Summary

A striking photographic record of how the Beeching cuts and modernisation saw our grand terminal stations, soaring viaducts and cavernous locomotive works wiped from the landscape The current restoration of St Pancras Station and its Midland Hotel is a glorious exception to a melancholy rule – that the finer our railway architecture, the more likely it was to be demolished in the name of progress.

A striking photographic record of how the Beeching cuts and modernisation saw our grand terminal stations, soaring viaducts and cavernous locomotive works wiped from the landscape The current restoration of St Pancras Station and its Midland Hotel is a glorious exception to a melancholy rule – that the finer our railway architecture, the more likely it was to be demolished in the name of progress. Who would know that the ugly, low concrete bunker of Birmingham New Street station replaced a handsome glass-roofed train shed, or that until the 1960s the stupendously high Belah viaduct swept across a remote Cumbrian valley – or that the outlet mall in Swindon selling cheap designer clothing used to be he great GWR locomotive works? – or that on little bucolic branch lines in the West Country or Essex an old bus body was the waiting-room? In over 200 fascinating and often rare images John Minnis documents the remarkably rich architectural heritage of our railways, from quaint country halts to distinguished railway hotels – all of which exists now only in photographs.