Friends of the Rail Forum

Colonel Michael Cobb, who has died aged 93, was a regular Army officer who in retirement produced the definitive historical atlas of the railways of Great Britain, becoming on the strength of it the oldest person ever to receive a PhD from Cambridge University, at the age of 91.

The Railways of Great Britain: A Historical Atlas was a labour of love. Cobb, a lifelong railway enthusiast had, since the 1920s, attempted to travel on every line in the country, before being foiled by the mass closures of Dr Beeching. In his atlas he set out to record and map every railway and station opened between 1807 and 1994, superimposing them on the one inch to one mile Ordnance Survey map...