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Chester to Holyhead Railway vol 2 - Peter Baughan

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RoryH73

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i have a copy of Chester to Holyhead vol1 by Peter Baughan and was looking for a copy of vol 2 but it doesnt seem to exist, can anyone advise it it was ever written / published?
Volume 1 was published by David & Charles i believe.
any advise or assistance would be greatly received
 
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Mcr Warrior

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Was "A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain Volume II: North and Mid Wales" which came out some eight years later in 1980 (also published by David & Charles) perhaps the second volume by Peter Baughan?
 

oldman

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It doesn't appear in the catalogues of the British and Irish legal deposit libraries, including the National Library of Wales. They all have volume 1.
 

Mcr Warrior

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Was "A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain Volume II: North and Mid Wales" which came out some eight years later in 1980 (also published by David & Charles) perhaps the second volume by Peter Baughan?
Anyone happen to have this particular title and able to opine as to whether it is possibly the follow-up title to Peter Baughan's 1972 "Chester to Holyhead" offering?
 

oldman

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I don't have a copy but I have seen others in the series (this is vol. 11, not II). Given the title I would expect it to cover the Cambrian, GWR and probably the slate railways, as well as the LNWR lines in the north. It might include material that would have appeared in a vol. 2, but it would be stretching it to call it a sequel.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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I have copies of both Baughan books.
The C&H volume (1972) covers "the mainline up to 1880" and barely mentions branches, not even Llandudno.
It's mostly about the construction phase, the eventual takeover by the LNWR and development of the ferry service to Dublin.

The North & Mid Wales volume is a quick survey of how the region's railways began, with some overlap with the C&H volume.
There are chapters on groups of lines, and all the branches seem to be covered, including prospective lines never built.
Certainly it covers basic information on the Clwyd and Caernarvonshire lines, routes to Blaenau Ffestiniog and on Anglesey.
The southern border of the book is the Hereford-Brecon line of the Midland and on to Neath, and there's plenty on the Cambrian and Central Wales lines.
One of the features is the prominence of railway contractor Thomas Savin, who built many of these lines in the 1860s for various railway companies.
The original book is dated 1980, with a revision dated 1991.

I think both books are rather short on railway operations (services, timetables etc), concentrating rather on construction, mergers and (in the case of the C&H book) rolling stock.
There's almost nothing on operation in the 20th century, until the run-down under BR started.
 

oldman

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I notice vol. 2 is marked as 'Document not in place', unlike vol. 1.

My guess is that they created a record for vol. 2 with the number ZLIB 4/435 so that when it was published it would file next to vol. 1 with ZLIB 4/434. This may have been based on no more than the publisher saying that there would be a second volume one day.

The National Archives might be able to confirm if they created dummy records for non-existent items in this way.

Edit: Oddly when I googled ' "document not in place" national archives ', this book was the only thing that came up.
 
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RoryH73

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I’m mainly interested in the Caernarfon to llanberis branch, walked part of the former trackbed last weekend and it also runs through the campsite we used to stay at near pontrug
im sure I read something about surveys being done about reinstating rail from Caernarfon to llanberis using former track bed and part of the old Padarn railway.
anyone else seen or heard about that?
 

nickstanbra

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i have a copy of Chester to Holyhead vol1 by Peter Baughan and was looking for a copy of vol 2 but it doesnt seem to exist, can anyone advise it it was ever written / published?
Volume 1 was published by David & Charles i believe.
any advise or assistance would be greatly received
Volume 2 was never published.
This was a classic example of David & Charles not publishing second volumes without major cuts to the text. Their Hull & Barnsley second volume was similarly the case, both H&B authors forced to publish privately as they could not except cutting down years of research,
I believe the proposed second volume of the North British was a similar case. Peter Baughan did produce a form of second volume as a soft back, but cannot recall who published it, possibly Martin Bairstow. The regional historys mentioned were entirely different publications.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==

Volume 2 was never published.
This was a classic example of David & Charles not publishing second volumes without major cuts to the text. Their Hull & Barnsley second volume was similarly the case, both H&B authors forced to publish privately as they could not except cutting down years of research,
I believe the proposed second volume of the North British was a similar case. Peter Baughan did produce a form of second volume as a soft back, but cannot recall who published it, possibly Martin Bairstow. The regional historys mentioned were entirely different publications.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==

i have a copy of Chester to Holyhead vol1 by Peter Baughan and was looking for a copy of vol 2 but it doesnt seem to exist, can anyone advise it it was ever written / published?
Volume 1 was published by David & Charles i believe.
any advise or assistance would be greatly received
Further to my post concerning the Chester & Holyhead book. This is the follow up book which Peter Baughan produced after David & Charles declined publishing volume 2.
 

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krus_aragon

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I’m mainly interested in the Caernarfon to llanberis branch, walked part of the former trackbed last weekend and it also runs through the campsite we used to stay at near pontrug
The best reading material I can suggest for that branch is
Caernarvon And The Lines From Afonwen And Llanberis (Scenes From The Past: 28) by W.G.Rear, published by Foxline. I don't own a copy, but have flicked through it in the past. Bill Rear's equivalent title for the Anglesey branches is probably the best published title on those lines.

Regional History Volume 11 is very useful for a general background of North Wales' railway network, as described above, but won't have much more than a few pages on the Llanberis branch.
 
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