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Slightly off-mint.

Before the opening of the Great Western Railway, the journey from London to Bath by mail coach took 13 hours; the railway cut the journey time to four hours – it also ruined business for the coaching inns. Their decline is the first of many changes Swift describes, including the invasion of navvies and the cutting through Sydney Gardens; but the focus of the book is Brunel and the construction of his great railway with its bridges, viaducts and the Box Tunnel.

In his popular TV travel series, Michael Portillo followed 19th-century railway guides, tracing the history and development of each destination since their original publication. This historical companion to the BBC series focuses on the railways of America, telling the story of the first pioneers, engineering mavericks and tycoons and how the railroad helped to shape the country before and after the Civil War, and into the 20th century.

A year’s worth of locomotives, from Manston pulling the Thanet Belle into Margate in January to the Queen of Scots leaving King’s Cross in December. Envelope not included. Please note: the May bank holiday has been moved since 2020 calendars were printed; each calendar contains an addendum slip with information on the new holiday.

By the end of the 19th century, the steam locomotive was the most prominent and glamorous symbol of industrial modernism. This review of its history and operation was first published in 1897 and deals in the first part with the earliest locomotive designs, explaining the basic technology and outlining the improvements that gradually refined it, and in the second part with how a contemporary engine works, with diagrams and photographs.

Discussing the challenges of renovating engines and rolling stock and retaining authenticity while running a working railway in the 21st century, this volume traces the history of the preservation movement in Britain. A few shoestring operations in the 1960s have become over 100 heritage railways today, the focus of the enthusiasts that run them shifting from simply saving locomotives from the scrapheap or keeping cherished branch lines alive to running timetabled routes and developing as significant tourist attractions.

Ten years before the phasing out of steam on British railways in 1968, BR’s fleet numbered over 16,000 locomotives; some were as much as 80 years old when decommissioned and some almost new. Thanks to the preservation movement, there are now operational examples of about 150 different classes, but a large number are extinct. This comprehensive illustrated reference book provides detailed information about these lost engines, representing almost 350 classes and over 10,000 machines.

The first railway entrepreneurs considered that their real business would be in freight, the tremendous demand for passenger travel coming as something of a surprise. This well-researched history challenges the traditional notion of rail travel as a middle-class activity in the first decades of steam, exploring the cheap excursions that were promoted to the working classes by enterprising tour operators and railway companies, and revealing the appalling conditions, often in open carriages, that the day trippers had to endure.

Renowned for its engineering prowess, Scotland was a prolific producer of railway locomotives as well as ships in the steam era, accounting for about a fifth of British stock when BR was formed in 1948. This book profiles the locomotive constructors and railway company works in Scotland, and the engines that they built, from major manufacturers such as the North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow to the most remote depot, Inverurie Works, north of Aberdeen.

Railways have been essential to the economic and social development of Australia and New Zealand, transporting commodities from inland farms and quarries, and linking distant cities. This volume charts 34 of the most rewarding rail journeys in the two countries, each illustrated with colour photographs and a map, from New Zealand’s TranzAlpine to Australia’s Spirit of the Outback. It traces the history of each line, gives technical details of the track, locomotives and carriages, and highlights features of interest along the route.

David Bell made his name as a marine artist, having spent time in the merchant navy, but his boyhood passion was for the railways, fuelled by visits to Doncaster Carr shed during the last days of steam. This selection of his detailed yet atmospheric watercolour paintings and pencil sketches presents a mixture of scenes, from nostalgic imaginings of the great locomotives in their heyday to preserved steam railways and exhibits at the National Railway Museum.

The workforce of 423 employed by Swindon Works in 1843 grew to 14,000 by the early 20th century and the centre earned an enviable reputation by developing its own methods and inspiring a sense of community. This history of the GWR institution features the first-hand accounts of former employees, and provides detailed facts and figures including lists of locomotives and pay grades, and a lexicon of specialist language.

