Mattie Armstrong-Price’s study of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and India examines the impact of liberal imperial capitalism on railway work through the lens of ‘respectability’. Drawing on a range of actors that includes railway families, the vernacular press, trade unions and national leaders, Respectability on the Line asks how ideas of morality in railway contexts were refined amid the period’s wider political and cultural shifts. By situating lived experiences within these broader frames, Armstrong-Price demonstrates how top-down paternal ideals were shaped by gendered cultures of labour and different notions of respectability among railway workers and their dependants. Respectability on the Line therefore offers a fresh perspective on the field of imperial transport history, which has scarcely considered questions of labour, gender and sexuality within the same frame.

One way in which Armstrong-Price’s study breaks away from existing work on colonial railways is through the close examination of domestic railway spaces and their surrounding environments. Here, the relationship between gender and moralizing rhetoric is explored in detail, with early chapters on the late nineteenth century providing an intimate view of workers’ cohabitation, and case-studies of Swindon and Jamalpur offering new insights into the relationships that shaped their development as railway towns. Respectability on the Line also considers the influence of shared spaces such as mechanics institutions, illustrating how otherwise abstract ideas of railway paternalism were brought to life through the built environment. Later chapters turn to the early twentieth century, tracing changing paternalistic frameworks through the evolution of railway trade unions as they sought to emulate the paternal discourse of railway companies. These chapters depart to some extent from the more grounded studies of the book’s first half, focusing more on the role of trade unions and the vernacular press in shaping the politics of railway labour. Although this means that the physical intimacy of the earlier chapters features less prominently as the argument develops, Respectability on the Line’s later case-studies nonetheless highlight instances where moralizing and paternalistic rhetoric were translated into practice.

Armstrong-Price is able to identify how railway workers and their families interacted with such a breadth of paternalistic approaches by drawing on a rich variety of sources, sensitively chosen to illustrate the effects of several overlapping cultural milieus. For example, a scrapbook belonging to a former engineer is examined as a record of affective relationships as much as one of tangible building projects. By considering the lives of various railway actors in such layered detail, Respectability on the Line presents new ways to read against the racial biases of these curated visual records, while also demonstrating how such objects can function as both material and textual sources. Armstrong-Price’s reading of a multi-authored memoir compiled by the daughter of a stationmaster is another highlight, particularly when its reflections on paternal responsibility in the environs of the railway station are considered against canonical railway fiction. Indeed, it is at these moments of cross-examination and multi-layered reading that Armstrong-Price’s argument is at its most novel and convincing.

Respectability on the Line is also innovative in its comparative, cross-imperial approach. By holding Britain and India within the same frame, Armstrong-Price’s study illustrates how railway labour developed along different lines in the metropole and the colony. While building on Ian Kerr’s work on the transfer of railway technology and labour management between Britain and India, Respectability on the Line is distinguished by its side-by-side comparison of the two contexts, with their development at times considered in parallel. Moments of crossover and influence become less frequent as the analysis shifts to the early twentieth century, but Armstrong-Price continues to draw links between metropole and colony, even as the book’s later chapters are structured around the overarching argument that railway paternalism in Britain and India increasingly diverged.

Overall, Respectability on the Line convincingly reframes railway labour history through shifting ideas of paternalism, gender and morality. Scholars of labour, empire, gender and transport history will all find much to engage with here. Those seeking to move beyond the technological or economic aspects of colonial railway history will find particular value not only in Armstrong-Price’s consideration of railway workers as individuals, but also in the close attention paid to the environments in which they lived and the relationships they formed. Respectability on the Line builds on recent histories of India’s colonial railways, including the work of Ritika Prasad and Laura Bear, while adding depth to foundational works, such as Philip Bagwell’s authoritative history of the National Union of Railwaymen. Respectability on the Line’s novel focus on intimate railway lives and spaces opens productive avenues for future research, inviting scholars to consider how paternalist ideals developed in other colonial settings and evolved differently over time.