The Greatest Railway Blunder - Hardcover

Designed as a companion volume to the author's similar work on the AC Electrics, this new and informative book is an illustrated history of the great variety of dc electric locomotives and EMUs that have graced the tracks of the National Network. It includes the two famous Woodhead classes 76 and 77, the various Southern locomotives types Classes 70/71/73/74, and Class 92 in DC mode. Perhaps more importantly, eminent author Colin Marsden also includes invaluable information on the DC locomotives produced for departmental and special use. There is a great range of EMUs featured, including those of the crucial pioneering electrification schemes, such as the Mersey Railway and the Holcombe Brook branch. Also covered are the Manchester Altrincham lines, the Tyneside suburban network, the Grimsby and Immingham trams, the early LSWR schemes, as well as details of the later development of stock for the third-rail systems in and around London.Comprehensively illustrated throughout with stunning colour and mono illustrations, this fabulous new guide will provide detailed information on a subject not covered exclusively in many other publications. A must have for all modern traction enthusiasts.

Well known railway writer Adrian Vaughan, and author of the very successful title "Railway Blunders", now turns his attention to what he considers to be the greatest blunder the railway industry has ever perpetrated, the privatisation of the 1990s. A personal polemic, he first gives a history from the dawn of the railway age up to 1948 when the industry developed into a number of large, centralised, integrated self-supporting companies, but the efficiencies borne from a common gauge and common standards enabled the railways to withstand even the very worst pressures that two World Wars brought to the transport system. The author then goes on to analyse the process of privatisation and the effects it has had on the industry in the ensuing years.He looks in detail at the franchisees, the contracts, the costs, the successes and more prevalent failures, the comparison with railways abroad, and to the final chapter where he poses the question 'Has privatisation achieved anything that could not have been achieved by BR?' All readers can judge for themselves in this often controversial but always absorbing study.