Intended for both railway enthusiasts and anyone who enjoys exploring the British countryside and discovering more about Britain's heritage, this is a celebration of the beauty of 13 rural branch lines. They are all that remain of a once-vast network that covered the country until most of it was swept away by the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. The long-term future of these surviving rural lines is threatened by plans for the privatization of British Rail. Each of the 13 chapters covers a different branch line, the area in which it is located, the places it passes through, and the people who work and travel on it, and contains information boxes and a coloured route-map. The book includes both colour photographs and historical archive photographs of steams trains on the lines.