Four Great Railways

Newton Abbot, UK: David & Charles PLC. Very Good/Very Good. 1980. Hard Cover. 8vo 21.8 x 14.5 x 3 Cm 0715378422 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. Bumped. No ownership marks. Diagram, photographs on plates.223 pages clean and tight. The four great railways of the between the wars period, the LMS, LNER, GWR and SR, have been the subjects of numerous books in past years, mostly written in the form of company histories and dealing primarily with mechanical engineering and train performance. This book fills a gap between these previously published works and the more erudite studies of transport economists, with a fresh appraisal of the railways as a whole, and how each company tackled the problems, both of its own making and those forced on it by outside influences. The author served the former LNER and subsequently held high office in various parts of the British Rail network concerned with modernisation, planning, training and education, retiring as director of the Channel Tunnel scheme. He is thus eminently qualified to write about the four great railways from the inside. The book discusses the need for the 1923 grouping and how it came about; there are character sketches of each of the four main line companies, and chapters dealing with mechanical engineering, train services, civil engineering, road competition, the railwaymen themselves, and the many other facets, including shipping and hotels, allied to each company. But this is much more than a mere historical record, for the author examines closely many of the policy decisions of the twenties and thirties and discusses why some brought benefits while others went disastrously wrong. This is a valuable new study of the heyday of the traditional steam railway in Britain, concluding with the run-up to nationalisation in which the author was personally involved. .