The city of Leeds in West Yorkshire was once one of the busiest railway centres in Britain and had the largest concentration of railway engine builders in the country. The surrounding area has many railway ‘firsts’ – the first railway viaduct was built at Flockton in 1757; the first public railway opened near Wakefield (Lake Lock Railroad, 1796); and Leeds was home to the first commercially successful steam locomotives at the Middleton Railway in 1812.

This book by railway historian Anthony Dawson will explore how the railways came to Leeds, from the earliest plateways and waggonways of the eighteenth century to Yorkshire’s first main line, linking Leeds with the port at Selby, engineered by George Stephenson.