The Railways of Great Britain: a Historical Atlas by Colonel M. H. Cobb (Hardback, 2007) for sale online

About this product

Product Information

What makes this Atlas so special is that it sets the railways of Britain against the OS grid. The railways are shown prominently in colour, superimposed on OS maps of the area at a scale of 1 inch to the mile. The railways are therefore shown in the broader context of the the geographical features of the area they traverse, such as roads, canals, mountains and woodland. We have all glimpsed a disused railway from a train or a car and perhaps wondered what line it was. This Atlas will answer such questions immediately. The Atlas is the work of Colonel Michael H Cobb (Late RE) FRICS, MA who has been studying railways from the 1920s to the present day. After an army career specialising in surveying and the production of maps, Colonel Cobb worked for the Ordnance Survey and latterly for a civilian cartographic company. He began work on this project in 1978 and finally completed the cartographic work in 1996. The task of producing and financing this great project has taken up the intervening years, but at last the Atlas was ready to put before those interested in railways in 2004. It was subsequently reprinted in 2006. This second reprint has been revised to include the errors and omissions brought to the author's attention. The maps t only show the railways against the OS grid, they contain much additional information such as the names of the companies which originally built the lines and the opening and closing dates of stations. The appendices also contain a wealth of information. There is a full listing of all the stations and junctions featured on the map pages and there are family trees showing all the smaller concerns which were amalgamated into the larger pre-grouping companies.