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 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 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.