In 1981, with the Cold War at its height, Christopher Knowles embarked on the first of 24 train journeys as a tour guide from London to Hong Kong. In this memoir, he recalls travelling on ordinary passenger services through East Berlin, Poland, the Soviet Union and China, describes his eccentric fellow-travellers, and recounts a series of bizarre and sometimes frightening experiences, including being mistaken for a Red Army deserter in Mongolia.

A technical rundown of Rocket forms only a part of this guide to the groundbreaking locomotive, presented in the Haynes workshop manual format. Further sections include the story of the Rainhill Trials and how the engine became the foundation of locomotive design thereafter, first-hand accounts of what it was like to operate and travel with Rocket, and an analysis of a series of working replicas that have been built since the 1880s, and what can be learned from them.

Covering the 20 years following railway nationalization in 1948, this account of BR-owned vehicles covers topics including the Express Parcel Service, wagon-load traffic and operations during the Suez crisis.

With new locomotion coming on line in the 1960s, old (and relatively new) steam engines were moved around the country, eventually falling out of service and stored, scrapped or put up for sale.

One of the first of the new diesels, the Class 40 locomotives, nicknamed 'whistlers' after their exhaust sound, worked the West Coast Main Line in the early 1960s with broader duties later in their career.

When introduced in 1961, the Class 55 'Deltics' were the most powerful diesel units in operation and also the most expensive. They worked the East Coast Main Line for most of their front-line service life.

Class 44, 45 and 46 locomotives are known as Peaks after the first ten were named after mountains. The photographs in this volume chart the diverse operations and various liveries of their long service career.

Starting work on the West Coast Main Line in 1967, the Class 50s were retired from the Crewe-Glasgow route when it was electrified, moving to operate passenger services from Paddington.

The North Eastern Region encompassed the industrial centres of Tyneside as well as the sparsely populated expanses of North Yorkshire. This collection ranges from main-line locos, such as A4 Pacifics, to rural and industrial workhorses.

The Scottish Region in the last days of steam was a contrast between the concentrated and busy network around Glasgow and Edinburgh and the romantic rural lines across spectacular landscapes, serving the west coast ports.

Perhaps the most celebrated of the old regions, the proudly independent Western Region managed to retain the GWR reputation for exciting passenger locomotives, idyllic country branch lines and excellent safety during the early BR era.

As well as the innovative Mechanical Horses, this survey of the London, Midland and Scotland Railway’s road vehicles from 1923 to 1947 includes buses and coaches, tractors and trailers, livestock transporters, and wartime conversions.

Playing a crucial role in building one of the world's best transport systems, London's bus, tram, rail and Underground workers have fought hard to improve working conditions over the years. This book studies workforce and management relations from the late 19th to the 21st century.

Before the creation of the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive in 1969, the corporation bus companies of Birmingham, West Bromwich, Walsall and Wolverhampton all had distinctively liveried fleets, as did the famous independents in the region: Stratford Blue, Harper Brothers, Don Everall and Midland Red. This book reviews the vehicles employed by these operators through a collection of colour photographs, mostly of buses working their city routes during the 1960s.

Motor buses were introduced in Brighton in 1904 to compete with the new tram service, but complaints about the noise prompted Brighton, Hove and Preston United Omnibus Company to purchase a fleet of battery-powered electric buses in 1909. This illustrated history charts the development of public transport in the city and its environs, from the introduction of the tram system in 1901 to the 1990s when the buses went into private ownership.

Photographing the railways of the North East in the 1960s, Richard Gaunt strove to create more interesting scenes than the standard three-quarter 'wedge' train composition and many of the images in this portfolio display atmospheric and unusual views of platform, shed, siding and loco. Covering the Midland and West Coast Main Lines in Lancashire and Yorkshire and further north, the images are accompanied by the author's recollections of the period.

Victory in the two world wars would have been impossible without the railways: ‘everything that was grown, made or mined, had to be carried, and soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians also had to be carried.’ The scale of the task and dangers faced by the women and men of the railways were enormous, and this book, with its wealth of statistics and archival photography, pays tribute to the resourcefulness of railway staff, from cleaners and clerks to drivers and porters.

