It has now been over a century since Frank Hornby invented a toy to amuse his sons and called it Meccano, coining a word which is now known all over the world.Hornby's vision of an educational toy became the basis of perhaps the most successful British toy business of the twentieth century. Meccano has amused generations of children, encouraging many to become successful engineers.Roger Marriott here explores the long history of Meccano, charting the develo...

As Britain moved from austerity to prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s, it became clear that British Railways needed to modernise its equipment and rationalise its network if it was to hold its own in the face of growing competition from road and air transport.After attempting to maintain pre-war networks and technology in the 1950s, a reversal of policy in the 1960s brought line closures, new liveries and the last breath of steam, as Dr Beeching and his successors s...

Steam railways have always captured the public’s imagination. Even from the first stirrings of the mineral lines in the early 1800s through to the heyday of the Railway Age, steam engines kept and continue to keep their fascination. The delight is that around the British Isles is a wide range of working, restored steam railways. Every size and type is represented and it is these railways that primarily feature in this book, providing a real, solid picture of life and transport as it was. T...

Sir William Lyons enjoyed a seemingly unstoppable rise to fame and fortune in the motor industry, and the Jaguar brand that he introduced became world-famous.Yet it did not happen overnight. In the 1920s he was in Blackpool, styling motorcycle sidecars, and in the 1930s in Coventry developing the SS motor car, with the stand-alone Jaguar company not appearing until 1945.The company's success was aided by the amazing new XK engine of 1948, by motor racing su...

A history of post second world war steam locomotive design and construction in Great Britain, the perfect gift for railroad history buffs.After WWII the existing railway companies were all put into the control of the newly formed British Transport Commission and that government organization spawned British Railways, which came into being on January 1st 1948. The railway infrastructure had suffered badly during the war years and most of the steam locomotives were "t...

Hugh Llewelyn has travelled throughout Britain to gather this collection of his photographs of the diesel shunters. In addition to the main classes deployed by British Railways from the 1940s up to the present time, he also covers many of the rarer engines to be found working the docks and industrial centres. The shunters are shown in great detail and the images include not only the preserved examples, but also many of the neglected engines either in storage or abandoned. The result is a f...

A celebration of the life and engineering achievements of Isambard Kingdom Brunel by two of the world's foremost authorities.In his lifetime, Isambard Kingdom Brunel towered over his profession. Today, he remains the most famous engineer in history, the epitome of the volcanic creative forces which brought about the Industrial Revolution - and brought modern society into being.Brunel's extraordinary talents were drawn out by some remarkable opportunities - ...

The Jaguar E-type was the outstanding British sports car of the post-war years. Introduced in 1961 it was Jaguar's most numerically successful sports car until production ceased in 1974. Contents include: complete history of the E-type in all its forms; special feature panels throughout; information on buying and maintaining an E-type and full specifications and road tests. Illustrated with specially commissioned colour and black & white photographs.

For nearly sixty years, TVR produced some of the most thrilling, spine-tingling, hand-built sports cars to emerge from any British motor manufacturer. Yet it was the period between 1981 and 2004, under the management of Peter Wheeler, when the company finally shook off its shed-built roots and proved that it could produce cars that could match anything from Maranello or Stuttgart in terms of performance, but at a fraction of their price. Illustrated with over 300 photographs, TVR - Cars of...

Steam, and then cumbersome motor, tractors existed in small numbers before 1914, after which the need to produce more foods using less horse and man power saw the origins of the machine we know today. Thanks to mass production, Ford brought the price down to suit average farmers, and in the 1920s to 1940s numerous rivals brought in such novelties as diesel engines, pneumatic tyres, hydraulic implement lifts and even cost-effective all-wheel drive and weather protection. After the Second Wo...

The Bristol Omnibus Company can trace its origins to 1875, when Sir George White formed the Bristol Tramways Company. The company operated its first city bus service, a horse-bus to Clifton, in 1887 and first introduced motor buses in 1906. Not satisfied with the vehicles that it had bought, in 1908 the company began to manufacture its own buses and soon began to sell them to other operators as well, Bristol buses being built for use both in Britain and abroad for 75 years. Bristol buses c...

For British Rail, the 1970s was a time of contrasts, when bad jokes about sandwiches and pork pies often belied real achievements, like increasing computerisation and the arrival of the high-speed Inter-City 125s.But while television advertisements told of an 'Age of the Train', Monday morning misery continued for many, the commuter experience steadily worsening as rolling stock aged and grew ever more uncomfortable. Even when BR launched new electrification scheme...