Michael Foley 240 pages hardcover
The outbreak of the Second
World War had an enormous effect on the railway system in Britain.
Keeping the trains running through times of conflict was not such a
distant memory for the railway companies and their workers but in this
second major war of the twentieth century, the task was to prove a very
different one.
The railway system no longer consisted of the hundreds of companies
of the past, but the 'Big Four' still needed to learn how to work
together and forget their differences for the war effort. The logistics
of the mass evacuation of children, and transporting thousands of troops
during the evacuation of Dunkirk and the preparations for D-Day, for
instance, were unprecedented. At the same time, they had to cope with
the new and constant threat of aerial bombing that military advances
brought to the Second World War. The railway system, and the men and
women who ran it, effectively served as another branch of the military
during the conflict.
At the end of the war, Winston Churchill likened London to a large
animal, declaring that what kept the animal alive was its transport
system. The metaphor could have been applied to the whole of Britain,
and its most vital transport system was the railway.
This book is a fascinating account of the important role that the
railways played in the defence of the country as well as in their
support of the Allied forces in theatres of war around the world. It
brings to light the often forgotten stories of the brave and
hard-working men and women who went to work on the railways and put
their lives on the line.
