The Grand Junction had always had their eyes set on an eventual expansion into Scotland, with a line from Carlisle to Glasgow. For the time being they were not directly concerned with reaching Edinburgh as there were already plans being laid by another company, the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway, to link Scotland’s premier cities. The question that needed to be answered was where and how the line should be built, and in 1835 they naturally turned to their engineer Joseph Locke and commissioned him to survey likely routes. The most obvious, direct line was the one chosen earlier for the mail-coach route, heading more or less due north through Annandale via Gretna Green, Lockerbie and Beattock. This was an easy route for Locke to inspect as the line would have had to follow very closely that of the existing road, but this had to cross the range of hills known as the Southern Uplands. Even today this is a wild and sparsely populated region. He calculated that between Beattock and Elvanfoot there would be a ten-mile stretch at the alarming gradient of 1 in 75. He looked for an alternative route and found what he was looking for by swinging westward to join the valley of the River Nith through Cumnock to Kilmarnock, where it would turn back east again to reach Glasgow. This was a longer route, but avoided the punishing gradients: the summit level on the Nithdale line was actually nearly 600ft lower than that on the Annandale route. Locke was convinced that the latter would require fixed engines to cope with the extreme gradient, so he recommended the Nithdale route to the Company.
There is always the possibility, when there are two alternative routes under discussion, that whatever the engineer’s report might say, there will be factions arguing for each of them. This is exactly what happened here: if there was only going to be one west coast line, then inhabitants of towns along the way and those with special interests would argue for their particular route. As a result nothing was decided and the whole question was left in abeyance for a time, while Locke was kept busy on his many other projects. One party, however, came up with a new and convincing argument. J.J. Hope Johnson, the MP for Dumfriesshire, pointed out that if the Annandale route to Glasgow was followed, it would be possible to branch off this line and head to Edinburgh and beyond. He envisaged a line like a two-pronged fork, with the line initially heading more or less due north, then dividing east and west to serve Scotland’s two major cities. This was an enticing prospect as the east coast route was badly held up by the necessity to cross the Tyne at Newcastle. The difficulty was that the river had to be kept open for shipping, so Robert Stephenson had to design a high-level bridge. This remarkable structure still stands, and is unusual in having two decks, one for trains and one for road vehicles. Johnson’s plea to take the more direct line was helped by the fact that he had the enthusiastic support of the Annandale estate: having a major landowner on side would be a huge advantage when laying out the track.
Henry Booth, the secretary of the Grand Junction, was sufficiently impressed by the arguments to persuade the Board that they should commission a new survey from ‘an engineer of unquestionable eminence’. When the first survey had been carried out, Locke was still very much at the start of his career, but by then his reputation stood far higher, with two major routes to his credit: the Grand Junction and the line from London to Southampton that was almost completed. In 1837, he set off again, this time with the express objective of seeing if the line through Beattock was possible or not. His initial survey had not been encouraging and he tried now to find ways to ease the passage through the hills. His first thoughts were that it would require a continuous gradient of 1 in 93 for ten miles and even that could only be achieved by the construction of considerable earthworks. He later revised his plans to introduce a new route with just seven miles at the slightly easier gradient of 1 in 106. The route itself was the obvious, if somewhat meandering one, north of Beattock, where it clung closely to the line of the River Annan. There were a number of deep cuttings, but no more severe than on many other lines. It is a mark of how well he chose that modern engineers have never found a better route: the present main road and motorway almost exactly parallel Locke’s line.
He also had to consider the best route for the line to Edinburgh. His first thought was to leave the main line at Abington and head north east through Biggar, the route of the present A702, but changed his mind and opted instead to start further north at Carstairs. He put his proposals to the Board, but felt that he had to comment on the problems that might arise from the long, steep gradient on the Glasgow line. It has to be remembered that brakings on trains was still comparatively primitive, often relying on the hand brake on the tender and in the guard’s van. As J.B. Snell wryly remarked in his book Mechanical Engineering: Railways(1971): ‘In an emergency, the driver could always throw the engine into reverse, which was a splendid gesture of romantic desperation but had little effect in stopping a train moving at any speed.’ Locke made the position clear in his report:
In the descent, however, there is more danger, and this is a question of importance. Perfect machinery, and perfect watchfulness on the part of the attendants, leave no room for apprehension; and, could these be depended upon, the objections to such planes would be materially lessened …I am anxious that my opinion on this subject should be properly understood, and I will briefly repeat that, although there is no ground for rejection of this line, I would not, in the present state of our information on the general question, pronounce in its favour.
