A SURREY-based author and commuter has chronicled Britain’s remarkable railway revival.

Travelling today on an over-crowded commuter train between Haslemere and Waterloo it is hard to believe that 50 years ago the UK’s railway network was about to undergo a decade of dramatic rationalisation, travel by train was in steep decline and government transport policy was heavily-focused on new road building.

In his new book Railway Renaissance, town resident and long-standing commuter Gareth David (pictured) looks at how the railway network has been totally transformed in the past half century since publication of the infamous 1963 Beeching Report - ‘The re-shaping of British Railways.’

The author looks at the success of lines which escaped the Beeching axe in the 1960s and of routes which have since re-opened.

During the decade that followed Beeching’s report, some 4,100 miles of the UK rail network were lost, yet more than 500 miles of route has since been opened or re-opened, with passengers numbers on these revived lines almost invariably far exceeding the forecasts of transport experts made at the time re-opening was being considered.

Railway Renaissance is available from Haslemere Bookshop, and can also be ordered online from Amazon and Waterstones.

More background on the book and more of the author’s writing on British and international railways can be found on Gareth’s blog at www.railwayworld.net