Steam Trains: The Magnificent History of Britain's Locomotives from Stephenson's Rocket to BR's Evening Star

Most people are under a misapprehension: the Rocket was not the first steam engine. Quite a few were built before it, but Stephenson's engine was the first successful steam locomotive.

Colin Maggs tells the history of the steam engine from pre-Rocket days to British Railways building Evening Star, the last main line locomotive, through to the preservation movement and even discusses new-build locomotives of extinct classes such as the Tornado.

This is also the story of the rolling stock, the 'train'. The early first-class coaches were based on a stagecoach design, while some second-class coaches had no glass in the windows and passengers wore fine-gauge goggles to avoid getting cinders in their eyes. Third-class coaches were merely open trucks – after all, why not travel in the open as passengers had done on the outside of a stagecoach?