Last Trains: Dr Beeching and the death of rural England

During the course of the 1950s England lost confidence in its rulers and convinced itself it must modernise. The bankrupt, steam-powered railway, run by a Colonel Blimp, symbolised everything that was wrong with the country; the future lay in motorways and high-speed electric - or even atomic - express trains. But plans for a gleaming new railway system ended in failure and on the roads traffic ground to a halt. Along came Dr Beeching, forensically analysing the railways' problems and expertly d…