La obra de un desconocidoGeorge L. Boag

Abstract

George L. Boag was general director of the small mining railroad LorcaBaza- Águilas, belonging to the British enterprise The Great Southern of Spain Railway Company. He was also correspondent in Spain of The Railway Gazette, one of the most prestigious and influential periodicals of the momento in this sector. The Railway Gazette published its two main works, Manual of Railway Statisics (1912) and Railways of Spain (1923), which received some recognition from British critics. In Spain, however, the two went completely unnoticed. This is difficult to explain because Railways of Spain is one of the few rigorous monographic studies on the origin, development and operation of the Spanish railways, and the only one carried out from the British point of view. This article presents a biographical sketch of this British manager and describes and analyzes the content of said work. In Spain, after a progressive increase in state interventionism, "the railway problem" would eventually end, as in the other European countries, in the nationalization of the conventional width network (Railway Ordinance Act, 1941). This was one of Boag's intuitions that fulfilled.