It could scarcely be called a ringing endorsement of the Annandale route, but nevertheless this was the route that was agreed and the route that would be submitted to Parliament. work, however, was not going to be started for some time. The government was about to become involved in the whole question of railways to Scotland. Gladstone referred to this episode in a speech to the House of Commons in May, 1888:
It is almost ludicrous, to look back upon the infant state of the whole question at that period, when compared with the enormous development it has now attained. The unusual course was adopted by the government of Sir Robert Peel of appointing a commission or a scientific agency to examine the whole question of what ought to be the line of railway into Scotland. The motive was, that as it was known, or firmly believed, to be absolutely impossible that there should ever be more than one railway into Scotland, it was considered, of the highest importance that the best scientific power of the country should be brought to bear on the choice of the line.
The commissioners had to consider not two but four routes: the annandale and Nithsdale to the west and two to the east, both starting in newcastle. To describe their deliberations as thorough would be an understatement: they took two years, from 1839 to 1841, to reach a conclusion, by which time the terms of their investigation were already out of date. It had finally been recognised that one line into Scotland was almost certainly inadequate, so when they produced their findings, they offered two conclusions: if only one route was to be chosen it should be through annandale; if two were needed then they should be annandale and the line through Berwick to Edinburgh. As soon as the results were in, the annandale Committee began negotiations with the Grand Junction, but the arguments had not yet been finally settled. The Nithsdale faction had not given up the fight and both sides canvassed strongly for support. The Annandales had the rather clever idea of naming their route, the Caledonian Railway, which encouraged the Scots to think of it as their line, rather than merely an extension of an English route. After all the bickering, the Annandale route finally went to Parliament in 1845 and became an Act on 31 July.
The line was not entirely straightforward; parts of it were to run over two old mineral lines, the Garnkirk & Glasgow and the Wishaw & Coltness, both of which had to be converted from 4ft 6in gauge. There was also the question of locomotives to be used on the line and where they were to be built. It was decided to open a locomotive works at Greenock and the man in charge would be Robert Sinclair. He was born in London in 1817, where his father was a merchant. He was educated at Charterhouse but decided in his teens that he wanted to be an engineer
, and served an apprenticeship at the Greenock shipbuilding firm of Scott, Sinclair. On qualification he served for a time at the Robert Stephenson works before being appointed as an assistant to Buddicom and Allan at Crewe. He went on to join Buddicom again at the new works on the Paris & Rouen Railway, before being brought back to Britain as General Manager of the Glasgow, Paisley & Greenock Railway in 1844, while still only 27-years-old. He proved himself to be a highly competent manager and was seen as an obvious choice for the new post in charge of locomotive construction for the Caledonian. This was excellent news for Locke, who must have played a considerable part in the young man’s advancement. It meant that he had a trusted team around him. It almost goes without saying that the construction contract went to Brassey and now the man who would be building the locomotives was very much in the trusted and tried Crewe tradition.
