Railways and the Victorian Imagination

Can there be anything left to say about railways in the Victorian era? Surely the subject has been treated to the point of (over) exhaustion? Histories of railway companies, regions and lines abound, as do treatises on their economics, social impact and the rest, and more general accounts, many of them outstandingly good and seemingly the last word on their subjects. So credit then to Michael Freeman for coming up with a new angle, and to his publishers for putting his text into a generously, appropriately and very attractively illustrated volume. “A new cultural history of the railway age in...