Last Updated on April 23, 2026
FIFTH EDITION – REVISED & ENLARGED
“The Great Eastern had real character”, writes former British Railways Board Chairman, Sir Henry Johnson in his foreword to this book,
“something more than stately expresses with blue locomotives whose sides were so glossy that one could use them as a looking-glass.
In the Great Eastern we had a railway which handled at once really fast express services on two main lines, the most intensive steam suburban service ever known in the world, an enormous traffic in market and dairy produce, and heavy traffic from the North and Midlands into East Anglia. It was a pioneer in many things which later came to be regarded as proper to all railway working.”
No one was better qualified to write the Great Eastern’s history than the late Cecil J. Allen — a “dyed-in-the-wool Great Eastern man”, as Sir Henry Johnson describes him. He was born in Great Eastern territory and served that railway for all but twenty years, until it became merged in the London & North Eastern Railway. First published in 1955, this definitive history of the railway went through five hardback editions. For the fifth edition, now reprinted in this paperback, Cecil J. Allen brought the story up to date to the rebirth of the GER as the Great Eastern Line in the British Railways Eastern Region reorganisation of 1957 and the transition from express haulage by BR Britannia’ Pacifics to English Electric diesels.
This book was previously for sale at Margot’s Books. The shop is now closed — this post is kept as an archive record only.
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