'Creation of The Great Western Railway', this is a superb history of what was otherwise known as God's Wonderful Railway which stood above the rest as an international byword for excellence in the field of transport technology. These were the halcyon days when Stars, Castles and Kings either set the world alight or filled it with steam and smoke aplenty. The sight of Brunswick green-liveried engines big and small or in chocolate and cream-liveried coaches or long rakes of wagons was a mark of prestige for Britain. The company's Cheltenham Spa Express was the fastest train in the world, before the mighty London & North Eastern Railways glamorous streamlined A4 Pacifics made their debut on the East Coast Main Line. From the chairman, board of directors and chief mechanical engineers down to the ticket collector and station porter, the Paddington and Swindon empire was an immense source of pride to everyone who worked for it. Engineering genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway was bigger, wider and faster than any other. It linked London to New York via great steamships from Bristol. His unique broad gauge 'Super Railway' also connected Paddington to Plymouth and Penzance and took millions of people to these summer holiday destinations and inspired schoolboys who watched as the immaculately turned-out locomotives thundered down the lines. Two centuries on, many of Brunel's historic structures along the route have been given Listed Building protection and the book looks at the surrounding towns and villages during the construction of the railway and the affects such as how a GWR Medical Funds Society financed a cottage hospital in Swindon including dental and eye clinics used as a blueprint for the NHS a century later. Beautiful colour photographs include a replica carriage, the magnificent Clevedon Pier built from second-hand rails, and the Evening Star on display at the National Railway Museum at York. 32 pages of colour photographs, artworks, paintings and archive images. 168pp.

The Railway Junction by Walter de la Mare, A Local Train of Thought by Siegfried Sassoon, the battle of the gauges, famous locomotive engineers, From A Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson, British Rail Speed Records, famous loco designers, Dr Beeching, four into one equals BR, King's Cross Station by G. K. Chesterton, The Send-Off by Wilfred Owen, from gunboats to corpses, cliffhangers to the king of the castles, the Welsh Phoenix and along the route is the Great Central, here are poems and facts and tracks and crashes, a table of Worst Railway Accidents, an eccentric railway empire, the Tay Bridge Disaster, Brunel, streakers and more. Why did Brunel's atmospheric South Devon railway fail? What is the story between Mallard's speed record? From the euphoric to the poignant, travel through this enthralling history of our railways. First published by David & Charles in 2007 and reprinted many times. All original line art and photos. 144pp.

Among the bright lights and comfortable surroundings, the hustle and bustle of embarkation and the petty dramas and excitements of exploring a new ship, how many could have foreseen that in a little over 100 hours' time three quarters of their number would be dead and adrift on the freezing Atlantic, and the world's largest moving object - the apotheosis of human engineering achievement, wrought in iron and crewed by master mariners - would like broken up in stone cold pitch darkness 12,000 feet down on the sea bed, never to reach her destination a thousand miles away? It is a story with all the elements of high drama, tragedy, heroism, hubris, humanity and at times grim comedy - at every stage the Titanic's story is a highly sensory tale. Discover which novel predicted the disaster a whole 14 years before the maiden voyage, how a bottle of whiskey saved one of the crew and was a fire burning within the ship the real cause of its downfall? Find the answers to many amazing aspects in this absorbing collection of stories and trivia from stowaways to kidnapping, conspiracy theories and wreckage. The story travels from Belfast, Liverpool, Southampton, America and the characters of Captain Smith, Chief Officer Henry Wilde, John Jacob Astor IV, bedroom steward Henry Etches and stories from steerage to dressing Guggenheim. And stories of the Carpathia to the rescue, Cunard collecting the casualties, the tragic inactivity of the Californian, US and British enquiries, the indomitable Violet Jessop to memorabilia and Titanic in the cinema, it is a story of tragedy, tourism and trade. 144pp, line art.