The line was an immense undertaking, being driven for much of the way through difficult terrain and sparsely populated areas. Shortly after the Act was passed, the first sod was ceremonially cut on 11 October 1845 and soon some 20,000 men were at work. Invariably they were regarded with suspicion and even hostility when they arrived in an area. The line passed through Ecclefechan, the birthplace of historian Thomas Carlyle, who was singularly unimpressed by the whole idea of a railway and even less impressed by those who had arrived to build it. He wrote to a friend in August 1846:
The country is greatly in a state of derangement. The harvest, with its black potato fields, no great things, and all roads and lanes overrun with drunken navvies; for our great Caledonian Railway passes in this direction, and all the world here, as everywhere, calculates on getting to Heaven by steam! I have not in my travels seen anything uglier than that disorganic mass of labourers, sunk three-fold deeper in brutality by the three-fold wages they are getting. The Yorkshire and Lancashire men I hear, are reckoned the worst, and not without glad surprise, I find the Irish are the best in point of behaviour. The postmaster tells me several of the poor Irish do regularly apply to him for money drafts and send their earnings home. The English, who eat twice as much beef, consume the residue in whisky, and do not trouble the postmaster.
By 1847 Locke was able to report very satisfactory progress. He had visited Beattock that August and had got a ride on a locomotive back to Carlisle:
The Line from Beattock to Carlisle is now laid, and prodigious efforts have been made by the contractor during the last fortnight when I saw it, in order to have it ready by the end of the month. A few works remain to be finished off but the Road, Ballasting, Bridges (the operational parts of the Line) are well and substantially executed and I have no fear of any examination by the Inspector. You may open the Line whenever you think proper with perfect safety.
The Contractors are now pushing the works so as to open throughout in November next, and I hope it will be in your power to supply them with means to enable them to do so. It is perfectly practicable, but it will be necessary to use Temporary stations at Glasgow and perhaps at Edinburgh.
The line to Beattock was duly opened on 10 September and passengers were able to book tickets from London to both Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was not yet, however, quite the speedy journey promised by railway travel. a train left Euston for Carlisle at 8.45 in the evening, arriving at Carlisle at 10 the next morning. The next stage of just under 40 miles to Beattock was something of a crawl, taking two full hours, after which the railway had to be abandoned for horse-drawn coach: travellers finally reached Edinburgh at 6pm and Glasgow at a quarter to eight. It was at least an improvement over the trip by road. The very fastest mail-coach service was recorded leaving London at 8pm on a Friday and arriving at Glasgow at 2pm the following Monday. The line was a success, but its opening was almost marred by what could have been a catastrophic accident. The following day it was discovered that someone had laid a tree across the line at the Esk viaduct. Fortunately it was discovered before the first train of the day arrived, and although the Company put up what was then a massive reward of £100 to find the culprit, no one was ever discovered. By February 1848, the line had been completed to Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The initial service on the run to Beattock was provided by the typical Crewe-type 2-2-2 with 6-foot driving wheels. In spite of the worries expressed by Locke, during these early days on the Caledonian there were no brakes on the engine, only on the tender and on some rolling stock and the guards van. When the whole line was complete, there were clear instructions on how trains should proceed. On approaching the summit, the speed had to be reduced to 10mph and all available hand brakes screwed down tight and the driver was supposed to use the tender brakes to stop at Beattock. As the brakes all too often lost the battle against gravity, alarmed drivers were sometimes known to put their engines into reverse in order not to overshoot the station. The usual result of that manoeuvre was a visit to the workshops to repair the engine.
Whatever problems the 2-2-2s may or may not have had, they continued to be built in large numbers. Between 1847 and 1855, seventy-three locomotives of this class were constructed for passenger traffic, while there were 61 built for freight work, with coupled driving wheels, seventeen as 2-4-0s and 34 as 0-4-2s. There were a small number of other engines built, sometimes as tank engines. In all during this period 152 locomotives were delivered, 97 of them built under Sinclair’s supervision at Greenock. The rolling stock was typical of the period, though the third-class carriages had a touch of extra comfort, as they actually had windows with glass in them, but the effect was rather ruined by the fact that as they couldn’t be opened, a gap had to be left to allow air in. And in the often crowded conditions of third class, those left standing must have had a very uncomfortable ride as there was only 5ft 6in headroom.
