Stenlake Publishing - Bedfordshire’s Lost Railways
Bedfordshires Lost Railways
Author : Keith Scholey ISBN : 9781840332711 Cover : paperback Price : £9.00
The first phase of British railway building in the 1830s and '40s left Bedfordshire virtually untouched and it wasn't until the Midland Railway started building line to reach London in the 1850s that a comprehensive web of branch lines sprang up throughout the county. The speed of development can be gauged by the fact that the whole of the county’s rail network was complete by 1872. A long period of stability followed but the inevitable decline began almost a century later. The lines that are left today only mainly serve major towns, the exception being the remarkable Bedford Branch, which against all the odds remains open and, with its half-timbered stations and low platforms, in largely the condition it was in at the end of steam. This detailed history contains forty-nine period photographs, many of them of steam locomotives and stations long closed but well-remembered. Featured locations include Bedford St Johns, Sandy, Potton, Stanbridgeford, Luton Hoo, Luton Bute Street, Hatfield, Dunstable, Henlow, Henlow Camp, Turvey, Wootton Broadmead, Three Counties, Arlesey, Chiltern Green, Bedford Midland Road, Ampthill, Oakley, and Sharnbrook.