British Rail: A New History

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Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. I'm an American and picked this up on holiday; super readable even as someone not super familiar with the events that transpired.

The pandemic decimated passenger numbers and revenue, while the one blue-riband project, High Speed Two, has become a political plaything, its route being sliced and diced according to the exigencies of Parliamentary arithmetic on any given day. Within these pages, author Neil Parkhouse has assembled a breathtaking array of colour images, collected assiduously over a period of more than ten years, which are coupled with maps, tickets, WTT extracts and other ephemera to paint a picture of the railways of West Gloucestershire and the Wye Valley as they existed mostly over fifty years ago. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Along the way, some of the other locations which were once railway served – such as docks, quarries and industrial works – are also illustrated. Nevertheless, they are now significantly busier than they were in his time – between 1983 and the start of the pandemic, passenger numbers increased by two and a half times.

And Christian Wolmar is no fan of the many restrictive practices that had to be gradually removed in the face of resistance from staff. That question might be answered next year, when Great British Railways, a new body set up to superintend the rail network, is launched. By signing up, you are accepting our terms and conditions and our privacy policy and cookie policy *exclusions apply. Ultimately Wolmar demonstrates that just prior to privatisation this new breed of railway managers had beaten the not-fit-for-purpose formerly privately created and operated system into a sleek and pretty much as efficient and as effective as possible state owned business. However, we are now able to offer limited "DDP" (Delivered Duty Paid) services to certain EU destinations.

Past and present are welded together as smoothly as steel track; conflict belongs firmly in the past. Ultimately, Wolmar contends that British Rail’s downfall was a result not of managers but of politicians. Although this did not eliminate all of the problems, managers grew wise to the shift to Thatcher economics rather than resisting it. While this focus means the book occasionally lacks colour (Wolmar's brief discourse on signalmen's tea brewing habits was a welcome interlude! The book is superbly structured and written with passion and lucidity; perfect for a long train journey.With Peter Parker there came the first in the line of very public and media savvy managers who fought for the railway tooth and nail deploying modern marketing and managerial techniques to win public support and counter government and Treasury intransigence. This book provides an excellent overview of what happened and leaves the reader wonder who in their right mind would've privatized BR! Using the trains in Great Britain is a difficult and often frustrating experience for many; following the privatisation of the railways in the 1990s, passengers are often treated to confusing timetables, frequent delays and ever-increasing fares.

What comes across most strongly is the way that interference from government has time and again messed things up.Although it praises the changes made over the years, the author points out where they have fallen short. No doubt this book will be read voraciously by trainspotters and weirdos (salt of the earth, lovely people), but it should also be read and reread by the people around the next Labour government whose stated aim is root and branch reform of the railways.