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Bryan Morgan (1) (1923–)

Autor de The Great Trains

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15 Obras 167 Miembros 4 Reseñas 1 Preferidas

Obras de Bryan Morgan

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Printing is almost unreadable on some pages
 
Denunciada
busterrll | Nov 30, 2018 |
A charmingly subjective and unsystematic overview of the minor railways of continental Europe as they were in 1955. As Robert says, it’s often frustrating to be told so little about systems that have now been lost for good. Around 90% of the lines he describes in France, Italy and the Low Countries have closed since the fifties, at a rough guess, but in Germany quite a lot of lines that closed to passengers in the sixties have been revived in the last decade, while in Switzerland not all that much has changed except the names of the operating companies.

The text is very engaging, provided you can live with Morgan’s slightly quaint style and his tendency to personify everything (especially railway lines, engines and timetables). The book gives truly tantalising glimpses of what it must have been like to travel on these neglected backwaters of public transport in their dying years.

More orthodox railway enthusiasts will be probably scandalised by Morgan’s casual attitude to such things as dates, dimensions and wheel-arrangements. Generally we find out more about the shape of the conductor’s moustache and the hardness of the upholstery than about where and when the rolling stock was built. The chief value of the book when it was written must have been in reminding British railway enthusiasts that there was a whole fascinating continent full of odd railway interest only a ferry-ride away. Not that it can have had very much effect. In 1955 few British people would have had the time or the money to travel around on the continent for fun. It was still the time of austerity and exchange controls. Morgan frankly admits to not travelling on many Swiss lines because the fares are too high: he quotes six pounds as the return fare from Interlaken to Jungfraujoch (roughly what it would cost me for my ten-minute commute nowadays, if I were to buy a ticket for cash).

Not a particularly useful book, but a very enjoyable period piece that deserves to be better-known.
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thorold | otra reseña | Mar 29, 2013 |
I am blown away by this book. Bryan Morgan was a novelist and a railway enthusiast. He travelled through Western Europe in the early 1950s looking at secondary railways, and put his experiences and personal likes and dislikes in this book. About half the book is about France, a country I wish I knew better; but his chapters on Switzerland and Austria (a country I know fairly well) are worthwhile, and his coverage of Germany is almost as good and extensive as France. Given that he was unable to access East Germany, Poland or the (then) Czechoslovakia, he gets a lot of mileage out of what he did see. I've spent some time cross-referring his German chapter with the excellent Schweers & Wall German rail atlas, and a surprising amount of what Morgan saw in the 1950s is still extant in some form or another, and this has inspired me to think about retracing some of his steps as soon as I am able.

If there is one thing about this book that irritates the modern reader, it is Morgan's habit of dismissing something that (in the 1950s) seemed fairly humdrum - he will say something like "On the way there, I passed the Schmalspurbahn Aktiengesellschaft Bad Homburg, but as they only had some nondescript engines and a few ancient coaches of indeterminate origin, I gave them a miss for something more interesting." How we would love to have access to what he considered boring and humdrum today! And he makes a mysterious comment about there being something dark and mysterious and evil in the Berchtesgaden Alps unconnected with the area's Nazi past, and which he says is only equalled by a feeling of mystery and ancient terror that overcame him on the Great Western between High Wycombe and Banbury. What could he mean?

Even in the 1950s, there were things which Morgan said he had missed and could no longer see; such a shame. But for what we have a record of, and for Morgan's erudite account of travels in really odd places, long before Europe was united, modernised or increasingly polyglot (with American English now a common language), we must be truly thankful.
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RobertDay | otra reseña | Jun 11, 2012 |
Good general guide to major achievements against natural obstacles
 
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johnreddaway | Aug 23, 2010 |

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Estadísticas

Obras
15
Miembros
167
Popularidad
#127,264
Valoración
4.2
Reseñas
4
ISBNs
17
Idiomas
1
Favorito
1

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