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 was freight and local passenger traffic. In the summer, however, there was heavy traffic as Saturday holiday services from the northern industrial towns passed along the line. In 1962, John Betjeman travelled along the Somerset & Dorset from Evercreech Junction to Highbridge and Burnham-on-Sea, making a BBC documentary called Branch Line Railway, in which he pleaded for the line to be spared from the Beeching cuts. However, despite an active campaign to save it, and the promise by the new Labour government that there would be no more railway cutbacks, on 7 March 1966 the whole line was closed. 2016 will see the fiftieth anniversary of the closure of this much-mourned railway; here in this well-illustrated book, the history of the line is preserved.

Almost the entire network of the former Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway system closed at the end of February 1959. Some short sections of the railway were retained for passenger services until the mid-1960s and freight continued to run on a few others, one surviving into the 1980s. Only the passenger service between Cromer and Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast survives as part of the national network, which is now reached by the route of one-time competitor the Great Eastern Railway. Over sixty years after closure, interest in the M&GNJR and its predecessors remains high. The North Norfolk Railway runs its steam trains from the original station at Sheringham to a new one at Holt, a railway heritage centre has been established at Whitwell & Reepham station, and the M&GN Circle continues to research and celebrate this long-closed railway. There is much remaining evidence of the railway and sections of the trackbed provide pleasant walking and cycling routes. Utilising a range of rare and previously unpublished images, Steph Gillett offers a fascinating and nostalgic look back at this fondly remembered line.