The Spiritual Railway

This book is a collection of gospel messages that I have preached over the years. It seemed a waste to have them filed away. So here they are in book form. May God bless those who read this book.

This Vintage Words of Wisdom title was first published in 1937. Ninety-nine years earlier, in 1838, the London and Birmingham Railway was opened: the first intercity railway into London with its terminus at Euston and providing a direct connection to Coventry, Birmingham and onwards to the North-West. This signalled an acceleration in the construction of railways and a period of railway mania that swept the country. As Cyril Andrews explains in The Railway Age, the age of steam trains brought about fundamental transformations to the nation. It changed the landscape, demanded new engineering and technological advances, opened up new opportunities for commerce and, perhaps most importantly, ushered in changes to society as people now had the means to travel further, faster and easier than ever before.The social impact of the railways is well covered. The author considers the effect upon the various strata of society and how railways improved the working lives of those like the commercial traveller, introduced the concept of the commuter and enabled those in want of entertainment. Apparently 15,000 people in 1848 travelled by train to Coventry to see a revival of Lady Godiva's ride through the streets!Profusely illustrated with over 80 plates and photographs and accompanied by 50 line drawings and cartoons, The Railway Age takes a broad approach to railway history that considers more the impact and effect that railways had than just the technology of steam engines. So we read about the influence of Brunel, railway station architecture, railway hotels, speculators and the beginnings of the London underground, with the text interspersed with contemporary accounts, poetry and popular songs of the period. There are several lithographic plates by the famous early railway artist J.C. Bourne, as well as Punch cartoons, entries from The Comic Bradshaw and many other rare and fascinating images. Often amusing and surprising, The Railway Age is a welcome addition to the Vintage Words of Wisdom series and will appeal both to the railway enthusiast and to anyone with an interest in social history and, in particular, the effects of the industrialisation of Britain.

This is the definitive story of the men who built the railways – the unknown Victorian labourers who blasted, tunnelled, drank and brawled their way across nineteenth-century England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.

Jack Simmons, perhaps more than any other single scholar, is responsible for the advancement of the academic study of transport history. As well as being a co-founder of the Journal of Transport History, he wrote extensively on a variety of transport-related topics and was instrumental in developing the London Transport and the National Railway museums. Whilst his death in September 2000 at the age of 85 was a sad loss to the world of transport history, the achievements of his life, celebrated in this festschrift, remain a lasting legacy to succeeding generations of scholars in many fields. Concentrating on the theme of the railways, and how they dramatically affected the development of Britain and her society, this collection touches on numerous issues first highlighted by Professor Simmons which are now central to academic study. These include the men who built the railways, those who financed the enterprise, how the railways affected such everyday issues as tourism, the arts, and politics, as well as the lasting legacy of the railways in a country now dominated by the private car. This volume written by former friends, students and colleagues of Professor Simmons reflects these interests, and provides a fitting tribute to one of the truly great British historians of the twentieth century.

A delightful romp around the British Isles searching out the mad marquess, the eccentric earl, the barmy baron, and the daft duke and gathering a fair collection of crackpot inventors, weird adventurers and fascinatingly and not to mention insanely curious customs along the way. All of which make this rainy little island home to that remarkable breed of individual - the British eccentric.This expanded book still doesn't tell you where Stonehenge is, but it does tell you where ten spookier stone circles are where there will be no crowds, no admission charges and no parking problems... This is a book for the intelligent, humorous, curious tourist who doesn't go with the crowd. It is also a great armchair read that has been known to have readers weeping with mirth at the weird ways of the British.