From the earliest known map that shows a waggon-way in 1637, this atlas uses contemporary cartography, mostly from previously unpublished maps, along with illustrations of trackbeds, locomotives and rolling stock, to trace the technological development of railways in Britain. Beginning with primitive wooden rails used in mines and quarries, it describes progress up to the first modern, steam-driven railways in the early 19th century, and ends by surveying the transfer of the technology to other countries.

Walt Disney fell in love with trains as a boy, and featured them in his work for the rest of his life. With anecdotes about Walt’s job on his local line, and Mickey Mouse’s ‘birth’ on a train, this publication catalogues the locomotives in Disney movies, from Trolley Troubles, in 1927, through to 2014’s Planes: Fire and Rescue. Also featuring Walt’s own miniature railways, and the full-size Disney Railroad, the book includes colour photographs and previously unseen conceptual artwork.

By 1910, railway pioneers worldwide had laid over half a million miles of track, tunnelling through the Alps, crossing Andean peaks and linking Moscow with the Pacific coast. Talbot’s classic account of the romantic age of railway building celebrates the innovation, hardship and sheer determination of surveyors, engineers and workers in building the world’s great iron roads, including the American First Transcontinental Railroad, the never completed ‘Cape to Cairo’ Trans-African railway, and the Ffestiniog ‘toy’ railway in Wales.

Famous for its record-breaking express service on the LNER in the 1920s and 1930s, then as a globe-trotting preserved locomotive after 1963, the Flying Scotsman is now a national icon. This history of the engine, from Nigel Gresley’s drawing board to the National Railway Museum in 2016, is illustrated with over 130 photographs and reproductions, from a rare shot of the newly constructed locomotive at the Doncaster shed in 1923, to a stunning picture of the train on an evening test run, 2016.

Despite the electrification of many of the main line routes in Sussex during the 1930s, there were still steam locomotives running across the region in the 1950s and 1960s, including Bulleid Light Pacifics working services beyond the county and smaller engines on freight and shunting duties. Charting the scene during the last years of steam, many of the photographs in this collection are in colour and additional illustrations include period tickets, labels and timetables.

The 1955 British Railways Modernization Plan called for the replacement of steam locomotion, and British Railways placed 'pilot scheme' orders for diesels with a number of British manufacturers. The lack of standardization caused logistical problems and some of the many different models built proved unreliable or unsuited. All the major first-generation diesel locomotives, produced by English Electric, Metropolitan-Vickers and others, are featured in this collection of mostly colour photographs.

The railways in Dorset evolved around four main routes, two running east–west and two running north–south. Including some images dating to the early 20th century, this collection of archive photographs explores the county's lines during the steam era, including the small branch lines and other interesting aspects of the region's railways, such as the Weymouth Quay Tramway where trains ran on public roads through the town.

The Southern Railway was formed in 1923, an amalgamation of three companies. This meticulously detailed study by the veteran railway historian Colin Maggs traces the history of the three main companies and smaller railways, such as the Isle of Wight Railways and the London, Chatham Dover Railway. It also describes and illustrates, with around 100 period photographs, the locomotives and rolling stock, and covers topics such as major accidents and the railways’ cross-Channel shipping enterprises.

The Severn Tunnel, opened in 1886, brought increased traffic to South Wales. Communications were further improved in the early 20th century with GWR's 'Badminton Line' providing a direct link to London. Telling the history of the line, including its upgrading for high-speed trains in the 1970s, this book explores the stations, junctions, signal boxes, tunnels and other features of the route as well as the duties of staff who have worked on the railway.

Services on South African railways were in the process of modernization during the 1980s when renowned railway photographer, Keith Pirt, made several visits. He was nevertheless able to capture dramatic colour images of steam working the passenger network across the country and steam locos doing heavy work in South Africa's coal, gold and platinum industries.