A Text Book Of Railway Engineering


S.C. Saxena
    Railway Transpor tations and its Development 2. Railway Terminology 3. Railway Track 4. Stresses in Railway Track 5. Traction and Tractive Resistances 6. Rails 7. Rail Joints and Welding of Rails 8. Creep of Rails 9. Sleepers 10. Track Fittings and Fastenings 11. Ballast 12. Subgrade and Embankments 13. Track Alignments 14. Surveying 15. Geometric Design of the Track 16. Points and Crossings 17. Track Junctions 18. Stations and Yards 19. Equipment in Station Yards 20. Signaling and Control Systems 21. Interlocking of Signals and Points 22. Construction and Renewal of Track 23. Track Drainage 24. Conventional Maintenance of Track (or Manual Maintenance) 25. Railway Track Standards 26. Safety in Railways 27. Underground Railways and Tunnelling. PART- II MODERNIZATION OF RAILWAY TRACK AND FUTURE TRENDS 28. Modern Developments in Railways 29. Development of High and Super High Speeds 30. Modernization of Track for High Speeds 31. Modern Methods of Track Maintenance PART- III RAILWAY ADMINISTRATION, ECONOMICS AND FINANCE 32. Administration of Indian Railways 33. Railway Expenses, Rates and Fares 34. Material Management.

On the Slow Train: Twelve Great British Railway Journeys


Michael Williams - 2010
    This beautifully-packaged book will take the reader on the slow train to another era when travel meant more than hurrying from one place to the next, the journey meaning nothing but time lost in crowded carriages, condemned by broken timetables. On the Slow Train will reconnect with that long-missed need to lift our heads from the daily grind and reflect that there are still places in Britain where one can stop and stare. It will tap into many things: a love of railways, a love of history, and a love of nostalgia. This book will be a paean to another age before milk churns, porters, and cats on seats were replaced by security announcements and Burger King. These twelve spectacular journeys will help free us from what Baudelaire denounced as "the horrible burden of time."

Belles and Whistles: Five Journeys Through Time on Britain's Trains


Andrew Martin - 2014
    Everyone from schoolboys to socialites knew of these glamorous 'named trains' and aspired to ride aboard them. In Belles and Whistles, Andrew Martin recreates five of these famous train journeys by travelling aboard their nearest modern day equivalents. Sometimes their names have survived, even if only as a footnote on a timetable leaflet, but what has usually - if not always - disappeared is the extravagance and luxury. As Martin explains how we got from there to here, evocations of the golden age contrast with the starker modern reality: from monogrammed cutlery to stirring sticks, from silence on trains to tannoy announcements, from compartments to airline seating. For those who wonder whatever happened to porters, dining cars, mellow lighting, timetables, luggage in advance, trunk murders, the answers are all here. Martin's five journeys add up to an idiosyncratic history of Britain's railways, combining humour, historical anecdote, reportage from the present and romantic evocations of the past.

Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain


Christian Wolmar - 2008
    The opening of the pioneering Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 marked the beginning of the railways’ vital role in changing the face of Britain. Fire and Steam celebrates the vision and determination of the ambitious Victorian pioneers who developed this revolutionary transport system and the navvies who cut through the land to enable a country-wide network to emerge. The rise of the steam train allowed goods and people to circulate around Britain as never before, stimulating the growth of towns and industry, as well many of the facets of modern life, from fish and chips to professional football. From the early days of steam to electrification, via the railways’ magnificent contribution in two world wars, the checkered history of British Rail, and the buoyant future of the train, Fire and Steam examines the social and economical importance of the railway and how it helped to form the Britain of today.

Captain Cook


Oliver Warner - 2016
    He was the first to discover Australia and the Hawaiian Islands and the first to circumnavigate New Zealand. By the 1700s, England, eager to expand its realm of trade, promoted exploration of all the unclaimed regions of the world. The eighteenth century, the age of reason and enlightenment, required a new kind of explorer: not a rover or a plunderer or a seeker of adventure for its own sake, but a master of navigation and seamanship. Captain James Cook filled the bill. No one ever surpassed Cook's record. From South America to Australia, from the ice islands of the South Pacific to the fogbound Bering Strait, lay thousands of miles of islands, atolls, and ocean that Cook charted.

