The story of the men who built the railways, the unknown labourers of the 19th century who blasted, tunnelled, drank and randied their way across Christian England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside a new iron-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.