The Great Railway Conspiracy: The Fall and Rise of Britain's Railways Since the 1950's

The Great Railway Conspiracy was written in 1991, and covered the catastrophic collapse of the British railway system in the 1960s that saw closure or harsh rationalisation of many lines. Henshaw's thesis is that some of these closures were inevitable, but many were totally counterproductive, costing the economy far more than the simple balance-sheet of rationalisation had yielded. Evidence is drawn from later traffic figures on the surviving branch lines and the success of reopened railways. The book was reprinted in 1993 and again in 2013. This is the updated third edition bringing the story up to the early days of railway privatisation and the phenominal traffic growth on the surviving 'near-miss' Beeching branch lines, and reopened services. Brand new from storage, but may show some slight fading on the cover.