1st Edition
Routledge Revivals: The Atlas of British Railway History (1985)
First published in 1985, this Atlas uses over 50 specially drawn maps to trace the rise and fall of the railways’ fortunes, and is supported by an interesting and authoritative text. Financial and operating statistics are clearly presented in diagrammatic form and provide a wealth of information rarely available to the student of railway history. Freeman and Aldcroft provide the basis for a new understanding of the way in which the railways transformed Britain by the scale of their engineering works, by shrinking national space and reorganising the layouts of urban areas. Maps show the evolution of early wagon routes into the first railway routes, the frenetic activity of the ‘Railway Mania’ years, and the consolidation of these lines into a national network. This exciting presentation of railway development will interest the enthusiast as well as the more general student of British transport history.
Introduction
PART ONE
1. Precursors
2. Birth
3. Pioneers 1: Stockton and Darlington
4. Pioneers 2: Liverpool and Manchester
5. A Network Created
6. Railway Mania
7. The Railway System by 1850
8. The Broad Gauge
9. Social Benefits
10. Railways in the Landscape
PART TWO
11. The Network Matures: 1850-1875
12. The Growth of Traffic
13. The Locomotive Stable
14. Network Intensification: 1875-1914
15. The Race to the North
16. Railways and Towns
17. Railway Pricing
18. Traffic Density: 1901
19. Edwardian Zenith
PART THREE
20. World War One
21. The Railways in 1921
22. The Grouping: 1923
23. Steam Power at its Zenith
24. A New Age in Passenger Services
25. Southern Electric
26. Road Competition: The Railway Response
27. Railway Air Services
28. The Railways in 1938
PART FOUR
29. World War Two
30. The Big Four in Twilight
31. Nationalisation
32. Modernisation
33. Air and Road Competition
34. The Beeching Era
35. Into a New Age… Or Lingering Decline?
36. Now They Are Closed… Now They Are Open
Acknowledgements
Biography
Michael Freeman, Derek Aldcroft
