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The Growth and Impact of Railways

Early railways

Early railways were a combination of horse power, fixed steam engines and locomotives. The adaptation of steam engines to railways was slow.

The importance of this first passenger line cannot be too strongly stressed. After the Liverpool-Manchester line was opened, passenger traffic increased dramatically: the Manchester to Liverpool line catered for passengers right from the start and other lines followed suit.

Freight was also catered for, and freight costs were much reduced.

Railway Building

An Act of Parliament was necessary to build a railway. Committees of MPs studied proposals and objections and there was much scope for bribery from those who both proposed and opposed the building of new lines.

Opponents of railways included:

• shareholders in turnpikes and canals
• those whose livelihoods depended on coach travel
• landed gentry who feared the destruction of their estates and livestock - or who said they did, so they could ask more money for the land that the railway companies wanted.
• farmers who might lose land

Landowners demanded high compensation and soon realised that they could hold railway companies to ransom. The result was that by 1850 it cost about £40,000 to build one mile of railway.

By 1860 each mile of railway cost:

Costs were loaded onto freight and passenger charges.

The First Railways

One of the reasons for the massive expansion in railways was because iron was cheaper

The first railway boom broke because of

• the external drain on gold to America
• the domestic financial crisis
• too many small railway companies

1842: Queen Victoria made her first railway journey from Slough to Paddington. This gave respectability to railways.

Railway Mania: 1844-1846

By 1844 cheap money was available: the lending rate had been cut to 3¼%. Also, the 1844 Bank Charter Act created stability and confidence in the pound. The result was a great deal of wild speculation on railway construction.

These lines were built entirely by private enterprise. They were often built through slum areas of towns, making the housing problem worse, because of the demolition of the houses.

Even the dead were not allowed to rest in peace if they got in the way of the railway, as Engels described in his Condition of the Working Classes, 1844

Between 1839-1853, six government committees discussed railway policy. Only Gladstone's 1844 Committee recommended even a gradual take-over of railways by the State. Because of a lack of co-ordination, communications were haphazard and wasteful of resources and money. Rotherham had three stations, eventually. There was much rivalry between the 104 railway companies.

George Hudson, the "Railway King" made his fortune from railways and fraudulent dealings in stocks and shares. He was responsible for the first amalgamations, however. He created the Midland Railway. By 1845 he controlled 33% of the entire railway system.

Railways expanded the economy while in construction

• wages paid to navvies, at about 30/- per week
• they created other employment
• they directly employed about 4% of working men in 1847
• between 1844 and 1851, railways absorbed 20% of the total output of the engineering industry
• they provided stimulus for investment
• railways were an important element in mid-Victorian economic growth, but not the only one. Railways have been seen as the greatest cause of national prosperity - more than free trade - and have been seen as the critical element in the history of British capitalism, but R.A. Church says, "railways increased the national income by 11% at most and therefore made a smaller contribution to the national economy than has been widely assumed".
• encouraged technological advances
• the export of railways helped the economy and created developments in the engineering industry
• new towns were created by the railways - Swindon, Crewe.

At the same time, railways adversely affected road and canal transport and investment.

Railways were responsible for:

• the creation of the 'labour aristocracy'
• the creation of the New Model Trade Unions
• the Great Exhibition of 1851
• the standardisation of time

George Bradshaw, the originator of railway timetables, was an engraver and printer at Manchester. The first Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables and Assistant to Railway Travelling was published on 19 October 1839. It contained route maps, town plans, coach fares in London, Liverpool and Birmingham, and a table to enable passengers to reckon their speed in miles per hour by timing the train over a quarter of a mile in seconds. The railroads for which full timetables were given were the London to Birmingham, the Grand Junction, Liverpool and Manchester, Great Western, and Newcastle and Carlisle. The London to Birmingham line was started in 1834, opened in instalments from 1837 and completed in September 1838. The London terminus was at Euston Grove.

Railway Legislation

Parliament welcomed railways as competition for roads and canals, but allowed piecemeal development because it was reluctant to interfere: laissez-faire. Eventually the government was forced to do something to regulate the railways.

1830 Railway Act required the Stockton-Darlington railway to keep a record of all its financial dealings. It applied to all other railways.

1838 Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act said that railways had to carry the Royal Mail.

N.B. Sir Charles Wheatstone had patented the telegraph in 1837. Telegraph lines ran alongside railways and were used as signalling systems by 1839.

1840 Railway Regulation Act. The Board of Trade was given the power to inspect all lines before they opened. It was also given powers to supervise fares, rates and traffic and to investigate accidents if it so wished.

1842 Railway Act. This was mainly a safety Act to ensure that railways ran safe services. New lines had to be inspected by the Board of Trade, which could demand traffic returns and inquire into accidents.

1842 Railway Clearing House was set up to co-ordinate through traffic over the lines of different companies.

1843 Budget allowed the export of machinery. Railway rolling-stock, locomotives and expertise were exported world-wide by such men as Brassey, Peto and Sarin.

1844 Railway Act (the "Parliamentary Trains" Act). This followed Gladstone's Committee of inquiry into railway policy.

• Government assumed the right to buy all railways constructed after 1841, after a period of 21 years, if it so wished. This clause was not implemented.
• Government assumed the absolute right to take control of all railways in times of national emergency.
• Government assumed the right to fix fares and freight charges.
• Railway companies had to provide a minimum service: one train each day each way, travelling at not less than 12 miles per hour and stopping at every passenger station, charging no more than 1d. per mile for third class passengers.

