Railways have played a central role in New Zealand politics, economics, trade union history, tourism and popular culture. Yet rail history has been largely neglected by professional historians. While the field has long been popular with enthusiasts, they have tended to focus on locomotive and rolling stock minutiae, engineering feats and so on, and have paid little attention to social and cultural aspects. This stunning looking book includes a brief outline of the development of rail in NZ; and looks at who uses the trains and why; daily life on and off the rails; the train in popular culture and the collective memory. Neill Atkinson is a professional historian with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage in Wellington and the depth of his research is matched by the accessibility of his writing.

Author Biography

Neill Atkinson is an historian at the History Group, Ministry for Culture and Heritage. He has an MA with first-class honours in History from Auckland University, and now lives in Wellington. He has a keen interest in the history of transport and has also written on New Zealand politics and government, the labour movement, and the social history of working people. He has written four books: Crew Culture (2001), Rewarding Service (2002), Adventures in Democracy (2003) and Hell or High Water (2005). He also wrote a chapter on the interwar years for the book Frontier of Dreams: The Story of New Zealand (2005).