London District Railway Volume Two

This volume of London's District Railway covers the period that saw a useful but old fashioned steam-operated railway take its first tentative steps towards electrification and improvement. Modernisation was essential in order to match the modern electric trams and deep level tube railways that were being promoted, but the impoverished District hardly knew how to proceed and could not bear the cost. In the end, it was an American syndicate that came to the rescue, bringing finance, know-how and drive to the task and by 1905 transforming the District into a thoroughly modern electric railway. This book explains how all this came about and how the District then developed into an important part of an integrated transport system, culminating in 1933 in the formation of London Transport.