Without the railways for the Great Powers, the most terrible conflict the world has ever known would have taken a very different form - if it had happened at all.
In a remarkable historical railway journey through Britain and Europe, author Andrew Roden tells the story of the men and women who manned the tracks and the trains, and who relied on them to get them to battle and back home again. Drawing on diaries, memoirs and archive material he reveals the personal stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and pays tribute to their overlooked contribution. He looks at defining moments of railway history on both sides of the Great War.