Princess Fuzzypants here: World War I was the first war of the modern age. So much changed in those bloody four years. The means with which the war effort was conducted was almost unrecognizable from previous conflicts. This book looks at how the Railway system in Britain rose to the occasion and in doing so, became a vastly different “animal”.

When war was declared, there were a myriad of small companies that owned different parts of the railway system. There was no cohesion and the best one could hope was the competing entities would be able to work together. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not. By the end of the war there was close to a consensus that things would have to change. Some of the inability to coordinate caused problems with travel and the supply chain. Sometimes it ended in horrible disasters.

As a Canadian, it was interesting to learn how pivotal a role Canada made in building and maintaining railways and introducing Light railways to Britain. I was not aware of the importance of our contribution in this area. Time and again in the book, stories are told of how we helped the war effort.

The book is set out by year. It is an easy format for casual reading or study. It is chocked full of footnotes and pictures. It covers all the important moments and goes into detail of how the railways carried men and materiel to the Front and back and back home in Britain . Some of the stories were eye-openers. When I think about the tube stations and bombing, I immediately think of WWII. I was amazed how much damage was caused and how many people sheltered in stations during air raids in WWI. Some of the other areas that were included were the contributions of women and the balance between needing recruits but also needing to keep the infrastructure running. Also convered was the way the railways were used to save lives of the wounded and may have cost lives when it helped spread The Spanish Flu.

All in all it was an interesting book and well deserved four purrs and two paws up.

The most interesting thing I learned from this book is that trainspotting was already a pastime in 1900, something I had never thought about. Mr. Foley's book is full of other interesting facts about railways and their operation at the turn of the 20th century. I wish the presentation were a bit better organized, but overall this is a fun little book.

Very informative and pleasant to read book compiling the history of WWI through the lens of the British Railway systems. I thought it was really interesting to compare events before, during and after the war. I do wish some sources were provided more often to help support the material.

Michael Foley’s Britain’s Railways in the First World War is jam-packed with snippets of information. It comprises six chapters, one for each year from 1914 to 1919 plus a couple of appendices, glossary, bibliography and index.

Foley gives very little space to the planning work carries out before 1914 but is inconsistent with contemporary sources in one fairly important aspect. In January 1911, the country was divided on a geographic basis into six “commands” by the War Railway Council. The Council also appointed Secretary Railway Companies which would act on behalf of all the railway companies operating within their command. These were
Command Secretary Railway Company.
Eastern South Eastern and Chatham
Southern London and South Western
Western London and North Western
Northern North Eastern
Scottish North British
Irish Great Northern of Ireland

In the Introduction, Foley includes a London command, although a contemporary source (British Railways and The Great War by Edwin Pratt, published 1921) stated London was under Eastern Command. Foley also states that Southern Command was under the LNWR and Western Command was under the NER, which just don’t make sense. He doesn’t show Northern Command at all. It’s as though he’s simply misaligned commands and railways and not read the results. The list of commands and secretary companies is repeated in Chapter One, but this time it’s correct. Unfortunately, such a major error in the Introduction undermines one’s faith in the rest of the book.

One other error I spotted was the description in Chapter Two of the connection of an army camp at Kinmel Park, Rhyl, to the rail network as ‘A siding from the L&NWR ran into the camp’. The Kinmel Camp Railway was three miles long, initially running from Foryd Station on the LNWR’s coast line and later in the war, connecting to the Vale of Clwyd railway. If I recall correctly, the line had a few halts, including Faenol Bach for the public, not just the military. “Siding” is a misnomer.

There is more repetition than is warranted. For example, we only need to be told once that white feathers were handed out to non-uniformed men or that railways didn’t suffer too much disruption at the start of the war.

Apart from the division into one chapter per year, there seems little order or structure to the material – and there is a LOT of material. Although I understand it’s easiest to simply split the book by year, that results in very long chapters and disjointed presentation of information. I would have preferred to see the book structured into topics rather than just years. As it is, the book feels like a lot of snippets of research have simply been copied and pasted one after the other.

I still think this is a useful book and it does have an index, but it could have been so much better as a reference book.

#BritainsRailwaysintheFirstWorldWar #NetGalley