Rails to Nowhere

Join Simon and Ela for the first in a mini series of episodes looking at British Railways relationship with inovation. In this first episode we look a bit at the pre BR era, the Modernisation Plan, the work BR carried out in the early 1950 and the start of the swinging sixties.

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Music: ‘Koala’ David Cutter Music - www.davidcuttermusic.com

For more on OLE check out Gary Keenor’s excellent book at ocs4rail.com

Research for this episode was carried out using a number of sources including parts of the National Railway Museum library collection and the national archive. Below are the principle texts used to research this episode.

Bibliography

Bagwell, Philip, and Peter Lyth. Transport in Britain 1750 - 2000: From Canal Lock to Gridlock. London: Hambledon & London, 2002.

Bradley, Rodger. ‘British Railways: The 1948 Interchange Trials’. Railway Matters: On Track, n.d. Accessed https://railwaymatters.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/the-1948-interchange-trials_v2.pdf.

British Transport Commission. Modernisation and Re-equipment of British Railways. London, 1955.

Clough, David. The Modernisation Plan: British Railway’s Blueprint for the Future. Hersham: Ian Allan, 2014.

Gourvish, Terence. British Railways 1948-73: A Business History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Jackson, Tanya. British Rail: The Nations Railway. Stroud: The History Press, 2014.

Kichenside, Geoffrey, and Alan Williams. Two Centuries of Railway Signalling. 2nd ed. Addlestone: Oxford Publishing Co, 2016.

Loft, Charles. Government, the Railways and the Modernization of Britain: Beeching’s Last Trains. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006.

Marr, Andrew. A History of Modern Britain. London: Macmillan, 2007.

Primary Sources:

Her Majesties Government. ‘Railway Act 1921’ (1921).

Her Majesties Government. ‘Transport Act 1947’ (1947).

British Transport Commission. Modernisation and Re-equipment of British Railways. London, 1954.

British Transport Commission.  Modernisation of British Railways: The System of Electrification for British Railways. London, 1956.

British Transport Commission.  Re-appraisal of the Plan or the Modernisation and Re-equipment of British Railways. London, 1959.

A special note of thanks to www.railwaysarchive.co.uk for their wonderful work in digitising the documents referenced in this episode.