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The railway track system is the platform by which loads from moving trains are transferred to the underlying soil or supporting infrastructure such as bridges. The most common type of railway track system is ballasted track, which has been in use for over a century. Ballasted track has proved versatile. It can be constructed using locally available materials and with modifications to the rails and sleepers, crossings transferring trains from one route to another can be created. The structure of a ballasted track system consists of two main parts. The upper portion, termed the superstructure, comprises the rails, fastenings and sleepers. It is formed of components whose shape, stiffness and strength are designed and closely controlled. Below the superstructure is the substructure, which comprises the ballast and sub-ballast. Although the materials used in the substructure may have been specified, their engineering properties and geometric placement are less well controlled. In this chapter, we will explore how a typical ballasted track system transfers load to the ground and the ways in which the track form deteriorates, requiring maintenance and eventually renewal.

This chapter begins by outlining the ‘theory’ behind the achievement of a financially sustainable railway, before then examining the realities faced when implementing that theory. This is from the context of the main railway financial outgoings and sources of revenue in both the short- and long-term time horizons. What it suggests is that attainment of such a position has proved to be extremely difficult in practice, with the main reasons for such difficulties outlined and discussed. What is clear, however, is that any such initiatives revolve around the establishment of rigid and robust regulatory and organisational structures that create and maintain a clear separation between state and railway, strongly supported by the ideas of rail financing and rail funding.

Commenting on the Mexican Revolution in 1938, Trotsky argued that the country might achieve “national independence,” understood as a break with dependency relations. Whether this might occur depended – Trotsky continued – on “international factors.” Though not engaging with Mexico, Antonio Gramsci made a similar theoretical point. It is hence from this perspective that this chapter analyses the Mexican Revolution, asking whether it led to a break in dependency relations and the attainment of “national independence” or what I refer to as “relative geopolitical autonomy.” Presenting a framework of analysis largely based on the work of Gramsci that highlights its continuity with the thought of Marx, the chapter will answer negatively to this question. The chapter starts from the idea that Porfirio Díaz’s regime was unable to adapt the economic structure (still pre-capitalist) to the complex superstructures (capitalist), that is, to realize an historic bloc. It would be this job that the emergent Mexican bourgeoisie sought to finish. However, the situation is complicated by the powerful emergence of social movements from below, constituted largely by landless peasants, and to a lesser extent, the industrial proletariat. I will therefore argue that the revolution has been both “passive” and “bounded.” The term passive revolution will be applied to the last phase of the revolution as the emerging bourgeoisie successfully coopted the demands of the popular masses thereby “passivizing” them. But crucially, the revolution was also “bounded” because international factors, and especially US influence, played a conditioning role throughout the revolutionary process. At the same time, it would be the very “passive” nature of the revolution that would contribute to the reproduction of relations of dependency. Hence the chapter concludes that the period Trotsky commented upon (the Cárdenas period) is the highest level of “independence” Mexico achieved, only to decrease again over the years.

While working on the final draft of Das Kapital Volume I, Marx discovered that the assumption that he had previously held: as it circulated capital extended its sphere of operation and at the same time absorbed earlier forms of economic organization was not supported by empirical evidence. From 1869 he began to study how in fact capital began to circulate in Russia, a country which had begun to create a capitalist economy after the liberation of the peasantry in 1861. Marx was aided in this project by Nikolai Danielson, who sent him materials on the Russian economy and who himself made a study of contemporary trends in Russian economic development. Marx contributed to the article Danielson published in 1880 on this subject. One of the works Marx acquired was the book by Vorontsov, who concurred with Danielson that only some features of capitalism were present in the Russian economy and that peasants were dispossessed without being re-deployed in capitalist enterprises. Marx died without incorporating his Russian material into the second volume of Das Kapital. Engels failed to see any problem with the circulation of capital and published the manuscripts as he found them, dispersing Marx’s Russian materials. Unlike Danielson, Engels was convinced that Russia’s economic development did not differ in any way from that of Western Europe, a conviction shared by Plekhanov and Lenin, who classed Danielson and Vorontsov as “narodniki.” Lenin’s book The Development of Capitalism in Russia is a polemic against Danielson and Vorontsov, but does not directly address the points they made.

Although the concept of destination is often described as an economic term that describes places of interest for tourists and visitors, currently, there is still little awareness in the extant literature about regional, city, village, resort, or even standalone tourist destinations. This chapter aims to clarify the meaning of destinations. It distinguishes the differences between common locations and tourist destinations. It uses case studies to describe places, placemaking, and the experiencescapes of various destinations. This contribution implies that tourist attractions differentiate themselves from other places, as they offer accessible attractions with amenities.

Butt can be placed within the framework of what George Boyce (1995, pp. 18–19) terms colonial patriotism. Butt's analyses of Ireland's economy and development during the next years brought together the several strands that marked out an Ireland of citizens, an Ireland of sort which has emerged at the turn of the present millennium. What were the influences on Butt and what is his place in the development of political economy? His position is best characterised as eclectic and distinct from the other early holders of the Whately Chair. Drawing upon but not endorsing classical political economy, Adam Smith, Longfield, Jean-Baptiste Say and others, Butt defies pigeonholing. His economic analysis emerged slowly, and initially, there was little hint that he would expand on Longfield's position which essentially was a theory of profit (McGovern, 2000, p. 5). However, Butt moved beyond Longfield's analysis and whereas the latter remained in the classical tradition on free trade, he did not. He expanded Longfield's approach that crucial to the determination of the price of goods was the importance of applying a unit of whatever resource to its marginal use, concluding that the factors of production were remunerated in relation to the utility they created in their least efficient, marginal employment (Boylan & Foley, 2003, Vol. 2, p. 10). His importance, it has been observed, was in drawing attention to the potential resource mobilisation and distribution aspects of protection and in assessing the benefits and weaknesses of protection in relation to the complexity of specific circumstances (Boylan and Foley, 2003, Vol. 3, p. 5). Butt's Whatley lectures have received most attention although it will be suggested that certain of his other writings were as important or even more significant as indicative of his ideas on political economy. In his first Whatley lecture (Butt, 1837a), appropriating the title ‘Introduction’, Butt outlined somewhat verbosely the scope of what he intended to address and adopted the high ground about the purpose of political economy. He declared it was ‘to teach certain truths connected with the social condition of man – it attempts to explain the nature of the causes by which is brought about that singular machinery of society by which Providence has set man to supply each other's wants, and thus receive and confer a mutual benefit’ (1837a, p. 23). Butt addressed the question of production and the creation of ‘utility’. Employing the illustration of cotton stockings, Butt demonstrated the complex interchange required to produce even the most mundane of articles (1837a, pp. 25–26). ‘When you purchase your pair of cotton stockings’, he noted, ‘you are positively commanding for your own personal comfort and accommodation, not only the services of thousands of your cotemporary fellow creatures, but the accumulated results of the labours of generations that have long since passed away’ (1837a, p. 28). Thus, he maintained, political economy ‘teaches the laws which regulate the production, distribution and consumption of wealth’ (1837a, p. 30).