Branch & Minor Lines

There is nothing more charming and evocative to railway enthusiasts than a rural branch line. Most were built before the advent of motorized road transport and provided a vital lifeline for the communities served, but these lines inevitably declined. Although the infamous Dr Beeching usually takes the blame for closures, there were significant losses in the 1920s and 1930s, when more than a 1,000 miles of track were declared redundant. More recently, there has been regeneration of some lines and new stations opened. This beautifully illustrated book looks at lines from the steam age through to the present time of diesel and electric multiple units.

John Vaughan is a respected railway author who has written some 40 books in the past 40 years, mainly for Ian Allen but also for Haynes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when railway publishing was favoured in Sparkford under the OPC imprint.