Tiny Stations

Take an eccentric look at lost Britain through its railway request stops. Perhaps the oddest quirk of Britain's railway network is also one of its least well known: around 150 of the nation's stations are request stops. Take an unassuming station like Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire--the scene of a fatal accident involving thousands of carrots. Or Talsarnau in Wales, which experienced a tsunami. Tiny Stations is the story of the author's journey from the far west of Cornwall to the far north of Scotland, visiting around 40 of the most interesting of these little used and ill-regarded stations. Often a pen-stroke away from closure--kept alive by political expediency, labyrinthine bureaucracy, or sheer whimsy--these half-abandoned stops afford a fascinating glimpse of a Britain that has all but disappeared from view. There are stations built to serve once thriving industries--copper mines, smelting works, cotton mills, and china clay quarries where the first trains were pulled by horses; stations erected for the sole convenience of stately home and castle owners through whose land the new iron road cut an unwelcome swathe; stations created for Victorian day-tripping attractions; a station built for a cavalry barracks whose last horse has long since bolted; and many more. Dixe Wills will leave you in no doubt that there's more to tiny stations than you might think.

The perfect new gift from the bestselling author of Britain's 1000 Best Churches It is the scene for our hopeful beginnings and our intended ends, and the timeless experiences of coming and going, meeting, greeting and parting. It is an institution with its own rituals and priests, and a long-neglected aspect of Britain's architecture. And yet so little do we look at the railway station. Simon Jenkins has travelled the length and breadth of Great Britain, from Waterloo to Wemyss Bay, Betws-y-Coed to Beverley, to select his hundred best. Blending his usual insight and authority with his personal reflections and experiences - including his founding the Railway Heritage Trust - the foremost expert on our national heritage deftly reveals the history, geography, design and significance of each of these glories. Beautifully illustrated with colour photographs throughout, this joyous exploration of our social history shows the station's role in the national imagination; champions the engineers, architects and rival companies that made them possible; and tells the story behind the triumphs and follies of these very British creations. These are the marvellous, often undersung places that link our nation, celebrated like never before.

In July 1923, less than three years after Westinghouse station KDKA signed on, company engineer Frank Conrad began regular simulcasting of its programs on a frequency in the newly-discovered shortwave range. It was an important event in a technological revolution that would make dependable worldwide radio communication possible for the first time. In subsequent years, countless stations in practically all countries followed suit, taking to shortwave to extend reception domestically or reach audiences thousands of miles away. Shortwave broadcasting would also have an important role in World War II and in the Cold War. In this, his fourth book on shortwave broadcast history, the author revisits the period of his earlier work, On the Short Waves, 1923-1945, and focuses on the stations that were on the air in those early days. The year-by-year account chronicles the birth and operation of the large international broadcasters, as well as the numerous smaller stations that were a great attraction to the DXers, or long-distance radio enthusiasts, of the time. With more than 100 illustrations and extensive notes, bibliography and index, the book is also a valuable starting point for further study and research.