|
|
Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Transport industries > Railway transport industries > General
Britain's privatised railways continure to provoke debate about the
organisation, financing, and development of the railway system.
This important book, written by Britain's leading railway
historian, provides an authoritative account of the progress made
by British Rail prior to privatisation, and a unique insight into
its difficult role in the government's privatisation planning from
1989. Based on free access to the British Railway Board's rich
archives, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the main
themes: a process of continuous organisational change; the
existence of a persistent government audit; perennial investment
restraints; the directive to reduce operating costs and improve
productivity; a concern with financial performance, technological
change, service quality, and the management of industrial
relations; and the Board's ambiguous position as the Conservative
government pressed home its privatisation programme. The
introduction of sector management from 1982 and the 'Organising for
Quality' initiative of the early 1990s, the Serpell Report on
railway finances of 1983, the sale of the subsidiary businesses,
the large-scale investment in the Channel Tunnel, and the obsession
with safety which followed the Clapham accident of 1988, are all
examined in depth. In the conclusion, the author reviews the
successes and failures of the public sector, rehearses the
arguments for and against integration in the railway industry, and
contrasts what many have termed 'the golden age' of the mid-late
1980s, when the British Rail-government relationship was arguably
at its most effective, with what has happened since 1994.
This book, written by Britain's leading railway historian, provides an authoritative account of the progress made by British Rail prior to privatisation and a unique insight into its difficult role in the government's privatisation planning from 1989. Based on privileged access to the British Railway Board's rich archives, Terry Gourvish presents a comprehensive analysis which traces the external pressures on British Rail and its own changing internal organization between 1974 and 1997.
This book addresses the needs of researchers and practitioners in
the field of high-speed trains, especially those whose work
involves safety and reliability issues in traction systems. It will
appeal to researchers and graduate students at institutions of
higher learning, research labs, and in the industrial R&D
sector, catering to a readership from a broad range of disciplines
including intelligent transportation, electrical engineering,
mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, the biological
sciences and engineering, economics, ecology, and the mathematical
sciences.
Of all the products of the Industrial Revolution, none left its
mark on the landscape of Britain, or changed the lives of the
British people, more than the railway. The encyclopedic Oxford
Companion to British Railway History reveals, for the first time,
the full story of this remarkable achievement: the inspired
pioneers, the unprecedented feats of engineering, the romance, and
the reality. From the primitive wagonways of the seventeenth
century, through the eras of horse, steam, diesel, and electric
traction, it explores the railway's unique place in our history,
and the reasons for its extraordinary and enduring hold on our
collective imagination. Unrivalled authority Over 600 entries by 88
distinguished contributors chart the progress of rail travel from
1603 to the late twentieth century. Comprehensive coverage Covers
not only the technical and historical development of the railway,
but its social, economic, political, and artistic aspects.
Illustrated throughout Maps, diagrams, tables, and illustrations
bring the text to life and demystify technical concepts. People,
places, and politics Covers the key figures who influenced the
development of the railways, the towns that were changed forever,
and the policies that brought about the network's rise and fall.
This was the first anthropological monograph to have dealt at
length with the labour force of a major East African industry. It
is a study of the African employees of the East African Railways
and Harbours stationed at Kampala, Uganda, and living on the
Railway-owned Nsambya housing estate. Set in the years 1964 5,
shortly after Uganda's and Kenya's Independence, the book explores
some of the consequences for African migrant workers of the changes
affecting their society. Dr Grillo describes how falling prices for
primary agricultural products, educational expansion and rising
wages have created a high demand for employment. Those fortunate
enough to find work enjoy a relatively high standard of living.
Partly in consequence, the Railway labour force has become
stabilised with a low turnover of employees, the majority of whom
bring wives and children to live in town. They are, however, still
migrants who maintain social and economic ties with their areas of
origin. By fulfilling customary and personal obligations,
individuals retain a position within an 'ethnic' system which
provides one framework for relationships of solidarity and
opposition. The industry itself with its work-units, occupational
groups and grading system provides another.
