Iain Ellis

I've worked in the UK Rail industry for 37 years now so you'd think I'd have come across all the terminology and acronyms by now, but no ... I find at least one new one every day!

This book all started back in British Rail days, with a staff suggestion I made to create a "super index", where you could look things up and it would tell you which handbook or standard to find it in. I mean, someone else got hundreds of pounds just for reporting a water leak, so I was hopeful. My idea was rejected but I still thought the idea was sound.

Years passed, Privatisation happened, and then I found myself having to explain railway jargon to "civilians" (I mean, who doesn't understand RRWD HRO MHT?). I wrote some of the common track renewal stuff down, on four pages. People asked more questions. I wrote those answers down too. It rapidly got too big to print on a 'copier so I published it. Its now over well 700 pages, with hundreds of illustrations, and still growing. New entries are sent in every day by colleagues, my peers, readers and you can too, when you find a new one.

There is no other book you can buy that focuses on the engineering side of the modern UK railway; that's not to say the past is history, that's there too, as is a fair amount of management speak. I have to refer to it now and again, so I recommend you do too!

WALNUT REDE