The GWR opened in 1838 and Brunel gave elaborate reasons for choosing such a broad gauge. The basic reason appears to have been speed, which led to great technical arguments amongst the experts for many years over whether a train really could go faster on a wide track than on a narrow track. Brunel had the body of his carriages between the wheels whereas the Stephensons had placed their carriages over the wheels so there wasn’t a great advantage in volume of passengers or goods carried by the Brunel trains, which to the layman might seem the obvious advantage of increased width. Brunel’s point was strength, speed and safety of his much bigger locomotives. They did indeed go faster, though it might have been due to better engineering, and they forced the Stephensons to improve their performances, even though George had by now decided that forty miles an hour was fast enough for any locomotive.
The first locomotive on the GWR was the North Star, built by Robert Stephenson and Company at Newcastle, and their first and perhaps most famous engineer was Daniel (later Sir Daniel) Gooch, appointed at the age of twenty-nine. Gooch had previously worked in Robert Stephenson’s drawing office, but Brunel, whatever he thought of some of the Stephenson principles, couldn’t be said to be blindly prejudiced.
Brunel, however, appears to have been rather blind to the problems which obviously lay ahead, problems which George and Robert had pointed out from the beginning. In 1848, just when George was beginning his genuine retirement at Tapton House, the expanding success of the GWR brought it to Gloucester where it met head on the standard gauge of Stephenson. Along with Railway Mania, the Battle of the Gauges became one of the topics of the day. Thackeray, once again, had a series of short stories about the ridiculousness of it all, about everyone, people, bags, baggages and animals having to decamp from one train and get into another one.
A royal commission, that institution beloved by every British government who doesn’t know what to do, was set up in August 1845, and meticulously went through every facet of the problems, putting 6,500 questions to thousands of interested parties. Almost every expert was on the Stephenson side – even Joseph Locke gave evidence in their favour. Brunel and Gooch were almost on their own. The commission reported in 1846 in favour of the 4ft 8½ins gauge. Henceforth they said it had to be used in all public railways in Great Britain.
It was a personal triumph for George, though many commentators, then and now, had brave words to say for Brunel, fighting on his own against the weight of the Stephenson camp and their near-monopoly of the locomotive industry. But in many ways Brunel had been perverse. He genuinely considered his gauge was better, but his dimensions were equally as arbitrary as George’s. There is no innate perfect width for a railway train. One width having been securely established, it was surely inconvenient and uneconomic for the country to consider changing it.
If Brunel was perverse in the gauge battle – and it’s a word his supporters would never use – there was something paradoxical in his other major battle with George. At the same time as fighting for his broad gauge railway he was advocating a completely new system of rail transport which, if successful, would do away with locomotives of any sort. This was the atmospheric railway.
It must have been highly disturbing for George when he first heard about atmospheric railways. Having usurped the canals and the turnpikes, cutting them off in their prime, it did look for a time as if it could happen in turn to him and his railways before they’d ever reached their prime. The atmospheric system was not Brunel’s invention but when he took it up, in the 1840s, his name was enough to make it not just a fashionable cause but a serious and genuine threat.
To put it as simply as possible, the atmospheric system was a method of blowing instead of pulling a train along the tracks. A large pipe was laid between the tracks and air was pumped along it from pumping stations placed at intervals beside the line. A piston connected the head of the train to a slot in the pipe. (Scientifically the principle at stake was more a sucking action than a blowing action, though that was how it appeared: the pumping machines exhausted the air in front of the train, the train therefore being forced into the vacuum which had been created, hence the name atmospheric.) Amazingly, the system worked and was seen to work. It was tried out on a line near Dublin and plans were made to use it at Croydon and elsewhere.
Robert, as was his wont, went into the matter very carefully and inspected every aspect in detail. George, as was his way, dismissed it out of hand. He saw it as just another permutation of the stationary engine principle which he’d beaten once and for all at Rainhill. Instead of having a rope or chain doing the pulling, so he said, it was simply a rope of air and it wouldn’t work.
As if the idea wasn’t enough of an insult to George, Brunel had the effrontery to propose it on George’s homeland, on the railway to be built between Newcastle and Berwick. It was a railway George particularly wanted to build as it would achieve one of his life’s ambitions, a direct line from Edinburgh to London. It became George’s last great railway battle.
