The book I read to research this post was Rail Centres: Sheffield by Stephen R Batty which is a very good book which I bought from Amazon. Sheffield is one of the great industrial centres of Britain not to mention one of its biggest cities. It's famous for its steelmaking especially cutlery although nowadays and not mentioned in this book and like many big cities in Britain is going through a transformation. Anyway initially in the steam age Sheffield almost missed as George Stephenson although a renowned railway engineer wanted a 2 3/4 mile tunnel in one place and a very gentle gradient on the railway when asked to design a railway for this city. This resulted in an estimation for a huge amount of money that potential weren't interested in footing the bill for. In 1840 another engineer was asked to design a railway and he suggested cuttings instead of tunnels and a slightly sharper gradient, which with trains becoming more feasible seemed alright, but this brought the price down. Anyway over the next 50 years Sheffield become a major railway junction linking up places like Hull, Liverpool & London. When one of the railways was being built, a tunnel was being constructed and collapsed and 7 workers were able to jump clear but 6 workers died. I did really enjoy this book which is a worthy addition to the Rail Centres series.

The book I read to research this post was The Thaxton Branch by Peter Paye which is an excellent book which I bought from Amazon. Peter is an expert on the history of the trains in Eastern England and worked for British Rail for many years. Thaxton is a small town in Essex that is now very much part of the London commuter belt. In times past it was a major wool and cutlery manufacture centre in Britain. In fact it is rather remote for getting coal to this area otherwise it may very well have developed into a major cutlery centre like Sheffield. A railway was built here which used the legal definition of light railway which exempted it from a lot of the rules normal railways had to follow which made it viable. A plan went to the planning office for a London to Edinburgh line that would pass through here but it wasn't taken particularly seriously and several other routes were also submitted before a final one was accepted. When the railway was built as a branch line from Elsenham to Thaxted there was 1 goods train & 1 mixed train per day and the rest were passenger trains. This line is approximately 10 miles long and eventually succumbed to competition from the National motorcoach service which started running coaches here from 1920. Nowadays there is a bus service here just once a week and it is the classic case of a small town that has been drastically changed by economic pressures within Britain. The nearest fairly big town to here is probably Bishops Stortford. I really enjoyed this book and apparently it was the first book written by Peter although later he wrote a second edition.

The book I read to research this post was Nelson's Spy which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book is a history of Alexander Scott who may have been a spy at the time of the Battle Of Trafalgar and was a close friend of Lord Nelson. He may have been a key person in the outcome of the battle and helped tend to Nelson when he was mortally wounded. It was a battle between the British & French navies and it was the British who won. Alexander was a minister which enabled him to evade suspicion as a spy and also hear things because many people dropped their guard with a member of the clergy. He got the chance to do lots of travelling and lived to a ripe old age. His daughter wrote this book of recollections about him in 1842 and it has recently had an introduction added and been republished. Alexander came from a wealthy family but decided to go into the clergy because he lacked money. Many clergy men were able to save a nice nest egg and certainly Nelson rewarded him for any information. At one stage fresh from having a post in the navy he was offered a job as a chaplain on a smallish ship but felt it was a step backwards. Nelson told him if he got in an influential position he would make sure he was offered a better job. Spies were very important and could make the difference between winning or losing a battle. Even if their ships were outnumbered they could try and force a ship to put into port to try and even the odds or force a ship to go on the open sea where they could engage it in battle.

The book I read to research this post was British Railway Signalling by Alan Williams et al which is an excellent book which I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. This book is probably not one that anyone is likely to see for sale so I focus on railway signalling rather than reviewing the book. Currently in Britain they are changing the old fashioned signally methods to computerized regional railway control centres like at Crewe & at Saltley near Birmingham. A lot of things like the types of signal used remains unchanged however. At one time when a train passed a signal it stayed on go until just before the next train arrived then would signal that a train had passed as that train passed. There was an accident however when due to ice the signal couldn't go back to stop so now the signal always go to stop until it needs to go to go. Black & yellow signals indicate distance and black and white signals indicate whether the way is clear or not. If the signal is in a horizontal position it's unsafe to proceed and vertical indicates it's safe. On an ordinary line a train will have to stop if a train has gone by in the last 5 minutes or slow down if in the last 10 minutes. Of course this would tend to be where routes converge. Similiarly if you are at a station the signals will go to a vertical state if the train is within 5 minutes travel time. On single stretches they used to give a driver a token to indicate he was the only user on that track and that token would be handed in at the end of the single stretch. Only 1 driver at a time would have a token. The token can take many forms but generally is shaped like a key and comes out of a special machine.

The book I read to research this post was This Is York Major Railway Centre which is more a special magazine than a book. In this post I will focus more on writing about York than a review. York was connected to the railways quite early on because there was a railway around Newcastle & George Hudson had the foresight to see what was needed when they were building a railway from London was a long distance railway. He also helped orchestrate the building of the railway station & main hotel for rail travellers which were both very impressive. Hudson went on to manage the railway company when it became a regional company but dabble in underhand practises even by those days standards and eventually got the sack. A man called Leeman was responsible for catching him out and the National Railway Museum is on Leeman Street, a road dedicated to him. For many years Hudson was villified in York and it's only more recently a road has been named after him. York was the only place in Britain where you could see Atlantic expresses in 4 liveries. Carlisle had the edge in that 7 companies ran to the Citadel station but both places were a train spotters dream. At one stage at the museum there was a fire which claimed one of The Mallard's A4 sister locomotives. Of course the A4 was the fastest steam locomotive ever built and The Mallard which is on display here is the fastest steam locomotive ever and holds the world record. There are numerous steam railways privately run in Yorkshire. The Derwent Valley Railway used to have light in the title but this confused many people into thinking it was a narrow gauge railway which probably lost them business.

