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There were 21,000 route miles of railway in Britain. 

Today the country's railways deliver more passenger miles than they did to their greatest extent despite a drastic reduction in the size of the network. Those cuts were the result of a campaign by a number of individuals who believed, erroneously as the passing of time has shown, that railways were a thing of the past and an impediment to progress. 

Although the process of the railway closures started early, it gained momentum in the 1950s and in the harrowing years following the publication of the Beeching report. However, as the original research by the authors of this book reveals, it could have been much worse and there were plans to reduce the size of the network even more drastically, to the point where only a few lines would have survived.