Description

This compelling volume offers a thorough historical analysis of the severe infrastructure and energy challenges faced by Ireland during the Second World War—known locally as the Emergency. Cut off from standard British coal imports, the nation’s railway networks faced total collapse. The book chronicles the incredible engineering ingenuity and state-sponsored logistics deployed to keep the country moving, focusing heavily on the massive operations to harvest domestic turf from the bogs to fuel adapted steam locomotives. Rich with archival photographs, engineering records, and railway workers’ testimonies, this text serves as an invaluable resource for industrial historians, transport enthusiasts, and scholars of 20th-century Irish geopolitics.