The Bryan Morgan book has a real air of dissapointment and decay in it right through - but then is was a miserable era.
My reaction to Morgan's The End of the Line was very positive -- have always found most of it addictive reading -- just that, in my perception, at that time in the majority of western Europe, the "least and lightest" rural lines were very much on their way out, and that's simply how it was. I say "most of it"; because his chapters on countries where light railways were in decline, are to me lovely and highly poignant -- whereas the couple about lands in which such lines were doing fairly well, I found rather dull. Contributed to, I suspect, by the circumstances of the countries concerned -- Switzerland and Italy -- having never appealed to me in most contexts.
Comparing the GWR and the Southern , both much admired by self.
The SR got rid of the L+B whilst the GWR invested in the Vale of Rheidol in the 30's and worked a rich sea of not lead , but tourism - helped of course by the great popularity of the Cambrian Coast region and access to South Wales the Midlands in less than 3 hours by road or rail. (Aberystwyth - "the Biarritz of Wales !) - the line had no real use in WW2 but was carefully mothballed and went from strength to strength in the "afflunet" 1950's.
The key being accessibility to a large and varied holiday trade , and dare I say it an enterprising management at Divisional and Local level.
It would appear that fans of the British narrow gauge are fond of musing on how it might have been if other members of the Big Four had chosen to give the Rheidol treatment to their n/g sections: Southern with the L & B, and LMS with the Leek & Manifold had it worked out thus: theres a good chance that as with the Rheidol the line(s) concerned would still be with us today (both in scenic areas good tourist-bait).
Going off at a tangent here with thoughts of a favourite of mine, the Southwold Railway. Of the other English n/g lines the Manifold was essentially, from the beginning, part of the North Staffordshire Railways holdings, so its going to the LMS in 1923 was a given. Cause for a bit of puzzlement, though: as to why at Grouping, the L & B was taken into the Southern; but the Southwold was not incorporated in the LNER, but remained independent with the fate of which we are aware. Have always wondered: if the Southwold had gone into the LNER at Grouping -- would that railway have junked it some time before 1939; or perhaps, "done a Rheidol with it? It had a (decorous) seaside-resort terminus; and ran through quiet and low-lying, but delightful, countryside quintessence of East Anglia, which region has long been favoured by many people for holidays.