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Festiniog Law – The shaping of a pioneering railway
By Stephen Murfitt. Published by the Railway & Canal Historical Society. ISBN 978-0-901461-74-2. Hardback, 152pp, £27.50.
Just when it might be thought that nothing further could possibly be written on the history of the Festiniog Railway, along comes a book that breaks new ground. It focuses not on the surveyors or engineers but on those who have had to tackle the often highly complex legal requirements that have arisen over the past 150 years with the world's oldest statutory railway company still in operation.
The author is himself a lawyer and honorary solicitor to the FR company, having first been introduced to the line when training as volunteer locomotive fireman. He is also an accomplished writer, ably covering a subject that could so easily have become very dry and boring. Instead it cites in an understandable style how the law has influenced such fundamental issues as construction, operation, carriage rates, accidents and civil disputes.
As noted in a foreword by the eminent historian Michael Lewis, there was a bitter dispute with the contractor before the line was opened, a lawsuit of 1868 over damage
