening part of the closed line which or...
The authoritative and fascinating history of the rise and fall of the state-owned British Rail'Wolmar's book is impeccably organized and makes a fast, enjoyable read' THE TIMES Literary Supplement________You think you know British Rail. But you don't know the whole story.From its creation after the Second World War, through its fifty-year lifetime, British Rail was an innovative powerhouse that transformed our transport system. Uniting disparate lines into a highly competent organisation - heral...