A Walk Along The Tracks: Britain’s Disused Railway Lines – Hunter Davies

First published in 1982, A Walk Along The Tracks falls into the period when Dr Beeching’s pruning of the rail network was clearly still keenly felt and seen as one of the consequences of the nationalisation of the private, albeit much consolidated, private rail companies to create British Rail … the creation and floatation of Railtrack was still more than a decade off.

It’s a really good read, as Hunter Davies walks stretches of now-disused/decommissioned railway lines in various parts of the country – urban, rural, coastal, central, metropolitan, regional – telling the history of railways in the UK: the tracks, the trains, the owners, investors and customers.

Not nearly as dry and trainspotter-y as you might think!

Publisher page: A Walk Along The Tracks: Britain’s Disused Railway Lines – Hunter Davies