The Branch Lines of Oxfordshire by Colin Maggs (Amberley Publishing, £16.99) delights and infuriates at the same time. Its explorations of local curiosities such as the still-operational Bicester Military Railway and the long-vanished Wroxton Quarry Railway, serving ironstone mines, are excellent, as is the wide selection of photographs.

However, when it comes to the offshoots of the major railway routes, we are presented with chapter headings like Pen Farm Siding to Oxford and Oxford to Kelmscott & Langford, as though the Princes Risborough to Oxford line and the Oxford-Fairford branch simply began or ended at the pre-1974 county boundaries.

Great British Railway Journeys, by Charlie Bunce (HarperCollins, £20) accompanies the BBC2 TV series of the same name, presented by politician-turned-broadcaster Michael Portillo.

Mr Bunce, the programme’s producer, explains how the series reached our screens, courtesy of a £500 investment in a copy of Bradshaw’s Tourist Handbook, a rare companion volume to Victorian publisher George Bradshaw’s better-known railway timetable guides.

The modern book, lavishly illustrated with pictures old and new, traces the TV team’s travels, exploring the impact that the railways made as their iron rails spread the length and breadth of Britain.