The Railway Navvies : A History of the Men Who Made the Railways

This is the definitive story of the men who built the railways - the unknown Victorian labourers who blasted, tunnelled, drank and brawled their way across nineteenth-century England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals. This is the definitive story of the men who built the railways{u2014}the unknown Victorian laborers who blasted, tunneled, drank, and brawled their way across 19th-century England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, the anarchic group of labourers who built the 19th century railway system in Great Britain, remodelled the countryside in a manner unparalleled since the construction of the cathedrals