This book discusses policy instruments for sustainable
infrastructure developments. Railways are one of the most important
developmental instruments of a region, province, or country. They
play a crucial role in economic development, urban growth, urban
mobility, regional susceptibility, market integration, and world
trade. Railways are an integral part of regional and urban
development, both in terms of freight and passenger transport. By
offering case studies from various regions and cities in South
Asia, this book examines the evolution of railway transportation
and the impact of these infrastructure projects on regional and
urban development. It examines the interactions between evolving
infrastructures and competing demands and considers the negative
and positive externalities of railway transportation for people,
places, and locations. The contributions analyze issues such as
network infrastructure planning and technological development,
passenger mobility and satisfaction, vulnerability to environmental
impacts, and cross-border trade.
This book describes the southern Republicans' post- Civil War
railroad aid program--the central element of the Gospel of
Prosperity" designed to reestablish a vigorous economy in the
devastated South. Conceding that race and Unionism were basic
issues, Mark W. Summers explores a neglected facet of the postwar
era: the attempt to build a new South and a biracial Republican
majority through railroad aid. Originally published in 1984. The
Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology
to again make available previously out-of-print books from the
distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These
editions preserve the original texts of these important books while
presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The
goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access
to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books
published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
At its zenith, the British railway network was 21,000 route miles
long, twice its present size. Yet it now carries more passenger
miles than at its fullest extent and urgently needs more capacity
to grow further. The massive reduction in Britain's national
railway network resulted from a sustained campaign by a number of
individuals, who believed that railways had had their day, that
economies had to be made and that you could not stop what they saw
as 'progress'. Although the process of railway closure started
early, the pace accelerated during the 1950s and peaked in the
years following the Beeching report- The Reshaping of British
Railways - published in early 1963. However, it could have been
even worse. Original research by the authors reveals plans to
reduce the size of the railway network further and an assumption,
in the early 1990s, that market forces would shrink the network
where Government policies had failed. Had these been implemented,
only a handful of lines would have remained with the network
destroyed forever. The past is vital to understanding today's
railway as the industry struggles to meet the demands made of
it.Trimming at the margins remains a compelling argument for policy
makers unaware of history, and the risk remains that mistakes could
be repeated. Drawing upon a wide range of documents, including
cabinet papers, Holding the Line is an explosive account of how
close the railway industry came to being eviscerated and how the
dangers of 'closure by stealth' still exist in the contemporary
age.
Although published in 1999 when the WHR ran only from Caernarfon to
Dinas, John Stretton covers the whole route through to Porthmadog.
The remarkable archive views of the course of the old line serve to
illustrate what has since been achieved in reinstating this railway
through some of the most magnificent scenery in the British Isles.
Covering almost every line in the country, this acclaimed series of
books juxtaposes photographs of the same railway location separated
in time by just a few years, or maybe a century or more. Sometimes
the result is dereliction or disappearance, in others a
transformation into a modern high-speed railway. In both cases, the
contrasts are intriguing and informative. This volume includes: GWR
main lines from Brent Knoll and Frome to Wellington and Whiteball;
Railways around Taunton; GWR lines to Yeovil, Dulverton, Chard,
Axbridge and Mells Road; the Minehead branch, preserved as the West
Somerset Railway; the Somerset & Dorset from Burnham and
Chilcompton to Templecombe; and, the LSWR main line from
Templecombe to Chard Junction.
During the last decades, freight transportation experienced a
worldwide boom. At the same time, competition increased
considerably, such that efficient cost structures are indispensable
for any market player. One of the main challenges a transportation
company faces is the efficient employment of its personnel in
operations, commonly referred to as crew scheduling. In this book
the author presents solution approaches to large-scale crew
scheduling. Firstly, the implementation of state-of-the-art
operations research methods for a setting at a major European
freight railway carrier is presented. Secondly, the author
discusses acceleration techniques that make the developed
algorithms applicable even in short-term contexts. While the
analysis is based on European freight railway settings, the gained
insights also apply to other (crew) scheduling contexts. Potential
readership includes scholars and graduate students who are
interested in the fields of crew scheduling and column generation
as well as practitioners from transportation companies looking for
new planning approaches.
This book provides an in-depth history of the Metropolitan-Vickers
diesel-electric Type 2 locomotives, more frequently known
collectively as the Co-Bo's due to their unusual wheel arrangement.