George first surveyed a Newcastle–Berwick line in 1836 but, for various reasons, nothing had happened. It was revived again in 1843 by none other than George Hudson who commissioned George, already identified with the project, as engineer and he was very happy to accept. (It can be seen how George, whatever he was beginning to think privately of Hudson, was therefore forced to continue in public as his friend.) On the other side, advocating a different route and the different, atmospheric, principle, was Brunel and his chief supporter Lord Howick, son of Earl Grey, an enormously wealthy local landowner and MP.
The grand, climactic confrontation of George and Brunel took place in Newcastle with many people hoping for a punch up. There were indeed reports that George had grabbed Brunel’s arm in a decidedly rough-house style, but Smiles maintains all was friendly. ‘When Stephenson first met Brunel in Newcastle he good humouredly shook him by the collar and asked “What business had he North of the Tyne?” George gave him to understand that they were to have a fair stand-up fight for the ground and shaking hands before the battle like Englishmen, they parted in good humour.’
Both schemes went before parliament and George entered into the fight with enormous gusto and not a little vindictiveness – fighting on a principle, fighting the upstart Brunel and fighting a landed lord, the sort he could never stand. He’d had a running battle with Lord Howick from the beginning – or Hawick, as George called him, confusing him with the town. During his early survey work Lord Howick had tried desperately to keep George’s confounded railway well away from his estates. George wrote to Michael Longridge telling him exactly how he felt.
Tapton House, Nov 30. 1843
I am rather astonished at Lord Hawick’s observations about the line passing Hawick. It does not go through any of their pleasure grounds.… My senses are puzzled in judging how these people can set about making such paltry objections! It is compensation they want, nothing else.… This series of objections is a genteel way of picking the subscribers’ pockets. It may however be better to keep these observations quiet until we come before Parliament. I have never taken any part in politics but I think I now will and become a Tory; and I shall buy a piece of land in Northumberland to oppose Lord Hawick. I do not like his double dealing work. Is the great thoroughfare through England and Scotland to be turned aside injuriously, for the frivolous remarks made by Lord Hawick? no! the times are changed. I wonder their pulse does not cease to beat when such imaginations enter their brains! these failings are not becoming human beings. I can have no patience with them. However, I suppose we must bend and keep our tempers until we get what we want.
When the battle did reach parliament in 1845, George had a chance meeting with Lord Howick at the Stephensons’ London office. Smiles has a very entertaining description of what happened between them, as retailed to him by Robert Stephenson.
On the day in question, George was standing [in the outer office] with his back to the fire when Lord Howick called to see Robert. Oh! thought George,
he has come to try and talk Robert over about that atmospheric gimcrack; but I’ll tackle his Lordship. ‘Come in, my Lord,’ said he, ‘Robert’s busy; but I’ll answer your purpose quite as well; sit down here, if you please.’ George began, ‘Now, my Lord, I know very well what you have come about: it’s that atmospheric line in the north; I will show you in less than five minutes that it can never answer.’ ‘If Mr. Robert Stephenson is not at liberty, I can call again,’ said his Lordship. ‘He’s certainly occupied on important business just at present,’ was George’s answer; ‘but I can tell you far better than he can what nonsense the atmospheric system is: Robert’s good-natured, you see, and if your Lordship were to get alongside of him you might talk him over; so you have been quite lucky in meeting with me. Now, just look at the question of expense,’ – and then he proceeded in his strong Doric to explain his views in detail, until Lord Howick could stand it no longer, and he rose and walked towards the door. George followed him down stairs, to finish his demolition of the atmospheric system, and his parting words were, ‘You may take my word for it, my Lord, it will never answer.’ George afterwards told his son with glee of ‘the settler’ he had given Lord Howick.
George did indeed have the final settling. The Stephenson–Hudson line passed parliament amid much rejoicing in all locomotive circles. In Newcastle eight hundred workmen from the Stephenson loco works paraded in the streets with banners and music. (The atmospheric system did continue elsewhere for some years but was continually breaking down, was found to be uneconomic and finally abandoned. But for a time it did work: perhaps someone, some day, will take it up again.)
