This is the quite remarkable story of how a group of British entrepreneurs put a railway over an Alpine pass nearly 7,000 feet high in the 1860s, to provide the first rail link between France and Italy. They used the central rail system which the ingenious British engineer John Barraclough Fell developed for the Mont Cenis Railway to climb 1 in 12 gradients, and when the railway was opened in 1868 it was the world's first mountain railway. It was an undertaking of the greatest importance in the history both of technical innovation and of international communications.

Yet it was no more than a temporary measure, to serve until a tunnel at low level could be completed. It ran for only three and a half years. Nevertheless it strongly influenced mountain railway development, and itself was so soundly built that there are still many traces to be found of it.

Details of MCR locomotives, rolling stock, train services and traffic are all included in this book. Despite the early period which it covers, the book is fully illustrated, many of the illustrations being in origin contemporary with the railway itself.

John Ransom is an established author, primarily of transport matters but also on Scotland, where he lives in the Scottish Highlands. He has been involved in the railway preservation movement both in the UK and Europe since its earliest days.

ISBN 0 906294 41 X. 92 pages, 50 illustrations, hardback. 

£16.00