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Books > Sport & Leisure > Transport: general interest > Trains & railways: general interest
This book is a companion to the work West Coast Main Line
Locomotive Haulage and gives a flavour of the many varieties of
locomotives and other rolling stock that have operated over the
East Coast Main Line, including details of its creation and
operation. Utilizing over 20 maps and drawings, useful information
on line speeds and gradients is also provided. It explores the
usage of both diesels and electric locos on this line, and ends
with a reflection on what the future may hold for this invaluable
route. With over 150 images, this volume is an all-encompassing
look at locomotive haulage on the ECML.
We think of the Stephensons and Brunel as the fathers of the
railways, and their Liverpool and Manchester and Great Western
Railways as the prototypes of the modern systems. But who were the
railways' grandfathers and great-grandfathers? The rapid evolution
of the railways after 1830 depended on the juggernauts of steam
locomotion being able to draw upon centuries of experience in using
and developing railways, and of harnessing the power of steam.
Giants the Stephensons and others may have been, but they stood
upon the foundations built by many other considerable - if
lesser-known - talents. This is the story of those early pioneers
of steam.
Few transportation maps can boast the pedigree that London's iconic
Tube' map can. Sported on t-shirts, keyrings, duvet covers, and
most recently, downloaded an astonishing twenty million times in
app form, the map remains a long-standing icon of British design
and ingenuity. Hailed by the art and design community as a cultural
artefact, it has also inspired other culturally important pieces of
artwork, and in 2006 was voted second in BBC 2's Great British
Design Test. But it almost didn't make it out of the notepad it was
designed in. The story of how the Underground map evolved is almost
as troubled and fraught with complexities as the transport network
it represents. Mapping the Underground was not for the
faint-hearted - it rapidly became a source of frustration, and in
some cases obsession - often driving its custodians to the point of
distraction. The solution, when eventually found, would not only
revolutionise the movement of people around the city but change the
way we visualise London forever. Caroline Roope's wonderfully
researched book casts the Underground in a new light, placing the
world's most famous transit network and its even more famous map in
its wider historical and cultural context, revealing the people not
just behind the iconic map, but behind the Underground's artistic
and architectural heritage. From pioneers to visionaries,
disruptors to dissenters - the Underground has had them all - as
well as a constant stream of (often disgruntled) passengers. It is
thanks to the legacy of a host of reformers that the Tube and the
diagram that finally provided the key to understanding it, have
endured as masterpieces of both engineering and design.
This title talks about: Sheffield and Rotherham; Pennine routes
from Penistone; lines around Barnsley; Wakefield, Castleford and
Knottingley; the railway town of Doncaster; and Goole and Selby.
The railway era began in Britain when steam was king. In the age of
petrol and diesel, these once confident, rumbustious railways fell
into decline, yet as their fortunes waned, the fascination for
trains and all their works grew - and has if anything become more
intense as congested roads and high-speed trains have sparked a
revival in railway travel. In The Railways of Britain, Jack Simmons
sympathetically tells the history of the railways and describes
every major aspect of their equipment and operations: permanent
way, buildings, locomotives, rolling stock, signalling and labour
relations. He also makes journeys through the Pennines, Scotland,
Essex and Southern England on which he acts as observer and guide.
This third edition of one of the outstanding works of British
railway literature has been substantially rewritten, revised and
brought up to date. For the first time it has been fully
illustrated in colour and black and white with more than 200
photographs, maps and engravings, many of them previously
unpublished. Jack Simmons, late doyen of British railways
historians, was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of
Leicester. The Railways of Britain was first published in 1961 and
is his best-known work. His other books include St Pancras Station,
The Railway in England and Wales, 1830-1914, Transport Museums in
Britain and Western Europe and The Railway in Town and Country as
well as two volumes in the 11-volume Visual History of Modern
Britain, of which he was General Editor.
When it first opened on October 27, 1904, the New York City
subway ran twenty-two miles from City Hall to 145th Street and
Lenox Avenue--the longest stretch ever built at one time. From that
initial route through the completion of the IND or Independent
Subway line in the 1940s, the subway grew to cover 722 miles--long
enough to reach from New York to Chicago.
In this definitive history, Clifton Hood traces the complex and
fascinating story of the New York City subway system, one of the
urban engineering marvels of the twentieth century. For the
subway's centennial the author supplies a new foreward explaining
that now, after a century, "we can see more clearly than ever that
this rapid transit system is among the twentieth century's greatest
urban achievements."
The seminal and pioneering London Underground is more than a mass
transportation network - it is a style icon, its history involving
some of the most important architects and artists of their time.
Exploring Frank Pick's vision through the development of Metroland
to Holden's innovative designs, David Long expertly weaves the
story of the Underground - its abundance of characters (some good,
some not so good), design firsts and brand identity - with Jane
Magarigal's atmospheric photography. From suburban expansion to
Blitz bombings and Soviet adulation, this book celebrates what
remains a magnificent engineering and aesthetic achievement while
providing an affectionate if slightly elegiac portrait of a London
which is now gone for good.
