A new track record

Simon Bradley dates the demise of the on-board meal service to 1962, when Pullman services no longer offered croutons with the soup course. That may be a touch fanciful— there were other reasons for the decline, such as faster trains, cost cutting and the growth of fast food. Nevertheless, it is the type of anecdote that illustrates the thoroughness and depth of Bradley’s research.

It is indisputable that the railways were the most important invention of the early 19th century. Before their creation, travel between towns and cities was a desperately slow and difficult enterprise and moving goods around was even harder, given the terrible state of the roads. Railways were transformational in every sense and their rapid growth — Britain had more than 5,000 miles of railway just 20 years after the opening of the seminal Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830 — was testimony to their importance.

Rather than telling this oft-repeated tale chronologically, as most railway histories do, Bradley has taken the brave step of choosing a thematic approach.