The North Eastern Railway - The Cradle of Britain's Railways

This is a reissue of this long out of print history of the North Eastern Railway written by one of the doyens of railway literature in the last century, Cecil J. Allen. The NER had one of the most fascinating and complex histories of all of the British railway companies. It dates back to the earliest days of the development of the wagonways to carry coals from the Durham and Northumberland mines to the sea. Men like George Stephenson, Edward and Joseph Pease and George Hudson are involved in its story as is the struggle to build the trunk route linking the north and south which was to become the East Coast Main Line. Later, as the nineteenth century progressed, the NER's preoccupation was to protect its lucrative territories from the incursion of others. Every aspect of the NER's history is considered in this work from the engineering required to carry its lines through the rugged terrain which it served, to the development of locomotives and services and later efforts to electrify part of its network.