Whitby is well known today as a seaside resort and a picturesque place to visit, with its piers, boats, fine sands and, overlooking its tangle of red-roofed houses, the ruins of its Abbey in one of the most splendid settings in Britain for such romantic remains. But few of its many visitors would guess the long history of the town or its significance, from time to time, in national affairs. The only comprehensive history of Whitby, it rapidly sold out and Dr White, its author, of ancient Whitby stock, has now fully revised and updated his book, with some new illustrations and interpretations. This new edition will continue as the definitive work on Whitby.

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR) is one of the most popular heritage railways in Britain. Since 1973 it has transported hundreds of thousands of visitors in preserved steam and diesel-hauled trains between Pickering and Grosmont through an ancient landscape of unmatched beauty. When those trains started to run regularly to and from Whitby in 2007, it revived a service started back in 1836 by the Whitby & Pickering Railway Company.This copiously illustrated book tells the story of a truly fascinating railway from its origins in the 1830s right through to the challenges, compromises and changing proprieties inherent in running a heritage line in the 21st century.

The British railway network was a monument to Victorian private enterprise. Its masterpieces of civil engineering were emulated around the world. But its performance was controversial: praised for promoting a high density of lines, it was also criticised for wasteful duplication of routes. This is the first history of the British railway system written from a modern economic perspective. It uses conterfactual analysis to construct an alternaive network to represent the most efficient alternative rail network that could have been constructed given what was known at the time - the first time this has been done. It reveals how weaknesses in regulation and defects in government policy resulted in enormous inefficiency in the Victorian system that Britain lives with today. British railway companies developed into powerful regional monopolies, which then contested each other's territories. When denied access to existing lines in rival territories, they built duplicate lines instead. Plans for an integrated national system, sponsored by William Gladstone, were blocked by Members of Parliament because of a perceived conflict with the local interests they represented. Each town wanted more railways than its neighbours, and so too many lines were built. The costs of these surplus lines led ultimately to higher fares and freight charges, which impaired the performance of the economy. The book will be the definitive source of reference for those interested in the economic history of the British railway system. It makes use of a major new historical source, deposited railway plans, integrates transport and local history through its regional analysis of the railway system, and provides a comprehensive, classified bibliography.

Although a great deal has been published on the economic, social and engineering history of nineteenth-century railways, the work of historical geographers has been much less conspicuous. This overview by David Turnock goes a long way towards restoring the balance. It details every important aspect of the railway’s influence on spatial distribution of economic and social change, providing a full account of the nineteenth-century geography of the British Isles seen in the context of the railway. The book reviews and explains the shape of the developing railway network, beginning with the pre-steam railways and connections between existing road and water communications and the new rail lines. The author also discusses the impact of the railways on the patterns of industrial, urban and rural change throughout the century. Throughout, the historical geography of Ireland is treated in equal detail to that of Great Britain.

This fascinating selection of more than 180 photographs traces some of the many ways in which the Scarborough & Whitby Railway has changed and developed over the last century.