George always had great acclaim whenever he returned to Newcastle. He was cheered to the roof when he went back for the banquet organised by Hudson, when the first ‘flying’ trains arrived from London. He was now being called the ‘Father of Railways’, even the Inventor of Railways, according to some of the speeches, a title he never argued with. He visited Newcastle on another occasion when it was the venue for a meeting of the British Association, of which he’d been elected one of the vice-presidents. He toured the scenes from his boyhood, like Wylam, taking with him some of the distinguished guests, telling them harrowing stories about his early life and hard struggles.
In London, he never had the same spontaneous acclaim. It was, after all, Robert who brought the trains to London from the north, arriving at Euston, and Brunel from the west into Paddington. George had been personally rather abusive in his battles with Brunel, which Robert never was, and the Establishment generally still considered him something less than a gentleman and a great deal less than an engineering genius. However, George’s progress in foreign parts, where he was a prophet showered with every sort of honour, was one long triumphant tour.
As we saw from the early days in Darlington and Liverpool, European and American engineers had long been watching George’s locomotives with great interest. When the first locomotives were to be built in France for the Lyon–St Etienne, which started in 1829, two engines were brought from Stephenson’s Newcastle works to act as models and George himself received a gift of 12,500 francs for his help and advice. Newcastle was also sending locomotives to the USA from as early as 1828. The oldest complete locomotive which now exists in America, preserved in the Smithsonian Institute, is John Bull, built at Forth Street in 1831. America’s first locomotive railway was the South Carolina in 1830, five years after Darlington. (But by 1850 America had far outstripped Britain in the extent of its railway system.)
In 1833 Robert Stephenson and Company were exporting locomotives to Germany, plus enginemen to teach them how to run them; then two years later to Russia and by the end of the thirties to almost every European country, but George’s relationship with Belgian railways was probably the most fruitful. King Leopold, who’d become the first king of the Belgians in 1831, was determined to introduce railways to his country on a national, rational scale. Being a small, increasingly industrialised country, with important minerals and strategic ports, Belgium lent itself to a master plan rather than haphazard growth, as in Britain.
Locomotives were ordered from Newcastle in 1834 and George and Robert received a royal request in 1835 to come and advise them how to lay out a comprehensive railway system. They were both fêted by the king and queen at receptions in Brussels, which George seems to have enjoyed hugely. ‘King Leopold stated he was very glad to have the honour of my acquaintance,’ said George in a letter to Longridge. ‘He seemed quite delighted with what had taken place in Belgium about the Railways.’
George was made a Knight of the Order of Leopold and visited Belgium on several later occasions, for the grand openings of various lines, each time being handsomely received. In 1848, during one banquet, the director of the Belgian National Railways unveiled before the guests a marble bust of George, crowned with laurels, and under a triumphal arch a model of the Rocket.
In the same year, George embarked on the last of his many foreign railway expeditions, this time to Spain where he’d been asked to construct a railway from Madrid to the Bay of Biscay. He was by now sixty-four and the journey there was hazardous enough, quite apart from surveying such difficult terrain. He went with his friend, Sir Joshua Walmsley, and their adventures and near-escapes in crossing the Pyrenees were as hair-raising as Robert’s had been in South America. When George eventually struggled back to Paris he was so ill with pleurisy that Walmsley feared for his life, but he recovered, just, to tell Longridge the tale.
Tapton House, 22nd Nov, 1845.
My Dear Sir,
I am now at home and quite well, my recovery has been most extraordinary, the attack I had was pleurisy: I think it was first occasioned by taking unwholesome food at Bordeaux from that place I travelled night and day to Paris: I took very ill there, but still persevered in getting to England; on arriving at Havre I was obliged to have a Doctor who took 20 oz blood from me on board the Steam boat; I was then very weak but still wished to get on to England; the boat sailed at 5 o’clock P.M. I got to London the next day about half past 2 o’clock & there got the best advise; they got two Physicians to me; they put me to bed and cupped me on the right side; how much blood they took by cupping I cannot tell, they then put a blister on my side and gave me Calomel every four hours from Saturday night to tuesday night: I then became so weak that they durst not give me any more. on the Wednesday morning I was considerably relieved from pain and could then eat a little – my rapid recovery since that time has been astonishing, I am now quite as well as I ever was in my life, but I am advised to keep quite for a while.
