Backtrack was first published in 1987 with the aim of presenting British railway history. At first quarterly and then bi-monthly, Backtrack went monthly in 1995 and has gone from strength to strength, justifying its founder’s identification of a niche in the railway publishing market for a high quality historical journal.
Backtrack’s remit is to cover all aspects of railway history throughout Britain and Ireland, from its earliest days in the era of horse-drawn tramroads up to around ten years back from the present. Locomotives (whether steam, diesel or electric) and rolling stock feature prominently, but Backtrack also looks at the history of particular lines as well as considering the social, political, financial, engineering and labour aspects of railway history. Topics such as stations, bridges, signalling, biographies, train services and staff recollections therefore regularly appear in the magazine.

A strong pictorial content is an important feature of Backtrack and in addition to archive black and white photographs each issue contains quality historical colour coverage of the railway scene, all reproduced to the highest standards.

This app offers a free trial period, activated when you take out any new subscription within the app.
The free trial included with all subscriptions includes the download of the latest issue and any issues released during your free trial period.

With a subscription, future issues will automatically be added to your account on their release date. Within the app you can also purchase older issues individually if you missed them when they were first on sale.

Users can register for or login to a Pocketmags account in-app. This will protect their issues in the case of a lost device and allow browsing of purchases on multiple platforms. Existing Pocketmags users can retrieve their purchases by logging into their account.

If you have any problems at all please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]