The Crown: Truth & Fiction: An Expert Analysis of Netflix Series, THE CROWN


Hugo Vickers - 2017
    And so he has decided to put his thoughts down on paper. In THE CROWN: TRUTH & FICTION, Vickers writes that he does not approve of THE CROWN because 'it depicts real life people in situations which are partly true and partly false, and unfortunately most viewers take it all as gospel truth.'  He accepts that fiction can be a device to illuminate true events, but points out that it can be used to create dangerous, and lasting, false impressions too. THE CROWN has been a highly successful series, watched with intense interest across the globe.  The settings and costumes are of high quality, the acting is good, and it all looks convincing.  Peter Morgan is an intelligent writer, author of the film THE QUEEN, and the stage production of THE AUDIENCE.  The real Queen has previously inspired great performances from actresses such as Prunella Scales and Helen Mirren, and Claire Foy portrays her beautifully. As Vickers writes, 'THE CROWN has done a great job in reminding a younger generation that the Queen and Prince Philip were once young themselves.' One of the devices used in Series 2 is to take two straightforward themes which did happen and clash them against each other to create something which did not.  For example, in Episode 8, yes, the Queen and Prince Philip entertained the Kennedys at Buckingham Palace (on 5 June 1961), and yes, the Queen visited Nkrumah in Ghana (between 9 and 20 November 1961), but the Queen did not go to Ghana for the trivial reason that she wished to pull one over on Mrs Kennedy – she went there to ensure that Ghana remained part of the Commonwealth. Much has been written about the massive budget for this series and the attention to detail.   THE CROWN: TRUTH & FICTION identifies quite a number of mistakes, especially in respect of Orders and decorations.  Having worked on films himself, Hugo Vickers knows how hard it is to make sure these details are correct, and how sometimes shortcuts have to be taken.  But it is not that difficult to get the details right, and so he points out some of these errors.  But these are trivial things in comparison to the things shown as having happened, when they did not. The cruelest and most undeserved victim of the series is Prince Philip, here portrayed as a fractious, bumptious Jack the Lad, very much the villain.  Watching the series, Hugo Vickers concludes that he failed to find the man who, in 1962, was advancing Anglo-German relations through remarks such as, ‘It may be difficult for people to see any virtue in forgiving one’s enemies, but let them reflect that it is much more likely to achieve a better future than stoking the fires of hatred and suspicion.’  This fictional Prince Philip is little more than a self-centred philanderer.  The real Prince Philip told his biographer, Tim Heald: ‘I certainly believe in the need for a “free” press, but there is a difference between freedom and licence and between the honest pursuit of the truth and the cynical pursuit of thoughtless – even vindictive sensationalism.’ THE CROWN: TRUTH & FICTION delivers a sharp message to filmwriters, producers, and their historical advisers: Fiction should help us understand the truth, not pervert it.

The Man Called Red: An Autobiography of a Guide and Outfitter in Northern British Columbia


N.B. Sorensen - 2016
    One likes him almost immediately, both for his character, his honesty, and integrity and for his singular, unbending self-accountability.    He gets on well with almost everyone he meets - becoming the bane of those who cheat and lie and steal - and marries a woman he deserves and appreciates as much as he does the land that he explores and worships.     From the early 1900s until the present day, "Red" Sorensen recounts with exquisitely detailed descriptiveness his wilderness adventures and all-too-frequent brushes with mortal danger, whether from ubiquitous mountain predators, natural catastrophes, foolish fellow men, or his planes that seem to crash too often.     I find myself in awe of this man, and I admire his wife who kept up with him; It takes a special kind of women to love a man extraordinary as Red. If you sign up for his ride, prepare to be awestruck by the country he guides you through, and the quality of this man called simple "Red."Become part of a rapidly Vanishing Time and a rapidly Vanishing Place,      BUY NOW

Bradshaw’s Handbook


George Bradshaw - 1861
    Produced as the British railway network was reaching its zenith, and as tourism by rail became a serious pastime, it was the first national tourist guide specifically organized around railway journeys, and to this day offers a glimpse through the carriage window at a Britain long past. Bradshaw's Descriptive Railway Hand-Book of Great Britain and Ireland was published in four parts, describing the sights to be seen in towns and cities encountered along selected railway journeys in each region. Gathered together into a single book, it bore the short title Bradshaw's Handbook and after a few years, passed into obscurity, remaining extremely rare to this day. This is facsimile of that book, possibly the only surviving example of the 1863 edition.The original Bradshaw's Handbook inspired the BBC2 television series Great British Railway Journeys, now preparing for a fourth season.

