Rail Books - Free UK Postage on Orders Above £35!
Rail Books - Free UK Postage on Orders Above £35!
Cart 0
Doncaster 1853-1990 : Town of Train Makers
Doncaster Books

Doncaster 1853-1990 : Town of Train Makers

Regular price £7.00 Unit price per

The arrival of the Great Northern Railway workshop — the Plant works — in Doncaster in 1853 is undoubtedly the most significant event in the town's history. Attracted by work in the new railway industry, people flocked to the town and its population doubled in the space of forty years. From then on the lives and fortunes of the majority of the inhabitants of Doncaster were intimately bound up with the Plant'.

Doncaster: Town of Train Makers, tells the story of these people, generations of Doncaster families, their struggle for better pay and conditions, their pride in their work, and their enjoyment of the annual day's excursion —by train of course — to the coast. It is a story which touches significant developments in the economic, social and political history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Factory Acts, the rise of the trade unions, the formation of the Labour Party, the development of the Welfare State, nationalization, the Beeching Plan, the competition from road haulage, the European challenge, are all seen through the enlightening perspective of the Doncaster experience. Prominence is given to the part played by Doncaster in the two World Wars when the Plant became involved in munitions work, and the employment of women led to greater pressure for equal pay.

And alongside the social history are the engineers, men like Archibald Sturrock, Patrick Stirling and H.A. Ivatt, who designed the locomotives and rolling stock; the technical innovations; the proud lineage of locomotives such as the Mallard, the Flying Scotsman and the Silver Jubilee.

Philip Bagwell's fascinating and thoroughly researched book, with its unique collection of archive pictures, fills a gap in railway history and will be welcomed by enthusiasts and the general reader alike.

Hardback, 136 pages, black & white illustrations

Condition: Very Good

ISBN: 9780906976371