THE RISE AND FALL OF BRITISH RAILWAYS: GOODS & FREIGHT

摘要

This well-researched, highly detailed and clearly written book ought to be required reading for all serious students of modern railway history. Why such a bold claim? For three main reasons: first, because the saga of goods and freight movement by rail has been woefully under-recorded compared, for example, to passenger train or motive power history. Secondly, John Vaughan supplies readers with a lucid and yet unusual approach to the wider, national history of the UK's railways. Familiar issues appear once more, but in new contexts: the massive decline in freight and mineral movement; fumbling dieselisation; missed opportunities; meddling and contradictory interventions by politicians, and so on.