British Rail – A New History
By Christian Wolmar
Published by Penguin Michael Joseph www.penguinrandomhouse.com
165mm x 245mm size, 394 pages, B&W/colour, hardback. £30.00
THIS latest tome from the grand fromage of transport commentating is essential reading for Rail Express readers, and not just because of the gorgeous InterCity 125 illustrations on the dust jacket (the term InterCity disappearing, Wolmar notes, with the death of BR, but, ironically, kept alive abroad). Many RE readers will recall for themselves at least the blue and grey era of BR, but it’s worth noting that a whole new generation was either in its infancy or not even born when the national rail operator was privatised in the early 1990s. Either way, this book is hugely important in correcting tired clichés and more crucially giving the reader a well informed understanding of what the much-maligned, yet deeply popular, organisation was really about. For the former, nonsense about crinkled sandwiches and ‘the wrong kind of snow’ is quickly dealt with and for the latter Wolmar characteristically pulls no punches: “There is a strong case for saying that BR did not deserve the fate that it suffered. Breaking it up for a fire sale in a hurried and unplanned way ended up costing billions of taxpayers’ money and did nothing to improve the passenger experience.”
Wolmar is admittedly partisan – like most Rail Express readers he is pro-rail – but he is quick to point out that he is not driven by nostalgia, and the bulk of his text is a lucid analysis of how the organisation fared over its 40-odd year history, highlighting both achievements and failures.
Although the focus of this work is on BR, Privatisation is briefly covered, and the announcement of the planned replacement of the franchise system by Great British Railways (“it would be too embarrassing to simply reuse the British Railways name”) is also mentioned. As readers of our Irish Angle pages will be well aware, a small part of BR lives on in Northern Ireland, as NIR was deemed too small to Privatise. It has therefore continued as a vertically integrated railway under state ownership, that has invested in new trains and infrastructure and achieved its highest ever passenger numbers in the year preceding the pandemic.
Unlike many of the publications covered in these pages, this volume is a traditional book in the sense that, aside from the dust jacket and the extracts from BR design manuals on the inner covers, there are few illustrations. Just a couple of sections of monochrome and colour plates. That’s no bad thing, as it allows the reader to focus on the messages, and there are plenty of them, as this is no bad-tempered rant, but a succinctly delivered exposition. Which is why it is a must-read.