1845 Railway Act: parliament imposed a maximum charge for freight.

1846 Gauges Act prohibited the extension of the 7' gauge, except on the Great Western Railway and said that a third line of 4' 8½' had to be laid where 7' track met 4' 8½" line.

1849 Railway Act ratified the Railway Clearing House.

1854 Railway and Canal Traffic Act made it statutory to provide facilities for through traffic.

1854 Cardwell's Act made the railways public carriers and outlawed 'preferences' which levied different rates on different customers for particular goods.

These were skilled men, named from the canal navigators. Many came from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Ireland. Casual labour was used for unskilled work. Old navvies were rare: 40 was a good age. They lived in isolated communities near constructions in shanties.

In 1845, some ¼ million navvies were working on 3,000 miles of line and 1,100 lived in shanties working on Woodhead tunnel which ran under the Pennines to link Sheffield and Manchester. Navvies changed the face of the country, building viaducts, cuttings, tunnels and embankments by using sheer muscle power. Steam shovels were available by 1843 but men were cheaper.

Railway companies appointed an engineer to devise the route and appointed a contractor to build the railway. The 'butty system' developed whereby sub-contractors negotiated with gangs of navvies for a section of track. Brassey preferred this system. The truck system was the worst evil of railway building - isolation helped to encourage it, and the 1831 Truck Act did not apply to railways. Few people cared about navvies, anyway.

The Woodhead tunnel was built between 1839 and 1852. By 1842, a thousand men were employed in the construction. Initial estimates of the cost of £60,000 had risen to £200,000 by 1852. Provisions had to be taken 12 miles from Glossop, but prices were 50% higher than in Manchester: there was systematic 'robbery' by the contractors via truck. Men working on Woodhead were exhausted and ill because:

• they were permanently soaked, with little chance of getting dry
• they suffered from fumes and gas in the tunnels
• they had poor food and polluted water (1849 - cholera killed 28)
• there were an incredible number of deaths and injuries
• there was 24-hour shift work, with no time off
• the conditions were appalling

Men paid into a club for a doctor, themselves - the company gave no help or compensation.

Edwin Chadwick led the protest against the wretched lives of navvies, as publicised in the Woodhead scandal. He proposed:

• legislation to control railway work
• compensation for accident, injury or death, so more care would be taken of men's lives
• no work on Sundays: this was as much utilitarian as religious - one day's rest would reduce inefficiency and the resultant accidents

A Parliamentary Select Committee recommended these reforms, but was ignored.

Effects of railways

In 2009 I received an email from Adrian Vaughan concerning the Great Western Railway. Mr Vaughan is an ex-Western Region Railwayman and author of 28 books on the GWR and more general railway history and of two biographies of Isambard Kingdom Brunel; he is working on a third. His book, The Greatest Railway Blunder has just been published and his biography of S.M.Peto is due to be published in 2009.

Mr Vaughan said

I always protest at anyone using the term 'God's Wonderful Railway.' No-one ever used that expression until the 1970s when it was used in a TV sit.com. The railwaymen, of whom I knew dozens, many of them with service extending back to 1920, never ever used such a term for their railway. I did once hear an LMS man, to whom I had just vacated my footplate, after being relieved by him at Oxford, refer to the GWR as 'All you people think about is Grub Water and Relief'. Now that is real.

My driver did once point out to me what the letters G W R meant on the face of the boiler pressure 'Gone Wrong Right' because the G on the left-hand side of the dial stood under the figure or 60 lbs per sq.inch, while the R stood under the 225 psi number. That is real. If you want a first class meaning for GWR you cannot do better than 'Gone With Regret' and forget about attributing the pick and shovel and sweated creation of the railway to God.

The other point, where the GWR is concerned, that it was absolutely flat for 85 miles is absolutely untrue. The line original route rises, with two or at most three, very short level stretches, for 77¼ miles from Paddington to Swindon.

Paddington is about 100ft above sea and Swindon station is about 300ft. Gradients are minimal by the standards of other railway, the steepest - as far as Swindon - being 1 in 660 but 'absolutely flat' it absolutely is not. From the 77¼ mile post to the 85 mile post the line falls, there is a very short level and then it falls for 2 or 3 miles at 1 in 600 to Wootton Bassett, at the 85 m.p.

Finally - I.K Brunel was the Engineer of the Great Western Railway. Daniel Gooch was the Locomotive Superintendent - and IKB made sure EVERYONE, including Gooch, knew that!

I noticed the comment that you'd had from Adrian Vaughan back in 2009:- I always protest at anyone using the term 'God's Wonderful Railway.' No-one ever used that expression until the 1970s when it was used in a TV sit.com. I've no idea what the TV sit com. was, but I have to take issue with him because I was told about the term God's Wonderful Railway well before the 1970s by a much older family friend (who was also an ex GWR employee) and by way of proof, I actually wrote it in my 1961 Ian Allan ABC of WR locomotives at the time (I was 10 years old!). So, sorry Adrian, the term was certainly current before the 70s but I can give no more accurate history of it.

I'm surprised Mr. Vaughan didn't mention the taunt that was made in the Victorian era that GWR meant Great Way Round. This was because their route from London to Birmingham, until the early 1900s, was via Reading and Oxford and considerably longer in mileage than the rival LNWR route from Euston. [back]