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Chargement... On the Slow Train: Twelve Great British Railway Journeyspar Michael Williams
  
Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  John_Vaughan | Mar 28, 2012 | 
 While Williams takes us assiduously around the country, there are several gaps that he must have cannily left on purpose, such as the Highland line to Wick and Thurso, the West Country services that touch the sea at Dawlish and the Cambrian Coast line to ensure that we can expect a second volume. Even in the age of the Pendolino and the Eurostar, the slow train lives on. This is a eulogy to a lost world. While Michael talks of 12 lines that are still running, there is a lament for others killed off by the reforms of Dr Beeching in the early 1960s. His book also shines a light on the nonsensical way railways are organised today, with franchises supposedly introducing the market forces mantra to make railways efficient. But, as the book points out, the Conservative government of John Major, who privatised our railways, bungled it. Appartient à la série
Never was the sadness of the end of an affair so poignantly expressed than in Flanders and Swann's elegy The Slow Train. This beautifully-packaged book will take the reader on the slow train to another era when travel meant more than hurrying from one place to the next, the journey meaning nothing but time lost in crowded carriages, condemned by broken timetables. On the Slow Train will reconnect with that long-missed need to lift our heads from the daily grind and reflect that there are still places in Britain where one can stop and stare. It will tap into many things: a love of railways, a love of history, and a love of nostalgia. This book will be a paean to another age before milk churns, porters, and cats on seats were replaced by security announcements and Burger King. These twelve spectacular journeys will help free us from what Baudelaire denounced as "the horrible burden of time." Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)385.0941Social sciences Commerce, Communications, Transportation Trains and Railroads Subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography Europe British Isles - UK, Great Britain, Scotland, IrelandClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.9)
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1
Cadbury Castle, Camelot of King Arthur, Hardy’s Kings Arms with the Henchard wife, sold off by her husband, peering through the window – all on Brunel’s old line converted from the Robert Stephenson original - rolling through the heartland of Wessex pass Glastonbury Tor, the legendary home of the Holy Grail ... there are eleven other thrilling rides and chapters to this great read.
Amazingly, even though several of Williams trips are on original steam trains – owned now by Heritage Great Britain rather than private rail-moguls or England’s own ”Robber Barons” - all these evocative descriptions of trips take place in the last ten years. Despite the bumbled de-nationalization of the entire British Rail Network … or that the survived the Beeching years … trains services to rural halts and highlands can still be found.
A great book and – wonderfully – part of a series.