 Casson's recent research on the Victorian railway system suggests that rise and decline were ‘two sides of the coin’.When individual enterprise, supported by family and community ties, was advantageous, Britain succeeded, and when it became a handicap Britain failed.Casson creates a counterfactual model of the British railway system based on what might have happened had Parliament accepted advice from the civil service at the time of the Railway Mania in 1844-5.