An Illustrated History of: Schunthorpe’s Railways -Steam and Steel- (IR511)

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Product No.:IR511Title: An Illustrated History of: Schunthorpe’s Railways -Steam and Steel-Author(s):Longbone, BryanIllustrator(s): N/APublisher:Irwell PressISBN:1871608511Condition: NewBinding:SoftcoverDust Jacket: NoneEdition: 1st EditionPublication Year:1996Features: 76Pages with Black/White Photos.The greatest and most enduring maybe, of our iron and steel making centres, Scunthorpe – Frodingham grew up because wealth was there to be tapped. The story begins with the South Yorkshire Railway building a line alongside its own canal, reaching for the busy waters of the Trent and Humber. Into the cast come and go a host of characters – ironmasters and land-owning gentry, politicians, buccaneering railway magnates, venal local merchants and above all, the common folk, working 18 hours a day and drinking water brought in tins from miles off.Everyone strains to carve a slice of the untold commercial and mineral wealth laying all around. The thread connecting them all is the railway, from the Great Central to the LNER and British Railways, to the intricate system of industrial lines and locos serving the great works themselves. This small part of North Lincolnshire rose to become the economic powerhouse of the LNE Southern Area and the Eastern Region after it. The railway surrounding Scunthorpe was secure in a monopoly, and relations with the steel men could be fragile.Moreover the railway was ever struggling to keep pace with developments; it could never keep all its customers happy, despite going to the extraordinary lengths of involving itself in clandestine and illegal setting of rates for traffic. It had also to manoeuvre with Parliament – and just one of its endless episodes of twisting and turning was dismissed as ‘an act of insanity after the years of agitation to get improved railway facilities.I hear there is great dissatisfaction in Scunthorpe as you may imagine.’ Whatever the trials and tribulations of railway working and steel making on the ground, it made a wonderful theatre for the steam locomotive in all its many moods – it really was, Steam and Steel.