The railway systems of Nigeria were not just railways replacing another mode of transport. They were pioneers in the opening up of the country to development and contact with the outside world. This prodigious three-volume narrative sets out to explore those systems from their very beginning in the 1890s through their tortuous development to the closing decades of the twentieth century. The first volume starts with exploration, geography and demographic studies and covers the basics of the railway system: locomotives, rolling stock, permanent way, bridging, and signalling applications. The maintenance of these assets is then described followed by fuel examination and water supply exploration. The second volume covers the economic and political history for each of the nine railway and tramway systems traversing the country. Emphasis is given to time and place in the prevailing environment. In the third volume operational facilities and commercial practice are each described under three heads: crime, health, training, storekeeping and railway road transport are given a historical perspective. The whole is summed up under organisation, accounts and statistics while staff and industrial relations have their place, followed by short biographies of departmental heads.