PUBLISHER Gill & Macmillan Hume Avenue, Park West, Dublin 12

AUTHOR/EDITOR * Author - Tom Ferris 

DETAILS

Published	2008
ISBN	9780717142910
Published Price	€24.99
Type	Book

This title is by the well known railway publisher Tom Ferris - of Midland Counties Publications fame. He takes a look at the development of railways on the island from the earliest known attempts, through the opening of the D&KR in 1834 all the way up to 2007 and all of the trials and tribulations that beset the railway network on the island of Ireland in between. The book is a reasonable synopsis of the railway history of Ireland and does highlight key points which can often be overlooked. An annoyance that I found with the book was that of the standard bugbears of British railway historians of referring to the British Isles and Ireland's standard gauge as broad gauge. That these faux paxs come from an Ulsterman who should know better is worrying. On P179, the dates for the closure of the lines to Clifden and Achill have been transposed (Clifden closed in 1935 and Achill in 1937). I encountered typographical errors on page 76 with the "BC&RB" printed as "BC&RD" but perhaps the most interesting error I encountered was not of the authors creation. In setting the book up for binding, a folio appears to have been misplaced with the result that pages 151 - 182 are in the wrong place - being bound after the first set of photograph pages rather than the second. Having said that, the book does represent a useful overview of an interesting and complex topic and I would recommend it. 

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