The 1950s saw a realisation that British Railways needed to modernise its equipment and rationalise its network if it was to hold its own in the face of growing competition from road and air transport. The next decade brought line closures, new liveries and the last breath of steam, as Doctor Beeching and his successors strove to break even and build a new business from the old. From Britannia to the Blue Pullman, Evening Star to Inter-City, Greg Morse takes us through this turbulent twenty-year period, which started with a poor bag of assets and ended with BR poised to launch the fastest...

After the Second World War, the drive for the modernization of Britain's railways ushered in a new breed of locomotive: the Diesel. Diesel-powered trains had been around for some time, but faced with a coal crisis and the Clean Air Act in the 1950s, it was seen as a part of the solution for British Rail. This beautifully illustrated book, written by an expert on rail history, charts the rise and decline of Britain's diesel-powered locomotives. It covers a period of great change and experimentation, where the iconic steam engines that had dominated for a century were replaced by a series of...