The Railway Mania and Its Aftermath

The standard reference account of the British railway boom of 1845–1852, first published in 1936 as a sequel to Lewin’s Early British Railways and reprinted in 1968 as an economic classic. It is less a narrative of the mania than an exhaustive record of it: the physical expansion of the network across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, with lists of the lines promoted between 1845 and 1852 set against the lines actually built, alongside the slow emergence — or the absence — of any government policy toward promoters, fares, working expenses, train speeds, accidents and the telegraph.

Why it’s on the list: The primary-source spine of the railway mania: what was promised, what was financed, what actually got built, and what the state did about it. This is the boom every infrastructure-bubble analogy reaches for.

Where I saw it: @tylercosgrove’s October 15, 2025 list of 25 books he offered to send to Jared Kushner.

Connections

• The Railway King — the biography of the mania’s central promoter, also on this list.
• Bubble — the railway mania as the canonical infrastructure bubble.
• Infrastructure — what the capital was actually building, and the gap between promoted and completed mileage.
• Regulation — the book’s other subject: government’s improvised relationship with the promoters.
• Financial History — the section of the anti-library this sits in.