Publisher Description

he Settle & Carlisle railway runs across the roof of England, reaching the highest point   on any main line railway in the country, and carries both passenger services and freight   traffic. But it has also been fortunate enough to survive two attempts to close it and in   fact should probably never have been built at all.   There could now be a 72-mile abandoned trackbed passing through such places as Blea Moor, over Dent Head and Arten Gill viaducts and the legendary Ais Gill summit, but   sufficient people felt strongly enough to campaign successfully to stop this happening.  
This is the story of the revival in the fortunes of the Settle & Carlisle. Many closed stations   have reopened and been restored to their former glory, freight traffic has returned and steam-hauled excursions over the line have gone from strength to strength

Author Biography

Brian Sharpe was born and bred in Peterborough situated on the East Coast Main Line north of King's Cross. He still remembers clearly the LNER Pacifics which worked the expresses on the main line through the city, although by the age of ten they had been replaced by the new diesels. The sight of A3 Pacific No. 4472 Flying Scotsman running light engine towards London in 1963 after its purchase by Alan Pegler was very much a sign of what the future would hold. Brian has since followed the engine on much of its travels not only in all parts of the British Isles but even on its trip to Australia. For many years a volunteer on the Nene Valley Railway, Brian's career included working as deputy editor of Heritage Railway magazine between 2002 and 2018.

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