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.
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.
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.
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.
Geoff Swaine has combined his passions for photography and railways in this new collection of images which covers some of Britain's most celebrated heritage lines: The West Somerset Railway, the Bluebell Railway in Sussex, the North York Moors Railway, Didcot Railway Centre, the Mid-Hants Railway (Watercress Line), the Llangollen Railway in Wales, the Great Central Railway at Loughborough, the Severn Valley Railway, the North Norfolk Railway, the Kent & East Sussex Railway, the Gloucester & Warwickshire Railway, the Midland Railway Centre, the Battlefield Line, the Bodmin & Wenford Railway, the Spa Valley Railway, and the Dartmouth Steam Railway.
As authorised in 1835, the Great Western Railway extended from London to Bristol, but from the very earliest days, ambitious promoters were planning a whole series of extensions to destinations such as Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Cornwall and South Wales.
Bradshaw's Guide of 1863 was the staple book on what's what and where's where for the mid-Victorians and it gives the modern reader a unique insight into the world of the nineteenth-century railway travellers.
With a foreword by the Duke of Edinburgh, who travelled to the Antarctic on the maiden voyage of the RRS John Biscoe, this is the story of the ship's final voyage in the Antarctic to the British Antarctic Survey bases.
The Georgian town of Whitehaven, located on the West coast of Cumbria, was once the third most important port in Britain but today is only used by a handful of fishing vessels.
Weston-super-Mare and the Aeroplane 1910-2010 is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of the association between Weston-super-Mare and the aeroplane over the last one hundred years.
Bradshaw's Guide of 1863 was the staple book to what's what and where's where for the mid-Victorians and it gives the modern reader a unique insight into the world of the nineteenth-century travellers.
On 17 September 1921, the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton left London aboard his ship Quest, bound for the Antarctic on what would prove to be his final voyage.
The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway is perhaps best known for its role in the 1970s film The Railway Children, based on Edith Nesbit's much-loved book.
Founded in 1838 in Liverpool, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company was the first to operate steamships in the Pacific and primarily traded from the UK to the Pacific coasts of South America.
The old Bridgewater Trustees mineral railways were to become the Central Railways of the huge Manchester Collieries concern, which was formed in March 1929.
The London Brighton & South Coast Railway - also known as the 'Brighton Line' - was an important pre-grouping railway covering a triangular territory with London at its apex and the Sussex and Surrey coast at its base.
The advent of the jet airliner all but killed the liner on the Atlantic route but the ships to Australia survived into the 1970s, not just on the liner trade but also carrying emigrants from the UK and Europe to Australia.
This fourth volume of illustrated Bradshaw's Guides takes the traveller from the London Bridge and Victoria stations via the former South Eastern Railway to the 'watering places' of the coast of Kent.