2008-08-13 Early history of railways in the UK from a social perspective.

A book describing the development of the railways in the UK, mostly concentrating on the early times, but with a few trailing chapters on the post WW2 modern developments into the familiar modern rail system. This doesn't talk much about the underground, which Wolmar covers in The Subterranean Railway, but instead covers the early freight and passenger lines. He makes a deliberate effort to avoid covering most of the technology and instead describes the formation of the early railway companies and the social changes the railways caused as they spread through Britain. Really quite interesting.