CAMBRIDGE STATION: Its Development and Operation as a Rail Centre

SHORLAND-BALL, Rob

ISBN 10: 1473869048 / ISBN 13: 9781473869042

Published by Pen & Sword Transport, Barnsley, 2017

About this Item

188 pages. 116 colour & b/w photographs, maps and other illustrations. Blue boards in jacket. Every book is sent in a rigid cardboard posting box. Size: 25.5 Cm x 18 Cm.

Seller Inventory # 21423

Bibliographic Details

• Title: CAMBRIDGE STATION: Its Development and Operation as a Rail Centre
• Publisher: Pen & Sword Transport, Barnsley
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1473869048
• ISBN 13: 9781473869042
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Railways

About this title

Synopsis

Why build a Railway to Cambridge? This is the first substantive illustrated book about Cambridge Station which explores the opening of the station in 1845; the four principal railway companies which all worked to and from the station in a ‘tangle of mutual inconvenience;’ the extensive goods traffic which was handled in the several goods yard around the station; and the way the Station operated from early beginnings, to what Abellio East Anglia and Network Rail offer today. Cambridge Station is renowned for having one of the longest single platforms in the UK, served by Up and Down trains. Ingenious track work and extensive signaling could satisfy passengers who were told at the central booking hall entrance: 'Turn left for Kings Lynn or right for London.' The book contains several pictures never before published, showing how the Eastern Counties and then the Great Eastern Railway Companies contrived Cambridge Station and the Engine Sheds, Goods Yards, Signal Boxes and extensive sidings to serve East Anglia. And it tells people stories too, because the author worked on the station in the 1950s and 1960s and knows Cambridge and East Anglia well. He is a geographer and writes with knowledge, wisdom and humor.

About the Author

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.