GEOFFREY FREEMAN ALLEN - The Illustrated History of Railways Iin Britain

London England, Marshall Cavendish, 1982. Second Printing, Binding: Boards, Very Good/Fine/Very Good/fine. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall 0856857149 Hardback The story of railways in the British Isles parallels in so many ways the history of the United Kingdom since 1820 -with the first two decades of this century forming a water-shed in the 'modernization' of its systems. Yet the whole story has never been told adequately in a single book. Here at last, the author rectifies that ommission. In over 100,000 words he carefully covers the 'three ages' of railways. Starting with the development of early locomotives and the geographical growth of the network he describes the cut and thrust of inter-company politics and rivalry and the emergence of main-line speed and passenger comfort. With his sheer breadth of approach, yet anecdotal delivery, he moves into the years of dieselization and electrification and disucsses the many other aspects of changing industrial technology that, with the advent of British Rail, have brought the railways into a 'new age'. Even as a pure textbook, this book would be a delight. But it gains so much more substance by the astonishing array, in colour as well as black and white, of carefully selected illustrations.A year's work went into finding the best prints in existence - and the collection of early photographs is almost certainly the largest and best ever brought together in a single volume. The photographs were chosen, wherever possible, to recreate the mood of the era - look, for instance, at the LNWR express climbing Shap in 1899, or the interior of Nottingham Victoria Station the week it opened in 1900. These photographs gives us, as words never could, genuine glimpses of what railways, and life, were like in a byegone age. This book is a remarkable achievement. It has never been attempted before - and now that a visually outstanding and authoritative Illustrated History of Railways in Britain exists, no-one will need to attempt it again. Illustrated. Price clipped.