In 1950, a spider-web of railways overlay the British landmass from western Cornwall to the eastern tip of Caithness. Tracks fanned out from London through cities to the coastal settlements of Wales and Scotland, while branch lines moved from mills, mines, resorts and ports to the county towns (see Map 2.1). Commuters rushed from suburbs into London, Glasgow and Manchester, metropolitan centres surrounded by a dense penumbra of roads and rails. Threadlines of transport connected a human geography of settlement. In the eyes of the mapmaker, cities and their interconnections had tamed a world of mountain and plain, turning natural spaces into corridors, making the remote accessible. A century earlier, the transport network had a more truncated shape. Around 1840, railways linked London only to the largest county towns and the industrial centres of the North; they had scarcely reached Cornwall, Wales or the Scottish Highlands (see Map 2.2). A decade later, many new lines connected East and West, North and South, but large sections of Britain remained unreachable by railway (see Map 2.3). Moreover, roads had not yet swollen to accommodate automobiles and the needs of suburban residents. Cities, other than London and a few regional centres, remained small in size. The urban had not yet dwarfed the rural.