Twenty locomotives were constructed during the late-1950s for use
on the London Midland Region of British Railways. The fleet was
fraught with difficulties from the start, most notably due to
problems with their Crossley engines, this necessitating the need
for extensive rehabilitation work during the early-1960s. Matters
barely improved and the option to completely re-engine the
locomotives with English Electric units was debated at length, but
a downturn in traffic levels ultimately resulted in their demise by
the end of 1968 prior to any further major rebuilding work being
carried out. Significant quantities of new archive and personal
sighting information, supported by over 180 photographs and
diagrams, have been brought together to allow dramatic new insights
into this enigmatic class of locomotives, including the whole
debate surrounding potential re-engining, their works histories,
the extended periods in storage, together with in-depth reviews of
the various detail differences and liveries.
The Railway Research Institute (Instytut Kolejnictwa) in Warsaw was
established in 1951 and was, until 2000, part of the Polish State
Railways (PKP). At present, it serves as an independent entity, it
is subordinated to the minister responsible for transport. Since
its inception, the Institute has been the centre of competence for
technology, technique and organization of operation and services in
rail transport, particularly in respect to innovation. One of its
fundamental tasks also includes activities connected with safety
which are carried out in close cooperation with the National Safety
Authority, i.e. the Office of Rail Transport. At the same time the
Institute participated in the process of upgrading and
modernization of the rail network in Poland. Experience in high
speed rail, gained as a result of international cooperation and
basing on the effort to increase speed on railway lines in Poland
(so far 200 km/h), is included in the monograph "Koleje Duzych
Predkosci w Polsce" (High Speed Rail in Poland) published in 2015
for the benefit of the Polish reader. This monograph aims at
reaching an international audience of experts so as to present
Polish determinants of HSR implementation. In order to elaborate
this monograph, apart from specialists from the Railway Research
Institute, experts from other research and academic centres were
invited. Not only presenting a wide range of problems connected
with future construction of High Speed Lines in Polish conditions,
but also a number of operational ones. The authors have created a
reference work of universal character, solving problems in order to
build and operate high speed rail systems in countries on a similar
level of development as Poland. Features: providing requirements
for design and upgrade of engineering works on High Speed Rail
development information on restructuring and building railway lines
for countries starting to develop a High Speed Rail system dealing
with organizational, engineering, socioeconomic and economic
demands for transport services and the formation of human resources
for constructing and operting a High Speed Rails system. Presenting
these problems on the international arena will facilitate future
cooperation and application of world experience to create HSR in
Poland and integrate the Polish HSR network into the international
one.
Walter Licht chronicles the working and personal lives of the first
two generations of American railwaymen, the first workers in
America to enter large-scale, bureaucratically managed, corporately
owned work organizations. Originally published in 1983. The
Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology
to again make available previously out-of-print books from the
distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These
editions preserve the original texts of these important books while
presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The
goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access
to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books
published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This is an important contribution to the new urban history,
describing and analysing one of the best examples of a company town
in nineteenth-century Europe. This archetypal railway town was
built on a green-field site by a railway company in 1842-3. It was
a major junction, an administrative centre and an important
manufacturing centre. Thus it provides an ideal arena in which to
study the relationship between company and people and the effects
of this claustrophobic association on emerging economic and social
structure and politics in the era of large-scale development and
modernisation in Europe and America. Dianne Drummond applies the
full range of modern urban-historical approaches in this work. It
is a shining example of the ways in which new techniques in
research, analysis and comparison can redraw the best-known
histories. It will be essential reading for urban historians.
"Do not think of the Pennsylvania Railroad as a business
enterprise," "Forbes" magazine informed its readers in May 1936.
