British railway enthusiasm [Paperback]

This is the first academic book to study railway enthusiasts in Britain. Far from a trivial topic, the postwar train spotting craze swept most boys and some girls into a passion for railways, and for many, ignited a lifetime's interest.

British railway enthusiasm traces this postwar cohort, and those which followed, as they invigorated different sectors in the world of railway enthusiasm - train spotting, railway modelling, collecting railway relics - and then, in response to the demise of main line steam traction, Britain's now-huge preserved railway industry. Today this industry finds itself riven by tensions between preserving a loved past which ever fewer people can remember and earning money from tourist visitors.

The widespread and enduring significance of railway enthusiasm will ensure that this ground-breaking text becomes a key work in transport studies, and will appeal to enthusiasts as much as to students and scholars of transport and cultural history.

1. Introduction: The railway enthusiast's life-world

2. The railway book (and magazine) mania

3. Associated life

4. Train spotter: the last pariah

5. Preserved lines: playing trains or running a business?

6. Blood on the tracks

7. Modelling and engineering

8. The rise and fall of the toy train empire

9. Standards, schism and skill: exclusive brethren

10. A dying fall?

Bibliography

Index

Ian Carter is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Auckland