Our first ebook sale this month was "How the Steam Railways Came to Surrey" by Rupert Matthews.
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Product Description
When I was a boy I lived overlooking the main railway line from London
to Southampton. It had been built in 1838 by the London and Southampton
Railway, later to become the famous London and South Western Railway
(LSWR). From our front garden you could see the trains thundering back
and forth along the embankment that ran like a stripe across the
landscape. By then, of course, the glory days of steam in Surrey were
long gone. It was electric trains that raced back and forth. But the odd
steam train did go by, the plume of smoke drifting up into the air to
disperse over the landscape.
The railways came to Surrey in the
1840s and they were still being built in the 1930s, making Surrey most
unusual among the counties of England. Across most of the country,
railway building had ground to a halt long before the line to
Chessington was opened in 1939, complete with suitably modernistic
station architecture.
Those railways were to have a dramatic
impact on the landscapes, people and economy of Surrey. Indeed, the
Surrey that we see today has been largely created by the railways. It is
no exaggeration to say that more than any other county in England,
Surrey has been built on railways.
About the Author
Rupert
Matthews has written over 150 books for different publishers, achieving
significant sales in a variety of markets both in the UK and abroad. His
works have been translated into 19 languages and have been shortlisted
for a number of awards. Rupert has been a freelance writer for 20 years,
working in-house at a major book publisher before going freelance.
From the Author
I grew up overlooking the mainline from London to Southampton that
cuts like a swathe through Surrey. I was thrilled to write this book,
bringing back as it does so many memories of the old days.
From the Back Cover
When I was a boy I lived overlooking the main railway line from
London to Southampton. It had been built in 1838 by the London and
Southampton Railway, later to become the famous London and South Western
Railway (LSWR). From our front garden you could see the trains
thundering back and forth along the embankment that ran like a stripe
across the landscape. By then, of course, the glory days of steam in
Surrey were long gone. It was electric trains that raced back and forth.
But the odd steam train did go by, the plume of smoke drifting up into
the air to disperse over the landscape. The railways came to
Surrey in the 1840s and they were still being built in the 1930s, making
Surrey most unusual among the counties of England. Across most of the
country, railway building had ground to a halt long before the line to
Chessington was opened in 1939, complete with suitably modernistic
station architecture.
Those railways were to have a dramatic
impact on the landscapes, people and economy of Surrey. Indeed, the
Surrey that we see today has been largely created by the railways. It is
no exaggeration to say that more than any other county in England,
Surrey has been built on railways.
About the Author
Rupert Matthews has written over 150 books for different publishers,
achieving significant sales in a variety of markets both in the UK and
abroad. His works have been translated into 19 languages and have been
shortlisted for a number of awards. Rupert has been a freelance writer
for 20 years, working in-house at a major book publisher before going
freelance.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
When I was a boy I lived on the north facing hill outside Esher that
overlooks the main line from London to Portsmouth and Southampton. It
had been built in 1838 by the London and Southampton Railway, later to
become the famous London and South Western Railway (LSWR). From our
front garden you could see the trains thundering back and forth along
the embankment that ran like a stripe across the landscape. By then, of
course, the glory days of steam in Surrey were long gone. It was
electric trains that raced back and forth. But the odd steam train did
go by, the plume of smoke drifting up into the air to disperse over the
landscape.
Years later I was living down by the River Thames and
commuting up to London by train from Surbiton along that self same LSWR
mainline where I had grown up. Day after day I trudged up the hill to
the striking inter-wars station to get on to one of the many commuter
trains running up to Waterloo. By then all the steam trains had gone,
but the mark of them was everywhere. The site of the water tower, the
blackened undersides of the bridges and the engine sheds. I often
wondered what Surrey had been like back in the days of steam.
My
Uncle George had been a senior fireman on the LNER line running north
from London. He used to tell me about his days on the footplate. He told
me how he had started off as a teenager in the shed scrubbing and
cleaning, gradually working his way up to be a fireman, first on
shunters, then on local trains and finally on the great express trains
that thundered along the main lines, belching smoke and steam as they
powered up and down from London to York, Newcastle and Edinburgh. But I
think he had preferred the country lines with their quiet stations,
bunnies hopping in the fields and old-style station masters.
Surrey
had been like that once. The railways came to Surrey in the 1840s and
they were still being built in the 1930s, making Surrey most unusual
among the counties of England. Across most of the country, railway
building had ground to a halt long before the line to Chessington was
opened in 1939, complete with suitably modernistic station architecture.
Moreover, Surrey suffered only one line closure in the Beeching years,
leaving over 90% of its railway lines open and operating into the 21st
century. Surrey is most fortunate from the railway point of view.
Those
railways were to have dramatic impact on the landscapes, people and
economy of Surrey. Indeed, the Surrey that we see today has been largely
created by the railways. It is no exaggeration to say that more than
any other county in England, Surrey has been built on railways.
This
book sets out to describe How the Steam Railways came to Surrey. That
age of steam in Surrey is remembered fondly by thousands. The fans of
steam recall the many different locomotives that hurried along the
lines, the travellers recall the grimy grit of smoke and steam filling
carriages in summer when the windows were down, and all county residents
look back on a less hurried time when the demands of a globalised world
were still in the future and the good folk of Surrey could potter about
their own business in their own way. I have spoken to dozens of them
while researching this book. I am sorry that I missed the heyday of
steam in Surrey, but glad that I did at least come in for the last few
glimmers that reflected the glory days of long ago.
Since 1965 the
county has lost the rough square shape that it had for most of its
history. The northeastern corner of the county was in that year sliced
off and handed over to London on the grounds that it had been covered by
a vast suburban sprawl that belonged more to outer London than to
Surrey. The county originally stretched along the south bank of the
Thames to Southwark and Rotherhithe, but now stops before it reaches
Croydon or Sutton. Even the County Hall, seat of the County Council, is
outside of Surrey these days as it stands in Kingston upon Thames, now a
London borough. This book deals with Surrey as it is now.
