The British Railway System
Download The British Railway System PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get The British Railway System book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages.
The British Railway System. A Description of the Work Performed in the Principal Departments
Author: J. L. Maclean
language: en
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Release Date: 2024-02-27
Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.
British Rail
British Rail was a success.British Rail is a contentious company, as controversial as Dr Beeching and his axe. However, this examination of BR's passenger services shows just how vital the organisation was. It successfully carried millions of commuters to and from their jobs every day; organised its trunk route services to yield a profit under the brand name 'Inter-City'; and pioneered world-beating research and technological development through its own research centre and engineering subsidiary. It transformed the railway system of Britain from a post-Second World War state of collapse into a modern, technologically advanced railway. And it did all this despite being starved of cash and being subjected to the whims of ever-fickle politicians.British Rail: The Nation's Railway is a story, expertly weaved by Tanya Jackson, of how all this was achieved against the odds. Complemented by stunning black-and-white and colour images, this is certainly a volume that no rail enthusiast should be without.
The World's First Railway System
The British railway network was a monument to Victorian private enterprise. Its masterpieces of civil engineering were emulated around the world. But its performance was controversial: praised for promoting a high density of lines, it was also criticised for wasteful duplication of routes. This is the first history of the British railway system written from a modern economic perspective. It uses conterfactual analysis to construct an alternaive network to represent the most efficient alternative rail network that could have been constructed given what was known at the time - the first time this has been done. It reveals how weaknesses in regulation and defects in government policy resulted in enormous inefficiency in the Victorian system that Britain lives with today. British railway companies developed into powerful regional monopolies, which then contested each other's territories. When denied access to existing lines in rival territories, they built duplicate lines instead. Plans for an integrated national system, sponsored by William Gladstone, were blocked by Members of Parliament because of a perceived conflict with the local interests they represented. Each town wanted more railways than its neighbours, and so too many lines were built. The costs of these surplus lines led ultimately to higher fares and freight charges, which impaired the performance of the economy. The book will be the definitive source of reference for those interested in the economic history of the British railway system. It makes use of a major new historical source, deposited railway plans, integrates transport and local history through its regional analysis of the railway system, and provides a comprehensive, classified bibliography.