This is a visual history of Great Britain's railway network. It contains around 300 photographs from PA Photos' huge archives, spanning the whole of the 20th Century. The railway system in Britain is the oldest in the world, beginning in 1825 with the first steam locomotive hauled public railway and culminating in a network of more than 10,000 miles of track by 2000 and a high-speed rail link to continental Europe via the Channel Tunnel. This book traces the many fascinating changes of the railway in the 20th Century.

Author Biography

PA Photos is the photographic agency of the PA Group, the UK's national press agency best known as The Press Association. Established in the 19th Century, the PA has been capturing and archiving news photography for 140 years. Many of these pictures have not been seen since the time that they were first taken: to modern eyes the archives of PA Photos yield a unique insight into Britain's recent past.