Britain's Railways in the Great War, 1914-1918

The project will address six core inter-connected themes - political, administrative, economic, technical, cultural and social - both to explore the basic questions of how, and how well, the railways coped and to serve as a framework for future research. The geographical scope will be limited to the lines under state control via the Board of Trade and Railway Executive Committee - in other words, excluding Ireland's railways, which were managed separately. Case-studies might be used to analyse the performance and impacts on selected strategic routes (such as the lines to the Channel ports) and fixed assets such as major workshops. The assessments are expected to be mainly qualitative, with statistics used where appropriate to identify basic trends.