WITH the railway industry in ferment – with passenger numbers dropping, crippling strikes on the horizon and a dramatic reorganisation in prospect, Christian Wolmar's new history of the nationalised British Rail could not be more timely. Long the butt of jokes about curling sandwiches and the "wrong kind of snow", Wolmar's insightful book goes a long way to rescue its image, laying to rest many shibboleths on the way. Many mistakes were made in the early days after 1948 as ...more