Colin Maggs is one of the country's foremost transport and engineering historians and has written over one hundred books as well as innumerable magazine articles.

It's not that the railway management itself was without faults - particularly in the way that the old regions, reflecting the four private companies that were taken over, tried to still do things their own way. Some of the most well-known chairpersons, in particular Peter Parker and Robert Reid, confidently reorganized and restructured British Rail.

Much of the first part of the book is centered around the events surrounding the two major plans for British Railways: the Modernization Plan and the Reshaping of British Railways. Along the way, some of the other locations which were once railway served – such as docks, quarries and industrial works – are also illustrated.

The book is packed with important information about how BR was run and, more importantly, how it evolved and improved itself over time. The first half examines the newly nationalized industry through postwar austerity, arguing that it suffered from an “inheritance” of materials from World War II that made managing the “asset-heavy industry” difficult (55). Despite an obvious flair for the social history railway, Wolmar sticks closely to his main subject, the operational structure of the organisation which existed between 1948 and 1994, British Railways.

I thought this book would be quite dry and a slog to read but this turned out to not be the case at all.

We are able to send untracked parcels to bona fide PO Box addresses, friends and family members and to work addresses. Colin Maggs also ventures his views on where Britain's railways will go in the future, including HS2 and beyond. Wolmar takes up the story from nationalisation and examines how successive governments failed to understand or appreciate the true potential of the railways.The terminology would appeal to people with a knowledge but otherwise large parts are opaque but you get the jist. Having some awareness of UK history and politics alongside a hint of business acumen is a major benefit when reading through. At the same time Wolmar notes that even with nationalisation the privatisation era fiefdoms of individual area managers were allowed to live on which hobbled many attempts at reform. YES: British Rail is quite compact at less than 400 pages (excluding the bibliography and references), but it packs in a ton of detail from a wide array of sources and topics. Nationalisation came at a time when the system was on its knees, the former owners wanted compensation, and the concept of railways was under serious challenge from the roads lobby.