This book includes abandoned tunnels, derelict stations, old trackbeds and more that can be viewed in a series of 12 guided walks and short tube and train journeys, devised and investigated by the author.

    Adrian Vaughan, born in Reading in January 1941, fell in love with the entire spectacle of the steam railway. It was the Greatest Free Show on Earth. It had drama, it had wonderful peace and relaxation, it was musical and it had poetry - to those lucky enough to be able to appreciate it. It was educational as it raised so many questions in the mind of a boy. There was no feeling of oppression on that railway. Adrian was allowed to ride the engines and enter the signal boxes. He asked the railwaymen questions about their engine or their signal box and their work, and they kindly gave him the answers. He was coached in engine driving and signal box work through the 1940s and 1950s; he was the first volunteer railwayman at the age of twelve, unloading parcels, helping in the shunting yard. By the time he actually went to work for British Railways as a porter, he was fairly well versed not only in the work but in the spirit of the railwaymen and their commitment to what they called 'The Service'. Signalman's Morning is not a book of rose-tinted hindsight, nor is the trilogy. He knew, all through that period, that it was a very special time. These are his memories, carefully remembered until, in 1978, he felt capable of writing them down, on a 1942 vintage 'Imperial' typewriter, in a way to do justice to that wonderful epoch.

    The Companion Book to the Emmy Award-Winning Public Television Series

    It includes a brief history of each of the constituent and subsidiary companies, details of the railway’s activities, as well as telling the story of the LNER itself in peacetime and at war. Tables give details of its steam locomotives. This book is extensively illustrated.

    Symbols of progress and change, they tell of remarkable breakthroughs in technology, industry and travel. Iconic in their design they have both made a distinctive impact on Britain’s landscape and opened it up to millions of people who, through train journeys alone, became acquainted with wonderful new places and sights. And as fond staples of childhood experiences they evoke deep, memorable feelings of nostalgia, of holidays and home.Great British Railway Journeys is a passionate, charming and insightful look at Britain from a window seat: a compelling read for all who look forward to travelling by train.

    Organised into routes, the book covers all the main London termini and their principal routes as well as major intercity routes in other parts of Britain.

    Who would know that the ugly, low concrete bunker of Birmingham New Street station replaced a handsome glass-roofed train shed, that until the 1960s the stupendously high Belah viaduct swept across a remote Cumbrian valley, that the outlet mall in Swindon selling cheap designer clothing used to be the great GWR locomotive works, or that on little bucolic branch lines in the West Country or Essex an old bus body was the waiting-room? The current restoration of St Pancras Station and its Midland Hotel is a glorious exception to a melancholy rule—that the finer the railway architecture, the more likely it was to be demolished in the name of progress.

    In both the First and Second World Wars, railways were crucial in the transportation of men, munitions and coal, whilst on the Continent British forces operated railways to support the war effort. The heroic story of railways at war was confirmed in the months before and after the 'D' Day landings in 1944 when literally thousands of trains were run to support the Allied invasion, cementing their role as the 'fourth service' during World War II. Here, Tim Bryan provides an authoritative and fully illustrated guide to the railway's role in twentieth-century wartime.