"Think of it as a nation." At the end of the nineteenth century,
the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business
corporation in the world. In 1914, the PRR employed more than two
hundred thousand people--more than double the number of soldiers in
the United States Army. As the self-proclaimed "Standard Railroad
of the World," this colossal corporate body underwrote American
industrial expansion and shaped the economic, political, and social
environment of the United States. In turn, the PRR was
fundamentally shaped by the American landscape, adapting to
geography as well as shifts in competitive economics and public
policy. Albert J. Churella's masterful account, certain to become
the authoritative history of the Pennsylvania Railroad, illuminates
broad themes in American history, from the development of
managerial practices and labor relations to the relationship
between business and government to advances in technology and
transportation.Churella situates exhaustive archival research on
the Pennsylvania Railroad within the social, economic, and
technological changes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America,
chronicling the epic history of the PRR intertwined with that of a
developing nation. This first volume opens with the development of
the Main Line of Public Works, devised by Pennsylvanians in the
1820s to compete with the Erie Canal. Though a public rather than a
private enterprise, the Main Line foreshadowed the establishment of
the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1846. Over the next decades, as the
nation weathered the Civil War, industrial expansion, and labor
unrest, the PRR expanded despite competition with rival railroads
and disputes with such figures as Andrew Carnegie and John D.
Rockefeller. The dawn of the twentieth century brought a measure of
stability to the railroad industry, enabling the creation of such
architectural monuments as Pennsylvania Station in New York City.
The volume closes at the threshold of American involvement in World
War I, as the strategies that PRR executives had perfected in
previous decades proved less effective at guiding the company
through increasingly tumultuous economic and political waters.
For nearly thirty years, John Haining (under the pen name
'Countryman's Steam') contributed a vast range of designs and
constructional articles to the pages of Model Engineer magazine.
These covered all types and sizes of engine:- steam traction
engines for the road and field and standing engines, and the way
they worked with ploughs, cider mills, elevators and threshing
machines. The articles were always popular with those seeking steam
experiences away from the railways, and as a result the author
built up an authoritative reputation for the extent of his
knowledge in this area. As a technical consultant to Model
Engineer, the author built up an enviable reputation for the extent
of his knowledge and the immense trouble he took to reply fully and
clearly to readers' queries and problems. This book was originally
written in 1982 to expound on some of the problems encountered by
engine owners, both in full size and in small scale. It places
particular emphasis on design and construction, and the care of
steel boilers, with formulae and data used by the top firms. A new
and enlarged edition was extended to cover more fully the design,
construction and care of steel boilers in general, with formulae
and data used by firms of repute. An extra chapter was included
covering the author's designs of three vertical boilers, the
Sentinel, the Caradoc and a 3 inch scale version.
This work provides coverage of: Edinburgh and Leith; the East Coast
Main Line and the Waverley Route; the Forth Bridge and East Fife;
the West Fife and Clackmannan; and the West Lothian and Stirling to
Hilton Junction.
During much of his early career, from 1944 through to the early
1960s, Richard Hardy took hundreds of pictures of life on the
railways and the men he knew and worked with on a daily basis,
using his trusty Brownie 620 box camera. These unique behind the
scenes images form a fascinating and hugely evocative portrayal of
Britain at the height of the era of steam, during the time of the
'Big Four', and after 1947 when the sprawling nationalised network
known as British Railways came of age. The second edition contains
many new unseen photos which capture the railways in wartime,
providing a valuable social record of the nation at war. In
addition there is a sequence of rare photographs of French engines,
railways and railwaymen, offering a superb contrast to the British
rail network (it quickly becomes evident that the British rail
system ran on tea, whereas the French system ran on wine). Great
characters are the unifying theme of the pictures, and they include
famous figures associated with the railways, such as the poet John
Betjeman. This wonderfully illustrated book sets Richard's personal
photographs and text alongside a carefully collated selection of
ephemera, artworks and photographs drawn from the National Railway
Museum in York. Collectively these images and artefacts tell the
stories of the great brotherhood of railwaymen, brilliantly evoking
the speed, heat and dust of the footplate.
Covering almost every line in the country, this acclaimed series of
books juxtaposes photographs of the same railway location separated
in time by just a few years, or maybe a century or more. Sometimes
the result is dereliction or disappearance, in others a
transformation into a modern high-speed railway. In both cases, the
contrasts are intriguing and informative. This volume includes: the
Great Western main line over the South Devon banks; Great Western
lines in North Devon; the Exeter and Plymouth areas; the Southern
in East Devon; the Southern's 'Withered Arm' route to Plymouth;
and, preserved lines: the Paignton & Dartmouth Steam Railway,
Dart Valley Railway and Seaton Tramway.
|
|