The British Railways Pre-Grouping Atlas and Gazetteer was first published by Ian Allan Publishing in 1958 but has not been revised since the fifth edition in 1967. For this new edition the cartography has been completely redrawn in the larger page size of our recent atlases to make the mapping much clearer and easy to read. It has also been thoroughly corrected and for the first time will include lines not built at the time of the 1923 Grouping to show the entire historical railway network. The atlas will also have a gazetteer listing abbreviations of all the railway companies and an index listing all tunnels, water troughs, principal summits, stations, good and locomotive sheds, depots etc and junctions named on the maps. The British Railways Pre-Grouping Atlas and Gazetteer is a complete record of the approximately 150 of different companies that ran Britain's passenger railways, including narrow gauge, before the Grouping into the Big Four companies in 1923. The ownership of each line is differentiated by colour coding on the maps, with enlarged sections of the most complicated centres, making this an essential work of reference for all those interested in the history of Britain's railways, both the thousands of miles of railway lines that have now disappeared and the origins of today's network that survives.

Following the popularity of other historical railway atlases, this is an enlarged edition of the Pre-Grouping Atlas combined with the Railway Clearing House Junction Diagrams. The pages will show a map of the British railway network for a particular region immediately prior to the 1923 Grouping, showing the owners of line and each map will be accompanied detailed drawings published by the Railway Clearing House in 1914 of the junctions within that region. Immediately prior to the Grouping there were roughly 150 independent railway companies operating in the UK and each company's lines are colour coded in the atlas, allowing the reader to easily trace the historical operations of that company, even through the complex junctions. The atlas and junction diagrams are supplemented by a detailed list of all stations, junctions and companies in operation at that time, as well as additional information on features such as tunnels, watertroughs, viaducts and summits. This book will be an invaluable work of reference to the complex railway system in Britain 100 years ago and will appeal to railway enthusiasts and historians alike.

In World War 2 the railways of Britain played a pivotal part in the ultimate defeat of Germany and its allies - as they had done in World War 1. Under centralised control, the war effort put a considerable strain upon the infrastructure, equipment and staff of the railway industry. Certain lines which might otherwise have closed, such as the Shropshire & Montgomery, found new roles as military bases and munition dumps were established. Other lines, such as the line from Didcot to Winchester, underwent considerable expansion in order to provide increased capacity. In order to make the railways more efficient a limited number of passenger services were either suspended or withdrawn completely; in many cases, these were never to be restored. This atlas is designed to provide a guide to the impact of the war on the railway industry, illustrating the evolution of the railway network during these years. The various lines are differentiated between those that had passenger services throughout the war, those lines that saw passenger services temporarily or permanently withdrawn, freight-only lines, routes opened during the war and lines that saw capacity increased.