In the early 1990s, British Rail was broken up and privatised. One of the many side effects of this change was the rapid recruitment of quantity surveyors and project managers from outside industry into the engineering operation. The new staff, without the background knowledge of the British Rail staff, inevitably asked many questions. What was needed was a handy reference of railway engineering terms, and so the Encyclopaedia was born.

The first edition took ten years to collate, and the new fourth edition has over 15,700 commonly used abbreviations, acronyms, terms, major figures, suppliers, slang and items of jargon from all the disciplines, all collected together by an industry professional and fully cross referenced on 700+ pages.

The must-have desktop reference for Ministers, engineers, Sponsors, managers, graduates, technicians, new starters and enthusiasts, this book will help de-mystify any railway industry meeting or press release, most technical railway documents and standards, and some goverment policies.