The book I read to research this post was Anthropology For Dummies by Cameron M Smith which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is an introduction to the subject of anthropology and tries to demystify what is often considered a difficult subject. As with a lot of for dummies books it does a good job in that respect. In the old days anthropology was a bit of a quack subject carried out by a few eccentrics and often they were what we call social darwinists and didn't respect the new culture and couldn't wait to assimilate it into western ideas or thought the studied culture was going to die out anyway so they would just do a study of it before it did. What more serious anthropologists have discovered is we can learn alot about other ways of life and it can potentially help benefit our society and nowadays this subject is taken very seriously and of course they are a lot let eager to assimilate every culture into the western way of life. We can also learn a lot about ourselves and why our society is the way it is from studying this subject. We know we are descended from primates and that there are over 200+ types of people which is probably simplifying it a bit. One of the big questions in this subject is why people are so diverse. We know the first people probably came out of eastern Africa & of course gradually spread. In many cases at certain points there were landbridges like the Bering Straits which have long since gone. In Australia surprisingly there have been humans for at least 40,000 years which is surprising because this was more remote from anywhere else. In contrast Western Europe has only had people for 20,000 years. One of the big revolutions in humankind was growing crops and domesticating animals. Rice has been grown for 10,500 years, horses have been used for 5,000 years and even guinea pigs were being bread for food 3,000 years ago in Peru, perhaps surprisingly.I enjoyed reading this book and it is a decent length.

I am reviewing the novel The White Princess by Philippa Gregory which is an excellent historical fiction book which I bought from a local supermarket. I think the ending of this novel is the climax of the Cousin's War series based on the story of the Plantangenet rulers and at the end we see the beginning of the Tudor house. Philippa has a PhD from Edinburgh University and really seems to know her history. This book almost reads like an eyewitness account and she is a stickler to the facts in her stories. She has already done a series based on the Tudors so this series is a nice add on. This novel starts with the Battle Of Bosworth & Richard the 3rd's death and how Henry the 7th became king despite there being an unknown disease that many is a punishment from God. Henry marries Richard's sister to try and unite the Houses of Lancaster & York. At first his bride is reluctant to have anything to do with him and considers the sex they have to be rape and can't believe his mother actually condones it. As times goes on she warms to him gradually but when a pretender who is just a boy is trying to take the thrown although there are other people behind it. He eventually gets a job in Henry's kitchens and she is grateful to him for sparing him. Two other people claiming to be her cousin and brother aren't so lucky. Henry goes to all the trouble of staging an invasion of France just so the king will hand these 2 over. They do flee to Flanders but are eventually captured in Spain and handed over. At the end of the day the young lad claiming to be her brother does believe he has a genuine right to the throne and his sister despises how he is treated. It's a great story and I think it shows the best stories are often real life stories.

The book I read to research this post was The Hayling Railway by Peter Paye which is an excellent book which I bought from a specialist bookshop. This is a new book which has only recently been published. This is the 3rd edition. Hayling Island is a moderately successful seaside near Portsmouth & Havant. It's not as popular for holidays as it was and in the 19th century there was a railway linking it to Havant. There is a fine beach on the south coast of the island and much of the surrounding sea only makes it an island at high tide so it isn't a true island. Having said that the island is a substantial size. The Hayling Railway Company leased the railway from the London, Brighton & South Coast Company in 1872 & much of the railway was single track and ran on an embankment to avoid flooding. Nearby Portsmouth is a major naval base & from Havant the railway is linked to the rest of the South Coast Network. Havant station & Hayling South station were expanded and platforms were added. Some of the track was upgraded to dual track which enabled a more frequent service to be run. Alas in 1962 along with many other railways it was closed. Havant & Portsmouth which are both quite sizeable are still connected by railway to the rest of the network. I really enjoyed this book and it kept my interest throughout. Also it's a reasonable length at around 150 pages. Peter Paye is something of an expert on East Anglian railways and has written quite a lot of books about that. His books are consistently good. Finally Hayling Island isn't that far from the Isle of Wight which is a bigger island off Southampton and more well known as a holiday resort.

The book I've read to research this post was Tracing Your Ancestors by D M Field which is an excellent book which I bought from a second hand book store. In tracing your family tree it's worth checking if someone has already done a local history in your area or done a family history either in your family or a related family. It's surprising how many of these have been done and also how many exist in manuscript form and hardly anyone knows about them. It will save you loads of work. If your family is Irish you may find there was a fire at the records office in Dublin in 1922 which had various records stored more census records. You also may find your family has a coat of arms you never know. This is normally passed on via the eldest son in each generation. Another thing is family history where you read about the life in the towns and the careers your relatives worked in etc. In some ways this is better than simple family trees. Other things worth checking are wills, trade records, parish records, birth and death records and military records. This was a really enjoyable book that is only around 60 pages but is very informative.