While the coming of the railways to Britain's towns and cities in the nineteenth century transformed their fortunes and gave urban dwellers new opportunities to travel across the country, the effect on the largely rural population of the country was arguably far greater. And while some of the initial trunk lines were designed to link major cities, the network of smaller cross-country and branch lines that followed opened up large tracts of previously remote countryside, providing new markets for agricultural produce but also ending the isolation of many rural communities. For many railway...