Cabinet 10: India and Asia
Hamilton Ellis, The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Railways. London: Hamlyn, 1973.
‘Change is upon the railway scene which your author has loved as an old sailor forever loves sail.’ So writes Ellis in his foreword to this Pictorial Dictionary of Railways (above). And without doubt, the sentiment would have struck true with Webber, who managed to travel on rail through many countries in the world and double his pleasure by collecting books on rail. No doubt Webber would also have agreed with Ellis’s final dictum: ‘The rail changes: the principle of the rail continues.’ The picture and descriptions here convey something of the ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ way to travel in China in the 1960s.