Some fascinating maps showing how the railway network in Britain developed over the years

[WolvertonWorks]

https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/transport/onlineatlas/railways.pdf

Scroll down to see maps showing how the network developed. There's also some data about how the railways speeded up the time it took to travel between places.

 

[bspahh]

Interesting.

https://spoortijdlijn.nl/ is an interesting site which shows how the passenger rail network in the Netherlands built up. Its in Dutch, but in Chrome, Google Translate does a good job at translating it into English.