British railway system

System of transport taking off in the 1830s.

Development in Britain

In 1804, Richard Trevithick developed a locomotive near the town of Merthyr Tydfil, a coal and iron district in South Wales. There, most of the rails were built between 1830 and 1850. In the beginning, the development was slow, but finally, the railway system became the ‘backbone of transport’ (Niedhart 27). The Victorian age was the "age of steam" (Buchanan 758). In 1837, James Watt, Richard Trevithick and others improved what Thomas Newcomen had developed as a means of pumping water out of deep mines a hundred years before: the steam engine. They made its use for other industrial productions possible, as well as coal and metal mining. British railways and transport in general owe their tremendous success to this invention.

When in 1825 the first connection between Stockton and Darlington was opened with the ‘Locomation’ (Niedhart 28) engineered by George Stephenson, nobody could believe that a quarter of a century later, the country would be covered by 6,500 miles of tracks. The former miner and amateur engineer then turned to the Liverpool-Manchester-Railway Company, where he developed the ‘Rocket’ (Niedhart 28) in 1829.

In 1830, a railway was built that connected Manchester and Liverpool. This was a competitor for the existing transportation market that previously ran only on streets and channels. During the following decades, transportation in England became consequently cheaper and faster, which made it easier to supply the big cities with goods from afar.

During the next two decades, 5,000 miles of rails were laid. It took approximately three hours to travel from London to Bristol by train. In comparison: if you travelled by coach, it took you twenty hours to reach Bristol.

British railways were connected with various notable engineering works. For example, many bridges such as the bridge over Firth of Forth in Scotland were constructed, a tunnel was built under the River Severn, and the first underground railways were launched. London Underground railways were planned and constructed in two ways. The first solution was called "cut and cover", i.e. the lines were hauled by steam. This method was applied with the Metropolitan, District and Circle lines. In contrast, the "tube" system ran completely underground and was powered by electric locomotion instead of steam. In 1890, the line going from King William Street to Stockwell (now part of the Northern line) was the first "tube" to offer regular service.

Railway companies

By 1844, Britain boasted 104 separate railway companies, their number doubling in only 6 years.

The major companies were based in and going from London:

The London and North Western, going from Euston Station to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and then toward Scotland;

The Great Western, leaving at Paddington Station and travelling over Chester to Cornwall;

The Midland, starting at St Pancras Station and going north to Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and Carlisle;

The Great Northern, going from King’s Cross Station to Doncaster and taking the east coast route toward Scotland;

The Great Eastern, infamous for its slow and late trains, left at Liverpool Street Station and led to East Anglia;

The London and South Western, departing at Waterloo Station and covering the south west coast from Portsmouth to Devon;

The London, Brighton, and South Coast, which left at Victoria and London Bridge Stations respectively;

The South Eastern and The London, Chatham, and Dover, which travelled almost the same way from Victoria, Charing Cross, Cannon Street, Holborn Viaduct, and London Bridge to the big cities in Kent.

Other noteworthy railway companies outside of the capital were the follwing:

The Lancashire and Yorkshire;

The North Eastern, which monopolised north and east of York;

and finally The Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire, which became The Great Central in 1899.

Important individuals

The following people and companies are widely known for their involvement in the development of Britain's railway system:

George Stephenson (1781-1848): The self-taught engineer supervised the construction of both the Stockton-Darlington line and the Liverpool-Manchester line. He also invented the “Rocket” in 1829 with the help of his son Robert and with it they created the prototype locomotive for the Liverpool-Manchester route.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859): He was involved with the Great Western company and the Devon-Cornwall line. Most importantly, he developed the atmospheric railway in the 1840s, which was revolutionary in theory, but failed and proved unreliable in its application for regular services.

George Hudson (1800-1871): Often referred to as “the railway king”, he was in control of one quarter of England’s railway mileage and was the first to propose a general integrated railway system.

T.W. Rammell: At the Crystal Palace, the engineer of the Pneumatic Dispatch Company demonstrated his method of a pneumatic railway for the transport of small goods, using a 600-yard track which had been built at the Palace to serve this purpose.

The Railway Clearing House (1842): This bookkeeping organisation was in charge of distributing the companies' revenues. The standardisation of signals, working procedures and the categorisation of goods are also due to them.

