ABSTRACT
When I first started writing professionally about the railways I was acutely aware of the contribution that Jack Simmons was making to the subject and the need to position my researches in areas not already covered at length by one of the masters of the art. Based in Leicester, my home town, Jack had already provided signposts for most of the modern research agenda. His book on The Railways of Britain in 1961 provided particular inspiration, encouraging me to choose a railway topic – the career of Captain Mark Huish – for my PhD.1 Later on, when I thought I had some claims to being a professional railway historian, Jack showed me how it should be done, notably with the first book in his series on The Railway in England and Wales 1830-1914 (1978), and with The Oxford Companion to British Railway History (1997), a magisterial and deservedly successful volume which he edited with Gordon Biddle. Above all, his personal encouragement to me to write, and continue writing, about nationalized railways from 1947, was much appreciated. In 1986 I published a commissioned history covering the first 25 years of nationalized railways, 1948-73.2
Hardly had it been published than some critics were suggesting that a follow-up volume was required. It took several years to convince the British Railways Board that a sequel was worth promoting, and I know that Jack played no small part in lobbying for such an eventuality. I therefore owe him a considerable debt. The aim of this piece is to explain the salient features of my work as British Railways Board’s commissioned historian, with particular reference to my experiences in preparing ‘Volume II’.3
