Narrow Gauge Railways

Describes the narrow gauge railways of Belgian West Flanders and French Flanders before WW1.

Unusually among Welsh narrow-gauge railways, the 2ft 6in gauge Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway was built to benefit agriculture, not minerals. After several failed attempts to connect the market town at Welshpool with the rural community around Llanfair Caereinion, the 1896 Light Railways Act paved the way for the railway which opened in 1902.

Built to carry minerals from mines in the Rheidol valley, the 2ft gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway found its niche carrying tourists to the tourist attraction at Devil’s Bridge, 12 miles inland from the Cardigan coast resort of Aberystwyth.

James Waite has been a skilled railway photographer for many years. In this book he has brought together photographs of many of the world’s steam-worked narrow gauge railways in the twenty-first century, concentrating mostly on views which show the scenery, both natural and man-made, through which they ran.

The Somme sector of the Western Front was held by French forces until early 1916, when the British and Dominions Third and Fourth Armies moved into the northern part, before the joint First Battle of the Somme from July to November 1916. In 1917, with the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, British responsibility moved further south.

A delightful example of one of East Anglia's minor railways: A 3ft gauge railway, single track, just over 8 miles long from Halesworth (connections to London) across the heathland and marshes of East Suffolk to the seaside resort and harbor of Southwold.

THE REVIVAL AND RESTORATION of the Welsh Highland Railway is one of the greatest heritage railway achievements of the 21st Century, yet its success followed more than one hundred years of failure.Supported...

Opened in 1836 as a horse tramway using gravity to carry slate from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog, by the 1920s the Festiniog Railway had left its years of technical innovation and high profits long...