With stunning previously unpublished photographs documenting the end of steam railways of the G.W.R.

This book, covering the final years of steam on Britain’s railways, presents a wonderful array of over 200 color photographs, many of them previously unpublished. All the imagery is reproduced from original transparencies that have remained carefully preserved away from daylight since the day they were taken, so the original vividness of color remains – a rare quality. This book will delight today’s railway enthusiasts who are looking for new material.

Volume three in this series focuses on the basic principles of light pulse compression through chirp generation and compensation inside and outside the laser cavity. Traces the developmental of light railways from before the 1896 Light Railways Act, and places the failure of the subsequent expansion in the context of financial problems of the rail industry as a whole, due most especially to the concurrent rise of motor traffic. Assesses the impact on the remote areas served, and follows the form of transportation to its terminal decline between the wars. For historians and rail buffs. Distributed by St. Martin's. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In 1951, the Festival of Britain commissioned a series of short guides they dubbed 'handbooks for the explorer'. Their aim was to encourage readers to venture out beyond the capital and on to 'the roads and the by-roads' to see Britain as a 'living country'. Yet these thirteen guides did more than celebrate the rural splendour of this 'island nation': they also made much of Britain's industrial power and mid-century ambition – her thirst for new technologies, pride in manufacturing and passion for exciting new ways to travel by road, air and sea. Armed with these About Britain guides, historian Tim Cole takes to the roads to find out what has changed and what has remained the same over the 70 years since they were first published. From Oban to Torquay, Caernarvon to Cambridge, he explores the visible changes to our landscape, and the more subtle social and cultural shifts that lie beneath. In a starkly different era where travel has been transformed by the pandemic and many are journeying closer to home, About Britain is a warm and timely meditation on our changing relationship with the landscape, industry and transport. As he looks out on vineyards and apple orchards, power stations and slate mines, vast greenhouses and fulfilment centres for online goods, Cole provides an enchanting glimpse of twentieth and early twenty-first century Britain as seen from the driver's seat.

A mix of high quality colour and black & white photographs, together with informative commentaries brimming with detail, covering the railways of Scotland in the late 1950s and 1960s. Virtually all of the photographs have never been published before and were taken by the author, his late father, and their friend Alan Maund.

Take a nostalgic steam-powered journey back in time on the Cambrian Coast Line between Machynlleth and Pwllheli. At a time when steam was king and when the Cambrian Coast Express linked Pwllheli to Paddington, join holidaymakers and locals and travel along one of the most beautiful and evocative coastal routes in Britain. Includes an essay on the history of the line and photographs of its locomotives, trains and stations.

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.