Transport: general interest

During the Second World War, more than 9,000 flying boats were produced by the main protagonists, fulfilling a multitude of roles including maritime reconnaissance, bombing, fleet spotting, search and rescue, long-range transport and communications.

Cunard's advertising boasts of having 'The Most Famous Ocean Liners in the World'.

In this comprehensive book, the author charts the development and production of one of the most famous fire engine manufacturers in the world.

The Southern Railway, today headquartered at Chennai, Tamil Nadu, is the earliest of the seventeen zones of the Indian railway that is vital in connecting the different regions of this vast country.

In the 1960s, there were still steam locomotives based at Ayr depot and a wealth of branch lines crossed the Ayrshire countryside.

The first Waterloo Station opened in 1848 and the current building was completed in 1922, after a huge rebuilding programme started in 1899.

As one of the oldest cycling clubs in the world, the 'Anfield' has an amazing history.

Central London is encircled by some of the finest railway architecture in the world.

In the 1960s, Japanese motorcycle manufacturers were eating into the markets in Europe and the United States with genuinely new designs and modern technology.

In 1904 an eccentric inventor, Noel Pemberton-Billing, took an interest in flying machines.

In 1928, Edinburgh Corporation Transport was formed as the corporation increasingly began to run buses as well as trams in the city.

This comprehensive book provides the full background and history of the groundbreaking Kawasaki Z1.

For many years in Yachts and Yachting magazine, these very practical, workable sketches by yacht designer Ian Nicolson appeared regularly and they apply to every part of a boat.

Getting afloat need not be difficult or expensive if you were to build your own boat.

This fully revised third edition of a classic manual is a mine of information for yachtsmen to customise their boats.

This is the story of how the Second World War affected leisure boating: of the people who managed to overcome huge difficulties to go sailing during the war itself and the difficulties of re-establishing the sport in post-war years; of the sailing and yacht clubs which survived bombings, requisitioning, shortages and a host of other problems, and still thrive today.

The federal immigration station on Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay, opened on 1 January 1892.

Cold-moulded wood boatbuilding predates fibreglass and has been used successfully for sailing dinghies, offshore racing yachts, fast multihulls and powerboats, and even rowing shells.

Smuggling in Cornwall: An Illustrated History tells the story of the smuggling trade that flourished in Cornwall during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Coventry's buses had first entered service in 1914, supplementing the tram network.

'On an average Saturday, some thirty trains carried police escorts of between two and eight officers.

The merchants of Manchester were concerned about the high tariffs charged at Liverpool Docks and the excessive rates for transhipment of goods to Manchester.

This trilogy tells how Ian Nicolson, yachtsman, naval architect and author, joined a Canadian and a Norwegian to sail the 45-foot ketch Maken from England via the Panama Canal to Vancouver, Canada.

From its introduction in the mid-1960s, when the first aircraft were delivered, through the various humanitarian missions, the Falkland Islands conflict and operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, right up to the introduction of the J version, the Lockheed C-130 Hercules continues to give outstanding service with the RAF and with an expected retirement date of 2030, this would total a service career lasting for a staggering sixty-four years of continuous operations.

There is an unfathomable fascination with the romance connected to the construction of great railways, yet little is known of the beginning and growth of the pioneering railways of the world, of the heavy tax that their construction imposed on the ingenuity, skill and resources of their builders.

The Standard Motor Company grew to be one of the biggest companies in Coventry and employed some 11,000 people at its height.

David Devoy was first introduced to many of the independent Lanarkshire bus fleets back in the 1960s when he saw many of them on football hires to Glasgow, and on a school trip to visit a railway signal box in Motherwell which produced a street full of Hutchison's blue AEC service buses.

Long before Stagecoach, Arriva or First Bus, Ayrshire Independents fought it out with Western SMT on the local and long-distance routes within the county.

In the 1950s and 1960s these cheap return excursion trains ran overnight between London and both Glasgow and Edinburgh, departing on Friday evenings and then returning on Saturday evenings a week or a fortnight later.

For generations of Londoners, a trip to the seaside aboard a pleasure steamer such as the Royal Eagle, Golden Eagle or Royal Daffodil was the highlight of the year and these 'Poor Man's Liners' were part of childhood and family life for huge numbers of people.

The first trams to be operated in West Bromwich belonged to the South Staffordshire Tramways Company, which began operating double-deck steam trams from Handsworth to Wednesbury in 1883, eventually extending the route to Dudley.

On 8 August 1974, the world's last seagoing paddle steamer was sold by her owners for the princely sum of a pound.

In his time Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the world's greatest engineer.

London's Docklands have a rich and varied history.

The West Coast Main Line - going all the way from London to Glasgow - remains one of the most important railway routes in this country.

The LBSCR was the main route connecting London with Brighton and the pleasures of the South Coast resorts.

At its peak in the 1920s Ireland had some 3,500 route miles of track, today it has less than half that amount.

Infinitely flexible, they have appeared in short, medium and long wheelbase variants, with a host of body styles and conversions for everything from sixwheeled fire engines to motor homes.

The London & Birmingham Railway was the first major line in Britain and it was the greatest achievement of its engineer, Robert Stephenson, the man who, together with his father George, had set the age of the railway in motion with their pioneering achievements.

The history of East Shropshire has had a global impact, with Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale acknowledged as the 'Cradle of the Industrial Revolution'.

The Sprinter revolution of the 1980s led to the mass withdrawal of British Rail's vast fleet of first generation Diesel Multiple Units.

Popular history will tell the tale of how the steam locomotive came to dominate Victorian Britain but while the steam railway died out in the 1960s, the electric railway was already a success story and one that would not only endure but dominate rail travel to the present day and beyond.

Thanks to a quirk of fate, and the survival of so many locomotives in the Barry scrapyard, the GWR is well represented in the steam preservation scene today.

The Mersey has changed over the past thirty years.

The Manchester Ship Canal was a huge engineering achievement.

Based in Renfrewshire, Clydeside Scottish was a member of the Scottish Bus Group and was created from the northern part of Western SMT's area.

The Cornwall Railway was authorised on 3 August 1846 with the aim of constructing a broad gauge rail link between Plymouth, Truro and Falmouth.

The Isle of Man has a rich transport heritage and once boasted the largest narrow gauge network in Britain with eight railways and tramways.

The drama of the Cumbrian countryside combined with some of the most magnificent steam locomotives to be found anywhere in Britain.

Arguably one of the most dramatic railway lines in northern England, the Settle - Carlisle runs through remote, scenic regions of the Yorkshire Dales and the North Pennines.