Travel

The railway and the steamship revolutionised travel. The grand tour of Europe, which was popular during the eighteenth century, was replaced by commercialised pleasure travel after the Napoleonic Wars. Favoured destinations were France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, America and Egypt. When Thomas Cook started providing the British with round-trip tickets, hotel coupons, group excursions and the like, foreign travel became commonplace for the middle classes and from the 1850s onward, travel was usually associated with railway travel. Former coaches stayed merely a means of getting to the nearest railway station. By then, Britain had built about 9,000 stations nationwide. Whether short- or long-distance journey, passengers could travel in first-, second- or third-class accomodation and paid about twopence a mile when choosing one of the moderate options. Of course, compared to the formerly customary coaches, the railways could score with comfort, speed and lower costs.

Facts and Figures

All in all, Britain invested 630 million pounds in railways, an even higher sum that this of the cotton industry. A full 3% of Britain's male workforce (275,000) were employed in some way or another in railway business. Counting 540.7 million passengers in 1880 and 992.4 million in 1900, the considerable influence and popularity of railways becomes clear.

Railway Act

In the beginning, railway journeys took a lot of time, they were expensive and even dangerous. The Railway Act, introduced in 1844 by Sir Robert Peel, turned the railway into a means of mass transport, because this act did not only bring in the first security measures but also fixed the maximum price that had to be paid for a mile travelled. Additionally, it regulated the usage of the tracks and the stops at the stations. The technology of railway safety could be summed up by "lock, block and brake", i.e. railway signals were interlocked, intervals between the trains maintained, and brakes on every wheel used and automatically activated in case of train disjunction.

Iron, coal and bricks

The building of the railway system caused a great demand for iron, coal and bricks that was unprecedented before. Especially the demand for iron caused the second phase of the (first) industrial revolution, when not cotton, but coal and iron dominated.

A further development was made by Henry Bessemer in 1856. He invented a method to convert iron ore into steal without heating it for a second time. This made the production of steal more budget-priced.

Expenses

During the 1830s, the railway construction cost 4 Million Pounds each year, during the 1840s the numbers increased to 15 Million Pounds. This brought up a new system of financing because mostly, the investors were not present at the construction sites. They were gathered by the banks from all over the country.

1836/1837 and 1847 were boom years. In 1847, 300,000 people were involved in the building and operation of the railway system.

Britain as modern example

Even though there were drawbacks and redundancies, these could not hide the enormous impulses that the construction of the railway system sent out. London turned into the workshop of the world again. A good example of this is the Great Exhibition, with its Crystal Palace taking place in 1851.

So, the railway allowed Britain to enter modern industry as the main sector of its economy.

Timeline

1825 Stockton and Darlington service is launched. Shippers have to pay tolls for the use of tracks and still use their own horse waggons for the transport of goods.

1830 Liverpool and Manchester service is launched. Trains are powered by steam only, transport both passengers and freight and are controlled by companies. This route will become a model for railway construction after 1830.

mid-1830s Increased railway construction.

mid-1840s “Railway Mania”: 8,652 miles of new routes are authorised in only 3 years.

1850 London links to Dover, Brighton, Bristol, Exeter, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, York and East Anglia. The west coast line to Scotland is being constructed and the line to Holyhead on the Welsh coast, intended for communication with Ireland, is finished. Moreover, the east coast route to Scotland is all but completed.

1850 6,621 miles of railway line.

1863 The London underground railway system first goes into service with the Metropolitan line.

1875 11,789 miles of line.

1900 15,195 miles of line. Every British person undertakes 30 railway journeys on average.

Sources

Buchanan, R.A. “Steam Engine.” Victorian Britain. An Encyclopedia. Ed. Sally Mitchell. London: St. James Press, 1988. 758.
Casson, Mark. The world’s first railway system. Enterprise, competition, and regulation on the railway network in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Chew, Kenneth/ Anthony Wilson. Victorian Science and Engineering portrayed in The Illustrated London News. London: Alan Sutton (in association with the Science Museum), 1993.
Freeman, Michael. Railways and the Victorian Imagination. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999.
Gelfert, Hans-Dieter: Kleine Kulturgeschichte Großbritanniens. München: C.H. Beck, 1999.
Niedhart, Gottfried: Geschichte Englands im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. München: C.H. Beck, 1987.
Ranlett, John. “Railways.” Victorian Britain. An Encyclopedia. Ed. Sally Mitchell. London: St. James Press, 1988. 663-665.
Reynolds, John. “Urban Transportation.” Victorian Britain. An Encyclopedia. Ed. Sally Mitchell. London: St. James Press, 1988. 812-813.
Schoenbauer Thurin, Susan. “Travel and Tourism.” Victorian Britain. An Encyclopedia. Ed. Sally Mitchell. London: St. James Press, 1988. 817-818.