Excerpt from Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland That my undertaking will not be an easy one I know. My memory is well stored, but unfortunately I have never kept a diary or commonplace book of any kind. On the contrary a love of order and neatness, carried to absurd excess, has always led me to destroy accumulated letters or documents, and much that would be useful now has in the past, from time to time, been destroyed and cast as rubbish to the void. Most autobiographies, I suppose, are undertaken to please the writers. That this is the case with me I frankly confess; but I hope that what I find much pleasure in writing my readers may, at least, find some satisfaction in reading. Vanity, perhaps, plays some part in this hope, for, He that is pleased with himself easily imagines that he shall please others. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.