Building a Railway: Bourne to Saxby

Nineteenth-century photographs, juxtaposed with the same scenes taken in today's world, bring the building of a Lincolnshire railway vividly to life.

Joint publication of The Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology and The Lincoln Record Society.
Charles Stansfield Wilson [1844-1893] was the engineer who supervised the civil works on the railway line fromSaxby to Bourne. A keen amateur photographer, he took a series of photographs during the construction phase of the line from 1890 to 1893, 72 of which were mounted in an album: this is a priceless survival indeed, as photographsof the construction of a railway in Victorian England are extremely rare.

This volume presents a selection of these illustrations, accompanied by full and extensive captions which tell the story of the construction, and detail the work of the men and machines involved. There are pictures of the various stages of construction, of temporary and permanent engineering structures, and of the locomotives themselves. The volume also includes other contemporary photographs of the Wilson family; colour photographs of what can be seen today; explanatory text, describing their significance in railway and social history; a biography of Wilson; and a history of the line and its construction.