My history of the Bermuda Railway has been published
I am pleased to announce that my history of the railway, The Bermuda Railway, has been published by the National Museum of Bermuda Press. My aim was to produce a complete history of the line, but the reader will have to decide to what extent I have succeeded.
In Bermuda, The Bermuda Railway is available for $35 from bookshops such as The Bermuda Bookshop and The Bookmart. Outside the country, however, the National Museum does not distribute its publications to retailers.
Nonetheless, you can order my book, and all of the Museum’s extensive publications list, directly from the Museum through its website (nmb.bm/shop/). As well, the Bookmart (www.bookmart.bm) will ship books overseas. (I must warn you that in either case shipping costs are likely to be high.)
If you are in Bermuda, you can consult a copy at the Bermuda National Library (www.bnl.bm) on Queen Street.
The first version of this website appeared in 1998. I discovered the Bermuda Railway during annual visits to Bermuda starting in 1995, and especially thanks to the two existing books about the railway: Colin Pomeroy’s 1993 The Bermuda Railway, Gone — But Not Forgotten, and David Raine’s 1992 Rattle and Shake, The Story of the Bermuda Railway.
I was already a railway buff, and discovering that Bermuda — a dot in the North Atlantic — had a railway connecting its 22-mile length was fascinating. For the enthusiast, Pomeroy’s book was wonderful, and I think it still provides the best technical information about the railway.
Nonetheless, I felt that neither book really provided an adequate history and, somehow, I decided that I should. In 1998 this website was a first attempt to get something “down on paper”, as it were, and it led to all sorts of interesting contacts and discussions about the railway with people around the world.
Not everyone is a railway nut, of course, and many people who visit the site — probably most — are more interested in what is left of the railway today: the Bermuda Railway Trail. So I have also used the site to provide a guide to the Trail as well.
I began the long process of researching the railway’s history many years ago, a process made difficult by the fact that I live in Montreal, Canada, and the documentary materials I needed were almost exclusively found in Bermuda or in England. (I had to work for a living, too, which didn’t help!)
In 2011 a year’s leave let me spend four months in Bermuda and four months in England, visiting the Bermuda Archives and Bermuda National Library, as well as the British National Archives in London. My research “complete”, if that is ever possible, I began to write the book, and by the end of 2017 my final draft was essentially done.
Finally, it has now been published. I hope readers will find it a useful contribution to Bermuda history.