In his letter of August 1847, Locke had written of the need for a temporary station at Glasgow. The situation there was complicated by the existence of earlier lines. The Glasgow, Paisley & Greenock Railway, Locke’s first completed route in Scotland, had a terminus south of the Clyde at Bridge Street, where it was joined by an independently constructed railway, the Glasgow, Barrhead & Kilmarnock opened in 1848 and leased to the Caledonian the following year. This was never considered satisfactory as a main-line station, and Locke’s original suggestion for the construction of a temporary station was taken up, and built at Buchanan Street, just south of the Clyde. Constructed of wood, it was not exactly a handsome terminus for such an important route, but no one was too concerned, since it was never intended to be permanent. Locke and his associates would no doubt have been astonished to discover that it would remain virtually unchanged right through to the 1930s. Most of the stations on the line were designed by William Tite, who had enjoyed a long association with Locke. He had notable designs for many of the routes put out by the engineer, including the severely classical Nine Elms Station. For Carlisle, however, he opted for the increasingly popular Tudor style, no doubt thinking it more appropriate for a building close to the historic Carlisle Castle. It is a little ironic that Carlisle should have received a station of considerable grandeur when the far more important centre of Glasgow was served by such a mean edifice. Everything about the Carlisle station was grand, right down to the dining room which boasted an immense carved stone fireplace, complete with Latin motto and the date 1848 in Roman numerals.
The completion of the routes linking London to Glasgow and Edinburgh had always been the first objectives of the Caledonian but their ambitions did not end there. They also planned to advance even further north, right up to Aberdeen, but by now Scotland was becoming something of a maze of competing lines and not everything was going well with the Caledonian. In the letter quoted earlier, Locke had underlined the word ‘means’, perhaps hinting that the Company did not always provide the funds needed for work to proceed smoothly. Indeed, he was later to cite the Caledonian in Parliament as an example of a company that had been authorised to raise funds for construction and then used them for other purposes. The Company got into a bitter argument with the Edinburgh &
Glasgow Railway, a company that offered the most direct route between the two destinations, but who had to compete with passenger boats on the Forth & Clyde and Union canals. Instead of playing their trump card – speed – they decided to compete with cut-price tickets, a strategy that brought them to the brink of bankruptcy. The Caledonian decided that this would be the ideal time to join forces with a collapsing company, but negotiations failed. The Company decided to compete with the inter-city traffic by offering a route through Carstairs, which at least gave passengers ample time to enjoy the beauty of the countryside as they wound their way through the Pentland Hills, south of Edinburgh.
Shareholders became increasingly disenchanted with the management based in London, and there was even a proposal put forward that the London & North Western Railway should operate the whole Caledonian system. when this idea was roundly rejected, it was suggested that Brassey might consider setting up a company to take on the task. Brassey was approached and he at once consulted Locke, with the idea of cooperating in the enterprise. They began working out costs and what was likely to be involved in what would be for both of them a very different sort of venture.
In the midst of a barrage of criticism, the London Committee put out a circular setting out the case for their own actions and continued involvement, but in doing so also hinted very strongly that Brassey was taking advantage of the situation to feather his own nest. This might have been an acceptable argument applied to some railway contractors, but not Brassey, a man of strict probity. He responded angrily, writing to the Board and ending the letter: ‘I will only say in conclusion that I believe none of my dealings with the Caledonian, or any other Company, will justify the imputation of an attempt at extortion which is so unjustly cast upon me in the circular.’
It is unlikely that either Locke or Brassey were greatly perturbed at not taking the opportunity to help the Caledonian out of its difficulties. In the event, many of the problems were solved by increased investment in Scotland, which effectively moved control of the whole enterprise north of the border. In any case both the engineer and contractor were still heavily engaged in the next major task of extending the whole system. This was complicated by the fact that extension involved buying up a number of earlier mineral lines, not all of which were standard gauge as well as linking together a number of new, additional routes into Glasgow. Locke and Brassey worked together in the construction of the Clydesdale Junction that linked Motherwell to Glasgow, a very simple line to construct, requiring very little in the way of engineering difficulties to overcome, which was opened in 1849. There was a further extension from Garnqueen Junction, near Coatbridge, eastward to Castlecary, on the edge of present-day Cumbernauld.
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