Rails to Nowhere

Join Simon and Ela for the second in our mini series of episodes looking at British Railways relationship with inovation. In this episode we move on into the swinging sixties, explore the APT and HST and discuse less talked about improvements such as AWS and TOPS.

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

For those who wish to view on youtube the video can be found here https://youtu.be/VZ-hLSc8ir0

Bibliography

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.

125 Group. 125 An Enduring Icon. Stroud: Amberley, 2018.

125 Group. Inter-City 125: High Speed Train (1972 Onwards - All Models). Yeovil: Haynes Publishing, 2019.

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

Barnett, Roger. British Rail’s InterCity 125 and 225. Berkley, 1992.

Clough, David. APT: The Untold Story. Addlestone: Ian Allan, 2016.

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

Divall, Colin, and Hiroki Shin. ‘Engineers v. Industrial Designers: The Struggle for Professional Control over the British Rail Mark 2 Coach, c. 1955-1966’. The Journal of Transport History 39, no. 2 (2018): 145–69.

Gilchrist, Alastair. A History of Engineering Research on British Railways. Working Papers in Railway Studies. York, 2006.

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

Green, Chris, and Mike Vincent. The Intercity Story: 1964-2012. Hersham: Oxford Publishing Co, 2013.

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.

Middleton, William, Rick Morgan, and Roberta Diehl, eds. Encyclopaedia of North American Railroads. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

Nock, Oswald. Two Miles A Minute: The Story Behind the Conception and Operation of Britain’s High Speed and Advanced Passenger Trains. Cambridge: Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1980.

Poole, Stephen. Inside British Rail: Challenges and Progress on the Nationalised Railway 1970s-1990s. Stroud: The History Press, 2018.

Potter, Stephen. ‘Cutting-Edge Technology’. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 1, no. 1 (1989): 99–122.

Potter, Stephen. On the Right Lines? The Limits of Technological Innovation. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987.

Pyrgidis, Christos. Railway Transportation Systems: Design, Construction and Operation. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2016.

Rothwell, R, and P Gardiner. ‘Invention, Innovation, Re-Innovation and the Role of the User: A Case Study of British Hovercraft Development’. Technovation 3 (1985): 167–86.

Simmons, Jack, and Gordon Biddle, eds. The Oxford Companion to British Railway History: From 1603 to The 1990s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.