Early this year @port perran alerted this fiction series, which swmbo and I are enjoying

In the "Iron Horse" mention is made of  "A history of the English Railway" being read by Madeleine (our hero's companion)

I have found a downloadable (copythingie free) version of it here :
https://archive.org/details/ahistoryenglish00englgoog
and downloadable pdf here :
https://archive.org/download/ahistoryenglish00englgoog/ahistoryenglish00englgoog.pdf