The railways. Thousands of route-miles fenced off from the rest of the country, carved into landscapes barely changed since Shakespeare's time and ruled by their own mysterious rhythms and laws.

From the classical architecture of Newcastle Station to the unrelenting traffic and expanse of Clapham Junction and the lost stations of Oban and Challow, Simon Bradley explores the landscape of the railways, the trains and the passengers who pass through it. Private compartments and railway rugs have given way to 'standard' carriages with lavatories and luggage racks, but other parts of the system are old — some the oldest in the world. Bradley weaves from these networks a remarkable story of technological change, of architecture and engineering, of shifting social classes, gender relations and public health, of tourism and the changing world of work, showing us that to travel through Britain by train is to travel through time as well as space.