The Minor Railways of East Anglia: Development Demise and Destiny

Rob Shorland-Ball is a former teacher and a born story teller and so is well aware of the strong local loyalties in East Anglia.

Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex are considered to be very different separate and independent areas by their inhabitants.

When the author worked in Suffolk he explained that he came from Cambridge which he believed was the front door of East Anglia, an elderly Suffolk man to whom he was speaking, paused for a while and then said, with unarguable finality, "Here in Suffolk if Cambridge exists at all , it is a back door and rarely used."

The minor railways illustrated in this book were once busy transport links and made vital contributions to the social and business heritage of the areas they served.

By the 1950s and 60s, when the author explored them, they were rarely used, so needed to be recorded and their stories told before they were forgotten entirely.

To bring this book up to date, the final section is called Destiny because some of the track beds have survived and flourished with new usage as restored heritage railways, footpaths and cycleways and one route as a busy busway.

Rob Shorland-Ball remembers childhood holidays in Southwold when much of the derelict Southwold Railway, which closed in 1929, could still be discovered and explored. Rob, a one-time teacher and good story teller, worked for BR and from 1987 to 1994 was Deputy Head of the National Railway Museum in York so has a good working knowledge of railways and railway history. His co-author, David Lee now in his mid-90s, has researched the history of Southwold Railway for many years and welcomed Rob's knowledge and expertise in bringing together this substantive book on the Railway. Another important contributor is the late Alan Taylor whose opening chapter and several pictures are a tribute to his interest.

Rob has woven together the scholarship of David Lee and Alan Taylor to create a story of a railway which fascinated passengers while it worked, has lived on in memory, and is now being re-created by a Charitable Trust along much of its original track-bed.