British Locomotive Practice and Performance

Charles Rous-Marten, 'the high priest of train timing', travelled hundreds of thousands of miles between 1884 and 1908 on or behind locomotives recording many remarkable train performances. He was the originator and first author of The Railway Magazine's famous 'British Locomotive Practice and Performance' feature which has become the world's longest-running railway column and his articles provide today's reader with a unique contemporary insight into that Golden Age of railway development.The 34 extracts included here cover fascinating aspects of both practice and performance on the railways of Edwardian Britain from Scotland to the far West of England. Rous-Marten knew the great engineers personally, and shared in and recorded their experiments towards ever more powerful locomotives and faster schedules, and his infectiously enthusiastic style carries us back with him to that long-vanished era.