Sunday Times History Book of the Year 2015 Currently filming for
BBC programme Full Steam Ahead Britain's railways have been a vital
part of national life for nearly 200 years. Transforming lives and
landscapes, they have left their mark on everything from
timekeeping to tourism. As a self-contained world governed by
distinctive rules and traditions, the network also exerts a
fascination all its own. From the classical grandeur of Newcastle
station to the ceaseless traffic of Clapham Junction, from the
mysteries of Brunel's atmospheric railway to the lost routines of
the great marshalling yards, Simon Bradley explores the world of
Britain's railways, the evolution of the trains, and the changing
experiences of passengers and workers. The Victorians' private
compartments, railway rugs and footwarmers have made way for
air-conditioned carriages with airline-type seating, but the
railways remain a giant and diverse anthology of structures from
every period, and parts of the system are the oldest in the world.
Using fresh research, keen observation and a wealth of cultural
references, Bradley weaves from this network a remarkable story of
technological achievement, of architecture and engineering, of
shifting social classes and gender relations, of safety and crime,
of tourism and the changing world of work. The Railways shows us
that to travel through Britain by train is to journey through time
as well as space.
This new book is the third by Wolfgang Sawodny on German armored
trains in World War II, and presents all new information not
previously discussed in his first two highly successful volumes.
The main emphasis here is on the operational history of German
armored train units on the Russian front, and includes many
previously unpublished photographs.
Chartered in 1827 as the country's first railroad, the legendary
Baltimore and Ohio played a unique role in the nation's great
railroad drama and became the model for American railroading. John
W. Garrett, who served as president of the B&O from 1858 to
1884, ranked among the great power brokers of the time. In this
gripping and well-researched account, historian Kathleen Waters
Sander tells the story of the B&O's beginning and its
unprecedented plan to build a rail line from Baltimore over the
Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River, considered to be the most
ambitious engineering feat of its time. The B&O's success
ignited "railroad fever" and helped to catapult railroading to
America's most influential industry in the nineteenth century.
Taking the B&O helm during the railroads' expansive growth in
the 1850s, Garrett soon turned his attention to the demands of the
Civil War. Sander explains how, despite suspected Southern
sympathies, Garrett became one of President Abraham Lincoln's most
trusted confidantes and strategists, making the B&O available
for transporting Northern troops and equipment to critical battles.
The Confederates attacked the B&O 143 times, but could not put
"Mr. Lincoln's Road" out of business. After the war, Garrett became
one of the first of the famed Gilded Age tycoons, rising to
unimagined power and wealth. Sander explores how-when he was not
fighting fierce railroad wars with competitors-Garrett steered the
B&O into highly successful entrepreneurial endeavors,
quadrupling track mileage to reach important commercial markets,
jumpstarting Baltimore's moribund postwar economy, and constructing
lavish hotels in Western Maryland to open tourism in the region.
Sander brings to life the brazen risk-taking, clashing of oversized
egos, and opulent lifestyles of the Gilded Age tycoons in this
richly illustrated portrait of one man's undaunted efforts to
improve the B&O and advance its technology. Chronicling the
epic technological transformations of the nineteenth century, from
rudimentary commercial trade and primitive transportation westward
to the railroads' indelible impact on the country and the economy,
John W. Garrett and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is a vivid
account of Garrett's twenty-six-year reign.
The year 1963 will always be remembered as the one when the Sixties
really started to swing. The Beatles and Rolling Stones were
topping the charts while the mini-skirt and the Mini car had become
the latest fashion accessories. For those with an interest in
railways however, 1963 was memorable for the publication by Her
Majesty's Stationery Office of Part 1 of the report 'The Reshaping
of British Railways' by Dr Richard Beeching, then chairman of the
British Railways Board. The term 'reshaping' was somewhat of a
euphemism as the Report envisaged a radical reduction in the
national rail network. Hundreds of stations were to be closed to
both freight and passenger traffic, along with thousands of miles
of track, while several thousand staff would be made redundant.
This book is intended as a record of how the proposals affecting
passenger services in the Wessex Area were ruthlessly implemented
over a ten year period. Since then, despite the introduction of
modern high-speed rolling stock and much track rationalisation, the
extent of our rail network has remained basically the same. Train
services in Wessex today are therefore still very much Dr
Beeching's Legacy. In addition he bequeathed to the nation a linear
network of derelict land which could be put to other purposes,
including that of heritage railway. The area covered by this book
include sections of the counties of Avon, Somerset, Wiltshire,
Hampshire, Dorset and Gloucestershire.
This is the definitive story of the men who built the railways the unknown Victorian labourers who blasted, tunnelled, drank and brawled their way across nineteenth-century England.
Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.
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