Investment And Speculation In British Railways Classic Reprint

Author : W. R. Lawson
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781331237525
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (375 download)

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Download or read book British Railways written by W. R. Lawson and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-07-12 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from British Railways: A Financial and Commercial Survey The day of the steam traction railway is nearly over. Already electric traction has superseded steam in many branches of transportation, and the transition may be completed within the lifetime of the present generation. This may therefore be a suitable occasion for reviewing the work of the steam railway. No better field for such a review could be desired than the country which was the pioneer of railway builders. The British railways system is not only the oldest of all, but it is in many ways the most interesting. Though it has been by no means the most enterprising, it has had the greatest influence on the development of railways throughout the world. Although now a small system compared with that of the United States, there is more to be learned from it not only by the railway engineer, but by the traffic manager, the trader and the law-maker. Its very faults and shortcomings are instructive. A retrospect of British railways carries us back very nearly a whole century. It calls up before us a long procession of famous railway builders, administrators and financial organisers. Stephenson, Brunel, Brassey, Peto, the railway kings of their day, pass before us in imagination as we try to estimate the permanent value of the gigantic task which they accomplished. In the long roll of railway chairmen and managers many brilliant though half-forgotten names stand out pre-eminently. Moon, Finlay, Grierson, Watkin, Gooch, have all left their mark on the British railway of to-day. Not the least distinguished of them was the late Lord Salisbury, who in the railway crisis of 1866 was called in as a deus ex machina to rescue one of the most hopeless of the many railways then in bankruptcy. 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.