At the time of writing, over 200 underground railways are in service or under construction and here are the technical challenges they faced and the colourful personalities involved in their stories. In January 1863, London's Metropolitan Railway, running from Paddington to Farringdon, became the world's first underground railway. Budapest and Glasgow followed London in 1896 and in 1900 Paris added its Métro. Another 10 cities joined the underground club by 1939, many only a few kilometres in length with some tracks above ground. Since 2001, 79 underground railways have entered service, mostly in Asia with Chinese cities leading the way, in particular Beijing and Shanghai with its 420 miles of track, with both approaching four billion passengers a year. The deepest station is in St Petersburg at 86 metres or 282ft below ground built in the 1950s. From Auckland and Berlin's U-Bahn, Buenos Aires, the Chicago 'L', Crossrail, the Madrid Metro, we travel to Mexico City, Moscow, the New York subway, Pyong Yang, Stockholm, and Vienna, absorbing stories and trivia from innovative engineers and corrupt politicians, earthquakes and morning rush hours to great successes and terrible tragedies. With tales of secret networks and nuclear shelters, Art Nouveau and woolly mammoths, we delve deep underground. 144pp, well illus. with photos and line art.

'A Quiz Book for the Cultured Trainspotter' the book will test your knowledge of this country's rail system and enlighten you on the most colourful aspects of its long history. Covers entrepreneurs and engineers beginning with the first question. The carved head of which British steam pioneer is on the roof of the Gare du Nord Station, Paris? Was George Stephenson the father of Robert, or was Robert the father of George? Who on 5th July 1841 took his first step in the leisure travel business by chartering a train to take 500 temperance supporters from Leicester to Loughborough? What is Brunel's billiard table? There are picture questions and archive photos of the Flying Scotsman right up to which Great British Bake Off judge once served on the BR Board? Meet trunk murderers, trainspotters, haters of railways, railway writers, Ministers for Transport good and bad, railway cats and dogs and even a railway penguin, crime and criminals, celebrities, staff, stations and tunnels, bridges and junctions, famous trains and locos, carriages and sleepers, classes and tickets, refreshment, erotica and accidents. When was smoking banned on trains? What regular lineside event did Dickens describe as 'a shave in the air'? And what is a steam banana? 230pp, photos and thankfully, answers.

With a passion for engineering history, John Hannavy has written extensively on railways, steam-powered machines, the history of photography and the Industrial Revolution of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Power without control is unusable power, and long after the invention of the steam engine, finding ways of applying that power to tasks where consistency was of paramount importance was the Holy Grail which many steam engineers sought to find. It was the centrifugal governor which brought precision to the application of steam power, and its story can be traced back to 17th century Holland and Christiaan Huygens' development of both the pendulum clock and system controls for windmills. Governors are still at the heart of sophisticated machinery today, albeit electronic rather than mechanical. As machine speed increased, the governor had to evolve to keep pace with the demands for greater precision. Over 100 British patents were applied for in the 19th century alone for 'improvements' in governor design, many of which could be fitted or retro-fitted to engines from every large manufacturer. This is the first book to deal with the subject, telling the story of the evolution of the original 'spinning-ball' governor from its first appearance to the point where it became a small device entirely enclosed in a housing to keep it clean, and thus hidden from view. Over 200 photographs, engravings, plans and diagrams, one of which is a series of colour photographs of one of the few large mill engines to survive, Wigan's 2500hp Trencher Field Mill Engine and some of the more than 60,000 spindles in operation, all belt-driven from the massive steam engine. Chapters include James Watt Harnessing Steam, Selected Patents 1698-1913, British Governor Makers and Suppliers and Places to See Governors at Work including Showman's Road Locomotive No.3555 the Busy Bee, pumping stations, Twyford Waterworks, the Robey Trust's New Perseverance Ironworks in Tavistock or the shiny red balls of the Armstrong Engines which provided hydraulic power at Ellesmere Port, now the National Waterways Museum. Packed with colour, 160 large pages, 21.6 x 28cm.
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