CAPE BRETON'S RAIL LINES are perhaps best known for their substantial roles in the coal and steel industries. Shaped by factors such as physical geography, the availability of both capital and customers, and the distribution of population and industries, railways have played many important roles in the life of the island.

For more than a century-and-a-half after 1829 - when the railway age first came to Cape Breton - railways played a central role in supporting change as some areas of the island evolved from a rural and agricultural society into an urban and industrial one.

Expertly researched and richly illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps and documents, many of them rarely seen, railroad historian Herb MacDonald paints an interesting and colourful picture of Cape Breton's railways in the contexts of the economic, cultural and political events on the island and beyond.