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Running a railway is a complex business beset with drama. The operation of heavy equipment at speed, twenty-four hours a day, across the full length of the country and using extremely technical signaling, track and mechanical engineering is no mean feat and throws up a constant stream of challenges. Fortunately, the highly professional railway staff are ready to deal with these daily obstacles using their expertise, dedication and, as is so often...
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Pandemonium wafted up out of Deadwood Gulch whenever bellowing, muddy oxen teams led wagons rattling into town. For a decade, thousands of bull trains hauled all that miners, settlers and ne'er-do-wells needed to survive in that isolated prairie oasis. The bulls, thousands of them in mile-long, meandering trains, had last known civilization in Fort Pierre, two hundred miles to the east. After weeks on the harsh prairie of the Sioux, the exhausted...
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London's Underground is one of the best-known and most distinctive aspects of the city. Since Victorian times, this remarkable feat of engineering has made an extraordinary contribution to the economy of the capital and played a vital role in the daily life of generations of Londoners.
Stephen Halliday's informative, entertaining, wide-ranging history of the Underground celebrates the vision and determination of the Victorian Pioneers who conceived...
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Maine is populated with intriguing characters who set in motion a fascinating, compelling story of railroads and the unique communities they helped to build. One of the first states to build railroads and trolleys in the United States, Maine at one point had more than ninety communities with trolleys. Standard-gauge and "two-footers" crossed the state, including the St. Lawrence & Atlantic and the Bangor & Aroostook. From an international electric...
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A safe mode of transport today, the railways were far from vehicles of sleepy commute when they first came into service; indeed, accidents were commonplace and sometimes were a result of something far more sinister. In this fresh approach to railway history, Rosa Matheson explores the grim and grisly railway past. These horrible happenings include memorable disasters and accidents, the lack of burial grounds for London's dead, leading to the 'Necropolis...
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In the 1950s and 1960s south Lancashire and Cheshire was criss-crossed by a web of railway lines, servicing the various needs of local industries. The region was a haven for railway enthusiasts who pursued the hundreds of steam workhorses based at British Railways depots in 'chemical towns' such as Warrington, Widnes, Wigan and Sutton Oak, besides Southport and Northwich. While these facilities appeared less glamorous than larger counterparts in Liverpool...
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The exciting early days of the railways were tempered with danger, as the Victorian concept of health and safety was rather different to ours. Going 'into the dark' was a frightening experience and tunneling under the ground and under water was a death-defying activity in nineteenth-century Britain — many workers and travelers paid the ultimate price. Flooding, collapses and explosions, as well as malodorous air and illness, were just some of the...
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Los Angeles transportation's epic scale--its iconic freeways, Union Station, Los Angeles International Airport and the giant ports of its shores--has obscured many offbeat transit stories of moxie and eccentricity. Triumphs such as the Vincent Thomas Bridge and Mac Barnes's Ground Link buspool have existed alongside such flops as the Santa Monica Freeway Diamond Lane and the Oxnard-Los Angeles Caltrain commuter rail. The City of Angels lacks a propeller-driven...
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Alfred Plumley, son of a coachman, was born in 1874 in Somerset's Mendip Hills. Written in his old age, this memoir of his youth was discovered in an auction sale. In it, Alfred vividly describes his country childhood and first job as a serving boy at the grand house on the hill above his village. At age 16, Alfred decides to improve his prospects by 'going on the railway' and is sent to a tiny village station on the Somerset coast. He quickly comes...
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Used extensively and somewhat taken for granted by millions of commuters and tourists every day, the London Underground has long been a part of our national heritage and way of life. It was the first underground railway in the world, and is now central to lives of millions of Londoners. Here Ben Pedroche explores the realities of building the railway from the beginning, 150 years ago, exploring this dangerous, back-breaking job and how it culminated...
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Between 1849 and 1859, Virginia raced to pierce the Blue Ridge Mountains by rail and reach the Ohio River. At least 300 enslaved people labored involuntarily toward that goal, along with 1,500 Irish immigrants. The state leased the labor of enslaved Virginians from local slaveholders, including four connected with nearby University of Virginia. Blue Ridge Tunnel and Blue Ridge Railroad historian Mary E. Lyons explored hundreds of primary documents...
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British Rail was a success. It successfully carried millions of commuters to and from their jobs every day, organised its trunk route services to yield a profit under the brand name 'Inter-City', pioneered world-beating research and technological development through its own research centre and engineering subsidiary. It transformed the railway system of Britain from a post-Second World War state of collapse into a modern, technologically advanced...
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GWR, LMS, LNER and SR: these initials arouse memories of the Cornish Riviera Express, the streamlined Coronation Scot, the streamlined Coronation with its beaver tail, and the Southern Electrics, yet three of these companies only enjoyed a life of 25 years. Colin G. Maggs, who was born in this era and is one of the country's leading railway historians, is perfectly placed to tell the story of how these Big Four companies came into being and their...
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Running a railway is a complex business. However well-run it is there will always be surprises, often hilarious, frequently unexpected, sometimes serious. Here railway professionals recall notable incidents from across their careers on the railways, lovingly compiled by expert railwaymen and authors Geoff Body and Bill Parker. The incidents covered in this illustrated book include such bizarre 'everyday' events as coping with hurricanes, rogue locomotives...
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The Southern Railway may not have been the most glamorous of the 'Big Four' companies that emerged from the grouping of 1923, but it was the great innovator. In the 1930s the Southern pioneered the first main-line electrification and created the largest electrified suburban railway network in the world. It was also one of the few to offer regular departures and the first to run true international services, introducing the 'Night Ferry' through-trains...
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The formative years of Britain's railway network produced a host of ideas, activities and characters, quite a few of which now seem not only highly unusual, but sometimes little short of ridiculous. Weird schemes and designs, extravagant behaviour, reckless competition and larger-than-life characters all featured in the genuine struggle of the railway system to evolve. While the dawning of regulation and common sense brought about more uniform and...
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Keith Widdowson visited the North Eastern Region of British Railways on over forty occasions during the final eighteen months of steam powered passenger services. With the odd exceptions (usually for railtours) most of the locomotives were neglected, run down, filthy, prone to failure and often only kept their wheels turning courtesy of the skills of the crew coaxing them along with loving care. Far from the scenic delights so often justifiably portrayed...
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Born in inner-city Birmingham, from an 'impeccable working-class pedigree', Graham Satchwell was diagnosed with a serious illness at age 7 — a condition, which should have barred his entry to the police force. Forty-two years later, he was Britain's senior-most railway detective. In a career that encompassed every CID rank and involved some of the country's toughest gangsters, petty thieves, bomb threats, terrorism, the odd politician and even the...
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The London Midland & Scottish Railway was the largest of the Big Four railway companies to emerge from the 1923 grouping. It was the only one to operate in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as having two short stretches of line in the Irish Republic. It was also the world's largest railway shipping operator and owned the greatest number of railway hotels. Mainly a freight railway, it still boasted the best carriages, and the work...
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From the American Civil War onwards, railways have been an important aspect of war. So, important were the railways that in the First World War, the state took control of the railways, and then repeated this exercise in the Second World War. Wartime on the Railways describes the part played by Britain's railways during the Second World War, dealing not simply with operational matters or the impact of enemy action on the railways, but also looking...
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