John Minnis
A striking photographic record of howÂ industry cuts and modernisation saw Britain's grand terminal stations, soaring viaducts, and cavernous locomotive works wiped from the landscape,Â ,Filled withÂ fascinating and often rareÂ images, this collection documentsÂ the remarkably rich architectural heritage of British railways, from quaint country halts to distinguished railway hotelsâ€”all of which exists now only in photographs. Who would know that the ugly, low concrete bunker of Birmingham New Street station replaced a handsome glass-roofed train shed, that until the 1960s the stupendously high Belah viaduct swept across a remote Cumbrian valley, that the outlet mall in Swindon selling cheap designer clothing used to be the great GWR locomotive works, or that on little bucolic branch lines in the West Country or Essex an old bus body was the waiting-room? The current restoration of St Pancras Station and its Midland Hotel is a glorious exception to a melancholy ruleâ€”that the finerÂ the railway architecture, the more likely it was to be demolished in the name of progress.
History,Nonfiction
Britain's Lost Railways: The Twentieth Century Destruction of Our Finest Railway Architecture