Weale, John (writer), 61
Welshmen, as navvies, 26, 186
Wharncliffe, Lord (1st Baron), 137, 138
Wharncliffe, Lord (3rd Baron), 277
Wildfire, The, 256, 257
Williams, Frederick (railway historian), 35, 38, 104, 178
Winchester, 40, 48
Winchmore Hill, 238–40
Winter, distress in, 219–20; in France, 247–8; in Canada, 252–3; for British Army in the Crimea, 253; 259
Witnesses before the Commons Committee, 173
Wives, 30; relief for, at husband’s death, 88; 99; homeless after burning of Irish huts, 119–21; lending of, 142; 154; as nurses, in cholera epidemic, 160; selling of, 224; French, 250; allotments of pay to, 256–7
Women, 23; shared, 31; 37; looking after shanties, 96–7; 154, 223–38; 225
Woodhead, marriage ceremony, 22; 29, 68–9; first tunnel, 136–8; second tunnel, 158–61; third tunnel, 132, 161; protest resulting from, 163–7; numbers killed and injured, 146, 153, 171; missionaries at, 205–6; price of a wife, 224; 268; 137, 140
Wordsworth, William, 197
Works, foreign, carried out by British navvies, 242–64, 272–3
Work songs, 185–7
Wythes, George (contractor), 72
York and Scarborough, The, 69
Yorkshire, 27, 68, 268
Life-size bronze statue of The Unknown Navvy at Gerrards Cross station, Buckinghamshire, on the Chiltern Railway, once part of the Great Central. It was commissioned by Richard Fearn, chief executive of the linein the 1980s, helped by a donation of £3,000 by the band Genesis in appreciation of their song Driving the Last Spike, and was unveiled in 1992. The sculptor is Anthony Stones, who also made the statue of Captain Cook in the grounds of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
About The Railway Navvies
This is the definitive story of the men who built the railways – the unknown Victorian labourers who blasted, tunnelled, drank and brawled their way across nineteenth-century England.
Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.
Reviews
‘Absorbing detail presented so readably that no one with a spark of imagination and a twinge of interest in people could fail to find this book a pleasure.’
Alan Wykes, Evening Standard
‘Coleman’s vivid and perceptive study of Victorian railway navvies is something of a landmark.’
Asa Briggs, Guardian
‘A brilliant book about a magnificent and vanished race of men.’
W. G. Hoskins, Listener
About Terry Coleman & Christian Wolmar
TERRY COLEMAN is a journalist and author. For the Guardian, writing on politics and the arts, he reported from seventy countries, interviewed eight British prime ministers, served as New York correspondent, and was named Journalist of the Year. The Railway Navvies, his first book, won the Yorkshire Post literary prize. His later works include Passage to America, a history of mid-nineteenth century emigration from Britain and Ireland, and Southern Cross, a novel set in early Australia, which was an international best-seller. His most recent publications have been Nelson, Man and Legend, short-listed for the Marsh biography prize; Olivier: the Authorised Biography; and a history of the Old Vic theatre.
CHRISTIAN WOLMAR is a journalist, author, politician and Britain’s leading railway historian.
About Christian Wolmar’s Railway Library
The World the Railways Made
This is the story of a revolution that would create nations, carry empire, capitalism and industrialization to every corner of the planet, and, in its wake, usher in the modern world. This is the story of the railway.
Across American prairies, through Siberian tundra, over Argentinian pampas and deep into the heart of Africa, the modern world began with the arrival of the railway. The shock was sudden and universal: railways carried empire, capitalism and industrialization to every corner of the planet. For some, the ‘Iron Road’ symbolized the brute horrors of modernity; for others the way toward a brighter future.
From 1825, when the first passenger service linked Stockton and Darlington, to the outbreak of World War I, Nicholas Faith presents an engaging and entertaining journey through the first century of rail, introducing visionaries, engineers, surveyors, speculators, financiers and navvies – the heroes and the rogues of the mechanical revolution that turned the world upside down.
The railway was the most important invention of the 19th century, and The World the Railways Made argues that in the 21st century, with high speed lines that can compete with air travel and over 190 metro systems in 54 countries underpinning the world’s greatest cities, it remains just as relevant.
The World the Railways Made is available here.
I Tried to Run a Railway
By G.F. Fiennes
The railway system of Britain is the oldest in the world; its progress a turbulent journey of successes, failures and everything in between. In this entertaining autobiographical work, world-renowned railwayman Gerry Fiennes shares his first-hand experiences of the inner workings of this historic transport network through its most significant developments during the twentieth century. With his knowledgeable and humorous tales of management, railways and life, Fiennes provokes a smile on every page and a downright belly laugh on many.
A collection of witty and insightful anecdotes, I Tried to Run a Railway provides an insider’s perspective on the workings of the ‘big four’ regional rail companies, through the nationalisation of British Railways, to the tragic reduction of the great British route network, known as the Beeching Axe. A riveting read for railway enthusiasts.
I Tried to Run a Railway is available here.
The Lunatic Express
By Charles Miller
The Lunatic Express is a gripping account of the turbulent international race for the mastery and development of an immense region of East Africa that all but visionaries thought worthless. It is the narrative of the building of the Mombasa-Nairobi-Lake Victoria Railway. This colossal six-year enterprise cost countless lives from derailments, collisions, disease, tribal raids and the assaults of wild animals. It is a diorama of an earlier Africa of slave and ivory empires, of sultans and tribal monarchs and the vast lands that they ruled. Above all, it is the story of the white intruders whose combination of avarice, honour and tenacious courage made them a breed apart.
A Treasury of Railroad Folklore
By B. A. Botkin & Alvin F. Harlow
The stories, tall tales, traditions, ballads, and songs of the American railroad man. This collection tells the truth behind the men, machines, robbers, gamblers, hoboes and empire builders who marked milestones in the history of the iron rail, including Cooper, Vanderbilt, Wells Fargo and Casey Jones.
The Book of Railway Journeys
By Ludovic Kennedy
A Book of Railway Journeys is a collection of Ludovic Kennedy’s favourite train-journey literature – some of it famous, some quite unknown, but all of it informative, amusing, delightful or amazing. The anthology takes us on a round-the-world tour, through 155 years of train travel. It conjures up grand old trains and historic journeys; recalls horrific wartime adventures and spectacular crashes; and dwells on the romance of rail travel – its unlikely encounters, unexpected events…
Among the many fine writers represented here are Paul Theroux, Peter Fleming, Charles Dickens, Edward Thomas, John Betjeman, Thomas Hardy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Eric Newby. Together, the pieces form a book to delight train enthusiasts, admirers of good writing, and anyone embarking on a train journey.
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The story starts here.
First published by Hutchinson 1965
Book Club Associates 1966
Pelican Books 1968, 1969, 1970, 1973, 1976
Penguin Books 1981, 1986
Pimlico, 2000
This edition published in 2015 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Terry Coleman, 1965, 1968, 2015
Forward © Christian Wolmar, 2015
Jacket image: Roger Worsley Archive
Terry Coleman has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781784082321
ISBN (E) 9781784082314
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