Yours truly,
GEO. STEPHENSON.
Mich. Longridge Esq.
P.S. I have had a most extraordinary journey in Spain. I crossed the Pyrenees 5 times; and rode on horse back 50 miles amongst the mountains seeking out the lowest pass – we had our carriage drawn up by bullocks on to the mountain passes where a carriage had never been before – we passed just under the snow range. I shall give you an account of my travels when I see you: we travelled 3000 miles in 33 days: stopped 4 days in Madrid. 2 days at the summits of the mountain passes – I was kindly received in every Town where I was known.
Back at Tapton House, George now gave his almost undivided attention to his gardens. At Killingworth in the old days he’d competed with the miners in growing the largest and best vegetables, such as giant leeks, still one of the north east’s favourite sports. Now that he was a gentleman, he turned to more exotic vegetables and fruits, such as melons, pineapples and grapes. He built ten large greenhouses, heating them with his own system of hot water pipes. One of his ambitions was to grow pineapples as big as pumpkins which would ‘knock-under’ those grown by the Duke of Devonshire at nearby Chatsworth. The Chatsworth head gardener, Paxton, and his son Joseph, became close friends of George’s but it didn’t stop George trying to outdo them at every horticultural show. (Joseph Paxton, later Sir Joseph, went from gardening at Chatsworth to designing the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of
1851. Building larger greenhouses to keep George in his place no doubt helped.) George was particularly pleased, so Smiles relates, when his grapes took first prize at Rotherham in a competition ‘open to all England’.
George’s ultimate aim was to grow a straight cucumber, an exercise as pointless as three-foot leeks, but one that consumed him for several years. (And led to that barbed joke from William James’ daughter – about George taking the credit for everything from cucumbers to petticoats.) He tried different permutations of light and heat and eventually ordered straight, glass cylinders to be made for him at Newcastle. This finally did the trick. Carrying his first straight cucumber into the house to be admired by a group of visitors, he told them gleefully: ‘I think I have bothered them noo.’
He also experimented with stock breeding, trying new types of manure and new feedstuff, touring agricultural meetings and telling farmers where they were going wrong. He took up bird-watching again and became highly knowledgeable. He developed a method of fattening chickens in half the usual time. He’d noticed how they could be convinced that each day was really two days by shutting them in dark boxes after a heavy feed. He explained it all to Edward Pease who came to visit him one day, adding that if he were to devote himself to chickens he could make a small fortune. It sounds very much like battery farming.
His wife Elizabeth, not to be outdone, tried to keep bees but she found they wouldn’t thrive at Tapton and the hives perished for no apparent reason. George investigated, studying the habits and actions of the bees, and concluded they were too tired to get up the Tapton hill to the hives, having fed themselves on all the flowers at the bottom. The hives were moved downhill and thrived.
This incident is the only story in Smiles, or any other contemporary account, which refers to his wife Elizabeth, to whom he’d been married for twenty-five years. She died in 1845, just before his long trip to Spain, and was buried at Holy Trinity Church, Chesterfield. This was a new church and considered rather ‘low’, almost Methodist, which she presumably attended, though George is not known to have worshipped there or in any other church. George was left alone in the big house with his housekeeper, a lady called Ellen Gregory. But he had frequent visitors. His relations from Tyneside often came to see him and were handsomely received, usually going home with generous gifts, as did any old mechanic or miner from his past who arrived at his house asking for help. He took great interest in all Mechanics’ Institutes and travelled extensively to their dinners where he made his usual speech about his early hard struggles. Great people also came to see George, though they tended not to be the London greats. Ralph Waldo Emerson, on a visit from America, met him in Chesterfield – at the house of Swanwick, George’s former secretary. They discussed Americans, electricity, climate, soil and other subjects on which George had strong opinions and theories, all based on his observations, not on books, for he never went in for reading books, and Emerson expressed himself highly delighted. ‘It was worth crossing the Atlantic to have seen Stephenson alone,’ he said afterwards. ‘He had such native force of character and vigour of intellect. He seems to have the life of many men in him.’
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