The Devil's Mariner: A Life of William Dampier, Pirate and Explorer, 1651-1715


Anton Gill - 1997
     A self-taught geographer, hydrographer and navigator, Dampier was also a keen natural historian who showed his contemporaries then-unknown regions of the world, and vividly described the exotic creatures and plants that inhabited them without exaggeration. Impressing the Admiralty with his book, A New Voyage round the World, Dampier was given command of the infamous Roebuck expedition and became the first Englishman to explore parts of Australia. But Dampier's past reared its head when he employed acquaintances from his buccaneering days, and numerous problems beset him along the way; upon his eventual return Dampier was court-martialled for cruelty. Though he lived and worked like a buccaneer Dampier filled in blank spaces on the map, and in pioneering the seaways he opened up the oceans for exploration, thus laying the foundations for the British Empire. Although lauded in his day and going on to influence many in both literary and scientific spheres, Dampier died in obscurity and his name, associated with piracy, disappeared for many years. Comprehensive and compellingly told, Anton Gill's biography charts the life and endeavours of William Dampier, his successes and his failings, and reinstates him into the pantheon of great explorers. Anton Gill has been a freelance writer since 1984, specialising in European contemporary history but latterly branching out into historical fiction. He is the winner of the H H Wingate Award for non-fiction for 'The Journey Back From Hell'. He is also the author of 'Into Darkness', 'Dance Between the Flames' and 'An Honourable Defeat'. 'The Devil's Mariner' was his first biography.

The Railways: Nation, Network and People


Simon Bradley - 2015
    Transforming lives and landscapes, they have left their mark on everything from timekeeping to tourism. As a self-contained world governed by distinctive rules and traditions, the network also exerts a fascination all its own.From the classical grandeur of Newcastle station to the ceaseless traffic of Clapham Junction, from the mysteries of Brunel's atmospheric railway to the lost routines of the great marshalling yards, Simon Bradley explores the world of Britain's railways, the evolution of the trains, and the changing experiences of passengers and workers. The Victorians' private compartments, railway rugs and footwarmers have made way for air-conditioned carriages with airline-type seating, but the railways remain a giant and diverse anthology of structures from every period, and parts of the system are the oldest in the world.Using fresh research, keen observation and a wealth of cultural references, Bradley weaves from this network a remarkable story of technological achievement, of architecture and engineering, of shifting social classes and gender relations, of safety and crime, of tourism and the changing world of work. The Railways shows us that to travel through Britain by train is to journey through time as well as space.

Trains and Buttered Toast


John Betjeman - 2006
    He saw his country being devastated by war & progress & he waged a private war to save it. His only weapons were words - the poetry for which he is best known &, even more influential, the radio talks that first made him a phenomenon.

Reluctant Pioneer: How I Survived Five Years in the Canadian Bush


Thomas Osborne - 1995
    The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic."Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.

IVAR THE BONELESS: Myths Legends & History (Vikings Book 1)


KIV Books - 2018
    The records that talk about him are quite conflicting as they often are with mythical and historical figures. This book will do it's best and take a closer look to his origins, family and his notable exploits. We will also catch a glimpse into the possibilities of his demeanor and behavior without moving away from the fact that he is one of the most ruthless men to ever invade England in the 9th century. It is our hope that you'll enjoy this book and learn many new and exciting things about Ivar the Boneless!

Desert War


Stephen W. Sears - 2014
    The desert proved a real test of generalship, pitting Germany's Erwin Rommel against Britain's Bernard Montgomery and America's George Patton. Here, from award-winning military historian Stephen W. Sears, is the dramatic story of the generals, politicians, and soldiers who changed the course of the war.

Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain


Matthew Engel - 2009
    Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore—yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humor, capacity for suffering, and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has traveled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railway man, and—after a quest lasting decades—an individual pot of strawberry jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.