Britain's Railways in the Second World War

The outbreak of the Second World War had an enormous effect on the railway system in Britain. Keeping the trains running through times of conflict was not such a distant memory for the railway companies and their workers but in this second major war of the 20th century, the task was to prove a very different one. The railway system no longer consisted of the hundreds of companies of the past, but the Big Four' still needed to learn how to work together and forget their differences for the war effort. The logistics of the mass evacuation of children, transporting thousands of troops during the evacuation of Dunkirk and the preparations for D-Day, for instance, were unprecedented. At the same time, they had to cope with the new and constant threat of aerial bombing that military advances brought to WWII. This book is an account of the important role that the railways played in the defence of the country as well as in their support of the Allied forces in theatres of war around the world.