Description
The authoritative and fascinating history of the rise and fall of the state-owned British Rail.
You think you know British Rail. But you don't know the whole story. From its creation after the Second World War, through its fifty-year lifetime, British Rail was an innovative powerhouse that transformed our transport system.
Uniting disparate lines into a highly competent organisation - heralding 'The Age of the Train' - and, for a time, providing one of the fastest regular rail services in the world. Born into post-war austerity, traumatised, impoverished and exploited by a hostile press, the state-owned railway was dismissed as a dinosaur unable to evolve, and swept away by a government hellbent on selling it off. Now, award-winning writer Christian Wolmar provides a new perspective on national loss in a time of privatisation.
British Rail is ripe for a new history.