Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Today the words ‘Narrow Gauge’ bring to mind those little railways in North Wales which have been rescued from oblivion by enthusiasts to give pleasure to themselves and many thousands of holiday-makers every year. Yet how many of those who throng the streets and beaches of Towyn or Portmadoc recall or even know that it was Madoc’s Port and its railway that influenced communications throughout the world? But this is true for a hundred years ago the ‘impossible’ was done and steam engines worked for the first time on so narrow a gauge. In this book Mr Whitehouse has told the story of the rise and fall of the narrow-gauge rail- ways of these Islands in a series of interesting and exciting vignettes from 1863 to 1963. He begins with the arrival of steam on the Festiniog and follows through to the peak period of sixty years ago when the valleys and hills echoed to the voices of diminutive steam locomotives and their railways which were to play a vital part in the development of the countryside. Then came the decline due largely to the intervention of the motor car and the motor bus one by one the little lines died and became derelict until today the steam engine tends to be reviled as dirty and uneconomic. (LL)