Railroads category: 1183 books

For British Rail, the 1970s was a time of contrasts, when bad jokes about sandwiches and pork pies often belied real achievements, like increasing computerisation and the arrival of the high-speed Inter-City 125s. But while television advertisements told of an 'Age of the Train', Monday morning misery...

Another fascinating miscellany that will delight railway buffs everywhere. The branch lines of transport history are fully explored and all who love trains will delight in stories of the old railway companies, famous engines, discontinued lines, and all sorts of other railway trivia.

The Great Western Railway – quickly coming to be known as ‘God’s Wonderful Railway’ – was once regarded as the most advanced in the world. Engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel it was initially designed to connect Bristol to London and came to develop a distinct character all of its own,...

Used extensively and somewhat taken for granted by millions of commuters and tourists every day, the London Underground has long been a part of London's national heritage and way of life. It was the first underground railway in the world, and is now central to lives of millions of Londoners. Here...

The story of the most iconic railway company of the great age of steam. The initials ‘GWR’ conjure an evocative picture of a Brunswick green locomotive hauling tea-and-cream-coloured coaches through a verdant West Country landscape. However, the GWR was not just engines and trains. In this comprehensive...

The nineteenth century was a time of innovation and expansion across the industrial landscape, and nowhere more so than on the railways, as the new age of iron, steel and steam, literally, gathered pace. At the head of the race up was the iconic Great Western Railway. As this mighty corporation grew,...

The railway came to Oxfordshire during the 1840s, the core of the present-day local railway network being completed by 1853. Other lines were subsequently constructed and, despite some branch line closures during the 1960s, these Victorian railways are still serving the public during the first decades...

The Somerset & Dorset Railway, known as the S&D (said to also stand for ‘Slow and Dirty’ or ‘Serene and Delightful’), ran from Bath across the Mendip hills to Bournemouth on the south coast. Never a high-speed line, the main traffic for the Somerset & Dorset during the winter months...

The city of Glasgow, formerly one of the largest industrial centers in the world, was once responsible for building about one-quarter of the world's railway locomotives. This was complemented by a massive urban railway network: the second largest in the UK. However, the Beeching Report of 1963 inevitably...

The railway network within Birmingham has long been important for the movement of passengers and freight to serve the centre and its suburbs, and as the road network around Birmingham has become more congested, the railways in the city have, once more, taken on an important role. As the network declined...

Incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1835 and completed just six years later, the Great Western Railway became one of the great icons of the Age of Steam, and perhaps the world’s most famous railway company. Spanning Southern England from the Thames to the Bristol Channel, the history of Brunel’s...

It's hard to think of any institution that more readily represents London than the Underground system. Practical, egalitarian, efficient, popular, logical, organised and yet infuriating, maddening and confusing it stands for everything modern life does in this great world capital. For most of our...

The London and North Eastern Railway, or LNER as it was familiarly known, was one of the Big Four companies that took control of Britain's railway network following the 'Grouping' in 1923. This network represented a challenging mixture of mainline and rural passenger routes, suburban services, and...

Running a railway is a complex business that constantly throws up situations, dramas, and misadventures, both major and minor, for those involved in it. Geoff Body and Bill Parker have collated a rich selection of railway stories to create an enjoyable book of adventures and mishaps illustrating their...