British Railway History Vol 1

Author : Edwin A. Pratt
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331257745
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (577 download)

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Download or read book British Railways and the Great War, Vol. 1 written by Edwin A. Pratt and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-12 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from British Railways and the Great War, Vol. 1: Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements When, shortly after the outbreak of war and the successful dispatch of the Expeditionary Force to France, it became evident that railways were to play a part of primary importance in the development of the conflict - that the war, in fact, was to be a "Railway War" - the Author had the idea of following up his earlier works on transport questions by eventually giving to the world the story of what the British railways had accomplished as the result of activities obviously destined to tax their energies and their resources to the utmost extent and to exercise a considerable influence on the movements and achievements of the British Forces, if not on the actual course of the war itself. At this time, however, it was much too early to start on such an undertaking, and although the Railway Executive Committee, to whom the idea was mooted, were not averse thereto, when the proper time should arrive for carrying it into effect, it was evident that, under the prevailing conditions, any would-be historian seeking to learn all that was then going on might find that he was only asking for trouble. It thus occurred to the Author that, as a safer, though still useful, introduction to his proposed task, he might prepare a work which would trace the part that railways in general had played in warfare from the earliest days of their employment in this direction down to the outbreak of the latest war of all, in August, 1914. Hence the publication, in December, 1915, of his work on "The Rise of Rail-Power in War and Conquest, 1833-1914," a book of 400 pp., demy octavo, now out of print. On the announcement being made in the House of Commons in July, 1916, that the Government had arranged for the writing of an official history of the war, the Author revived the question as to a history of the part that British Railways were taking in the war, and facilities were then afforded to him for the making of the necessary researches and for the collection of the essential information, a certain amount of which, however, as regarded the earlier preparations of the British railways for war, in accordance with the dictates of ordinary State policy, had already been given by him in "The Rise of Rail-Power." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.