What the Railways Did for Us: The Making of Modern Britain by Stuart Hylton (4-Feb-2015) Hardcover

by Stuart Hylton

It is hard, from a distance of nearly two centuries, to imagine the impact the coming of the railways must have had at the start of the nineteenth century. Their physical impact was dramatic enough - great mechanical horses, breathing fire and smoke and drawing impossibly heavy trains at unimaginable speeds, across a landscape transformed by the embankments and cuttings, viaducts and tunnels their passage demanded. However, they would also transform the way war was conducted and peace was maintained; prove to be one of the drivers of the dramatic industrial growth of the nineteenth century; create opportunities for many to become enormously wealthy, but impoverish many more, who invested unwisely; cause the state to think again about the policy of laissez-faire that was its default position; transform our leisure; radically re-shape our towns and cities and change our very notions of time and how we measured it. In this book, Stuart Hylton looks at the changes wrought in the British Isles during the first century of the railway age and answers the question, what did the railways do for us?

Genres: History, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published April 20, 2015

Reviews

[Gianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview of the many effects the railways had on the way we live, move, relate to each other and the related economic impact. Short thematic chapters are easy to read and straightforward.

[James Tidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hylton traces the history of the railways and through a series of subjects, Hylton tells his readers exactly what the railways did for us. For example, the railways cleared a lot of the necessary slums but yet improved the diets of thousands, as fresh food was easily transported to the markets in hours. Hylton also reckons that Dr Richard Beeching whilst closing thousands of miles of track yet started the phase of the Heritage Railways which always seems to attract the attention of the adult who remembers the steam engine in its prime, through to the young child who is probably seeing a steam engine for the first time.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

You’ll learn about when a bungalow floated into a train and the station whose facilities were a hollow tree. Lots of wonderful obscure info but relies on other train histories rather than original sources and is a bit bitty. Good general overview of the social aspects of the railway.