Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ANORAKS' PARADISE, 25 Dec 2002
This is one of the most absorbing volumes I have ever encountered, and you can laugh if you want. So far as I can see it is no more amusing, and a lot more professional and accurate, than many another historical map. Britain was the cradle of the world's railways (come the anorak come the cliche) and it is pretty incredible how anyone ever put up the money for a good many of them. Would you believe that a railway was built from Leek in Staffs to a village called Waterhouses, at which station the passengers (if any) and freight had to be transferred to a narrow-gauge light railway offering onconveyance to a hamlet called Home End, pop c 37 of whom approx 29 were livestock? Would you believe that two major Scottish railways built great systems to connect Paisley with Barrhead -- I repeat Barrhead -- and that the bigger of the two never carried a passenger over its system? Does your credulity stretch to taking in that a loop-line was hacked out through urban Brighton from the main station to another terminus hardly half a mile away at Kemp Town and they never closed the loop? Have you ever seen a picture of the line out over Piel Pier south of Barrow and also south of Furness Abbey, to which sylvan terminus you could take a trip offering a 6-minute turnround in the woods, not enough time to do much I can think of? It's all part of a world that never happened, or not for long, and that is its romance for me. I love the British countryside, but I love it best when there is a just-about-discernable railway track to explore, and in fact there are some equally fascinating efforts in the cities, not least London but probably above all Glasgow. In my marathon-running days I used to love combining training with exploration, nearly meeting a premature end when pounding along the old Stainmore line with my head-down posture unaware that the Deepdale viaduct was unfenced, or indeed that it was where it was. It was a close thing, but I was up to the Tarzan bit and tried to get back to Barnard Castle looking as if white pants with a black backside were that year's latest in sportswear. The railway architecture is a lot of the fascination too. Much of it is simply magnificent, but there is a real anorakish thrill in spotting railway remains. Where does anorak shade off into historian or antiquarian? This book is based on the railways as they were at the grouping in 1923, but includes some others as a record of their existence. The number of lines they have left out is so few that they needn't have bothered with the distinction -- I would have liked to see the Findhorn railway and the rest of the Welsh Highland Railway or whatever it was called then. They have done an awfully good job in making the worst tangles clear, notably in the midlands. The most complicated urban networks are exploded into larger-scale, and I hope they are intelligible to other enthusiasts as they are to me, who through no merit of my own have eyesight that has not even lengthened at age 60-plus. I will use my age as a pretext to end on a mild gripe -- one of the most fascinating nodes was around Wrexham and especially Brymbo. I think I can follow the detail, but I may be wrong, especially as the 1922/3 deadline is operative. A reprint should get this unambiguously clear -- the Brymbo site is something approaching numinous for the right sort of anorak. A superb book.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ANORAKS' PARADISE, 25 Dec 2002
This is one of the most absorbing volumes I have ever encountered, and you can laugh if you want. So far as I can see it is no more amusing, and a lot more professional and accurate, than many another historical map. Britain was the cradle of the world's railways (come the anorak come the cliche) and it is pretty incredible how anyone ever put up the money for a good many of them. Would you believe that a railway was built from Leek in Staffs to a village called Waterhouses, at which station the passengers (if any) and freight had to be transferred to a narrow-gauge light railway offering onconveyance to a hamlet called Home End, pop c 37 of whom approx 29 were livestock? Would you believe that two major Scottish railways built great systems to connect Paisley with Barrhead -- I repeat Barrhead -- and that the bigger of the two never carried a passenger over its system? Does your credulity stretch to taking in that a loop-line was hacked out through urban Brighton from the main station to another terminus hardly half a mile away at Kemp Town and they never closed the loop? Have you ever seen a picture of the line out over Piel Pier south of Barrow and also south of Furness Abbey, to which sylvan terminus you could take a trip offering a 6-minute turnround in the woods, not enough time to do much I can think of? It's all part of a world that never happened, or not for long, and that is its romance for me. I love the British countryside, but I love it best when there is a just-about-discernable railway track to explore, and in fact there are some equally fascinating efforts in the cities, not least London but probably above all Glasgow. In my marathon-running days I used to love combining training with exploration, nearly meeting a premature end when pounding along the old Stainmore line with my head-down posture unaware that the Deepdale viaduct was unfenced, or indeed that it was where it was. It was a close thing, but I was up to the Tarzan bit and tried to get back to Barnard Castle looking as if white pants with a black backside were that year's latest in sportswear. The railway architecture is a lot of the fascination too. Much of it is simply magnificent, but there is a real anorakish thrill in spotting railway remains. Where does anorak shade off into historian or antiquarian? This book is based on the railways as they were at the grouping in 1923, but includes some others as a record of their existence. The number of lines they have left out is so few that they needn't have bothered with the distinction -- I would have liked to see the Findhorn railway and the rest of the Welsh Highland Railway or whatever it was called then. They have done an awfully good job in making the worst tangles clear, notably in the midlands. The most complicated urban networks are exploded into larger-scale, and I hope they are intelligible to other enthusiasts as they are to me, who through no merit of my own have eyesight that has not even lengthened at age 60-plus. I will use my age as a pretext to end on a mild gripe -- one of the most fascinating nodes was around Wrexham and especially Brymbo. I think I can follow the detail, but I may be wrong, especially as the 1922/3 deadline is operative. A reprint should get this unambiguously clear -- the Brymbo site is something approaching numinous for the right sort of anorak. A superb book.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good effort, based on historic information, 10 May 2001
By A Customer
I bought this book by mistake. I was looking for an atlas to show the 1955 railway situation. However, this book has proved to be a useful companion to the 1955 atlas, showing the full network circa 1923, which is enough to bring tears to your eyes ! Buy this book to see exactly what has dissappeared in the last 75 years.
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