By a campaign of intensive lobbying, Peter Leeds secured powerful support and set up a rival committee to press his proposal. Moreover, although the Lobstock Canal Company were opposed in principle to any railway scheme, he pointed out to them that the adoption of the Winterstoke route would mean that Lobstock would remain a canal stronghold. Privately, so great was his faith in the new system of transport, Peter Leeds believed that before many years every town in the country would be connected by rail, but he kept this thought to himself and by astute argument he was able to reach an understanding with the Lobstock Company whereby they agreed to confine their opposition to the proposed Lobstock and Coltisham route. But Peter Leeds and his supporters did not have the field to themselves by any means. They soon became involved in a legal and parliamentary battle far more protracted, more bitter and more costly than that which old Daniel Leeds and his party had waged over the route of the Lobstock Canal. Ranged against them were the Wendle Navigation Company and the Wendle bargemasters, the proprietors of the Westerport, Winterstoke and Coltisham Turnpike, the coach owners who used that much improved highway, and many traders in the town of Lobstock which would be excluded from rail communication if the Winterstoke line was adopted. Added to these who found their special interests threatened were the many landowners and farmers who were prepared to fight the coming of any railway and firmly believed the canal owners and the coach proprietors who prophesied that the new invention would destroy the crops and stock on any lands through which it passed. One of the most powerful members of this opposition, fighting the issue with all the considerable forces he could still command both locally and in the House of Lords, was old Lord Winterstoke. He fought as a proprietor of the Wendle Navigation and of the Turnpike Trust. He also fought as a great landowner who foresaw that this new monster would not only ruin his lands but intrude, belching steam and smoke, upon the landscape which his father had so expensively contrived with the aid of Lancelot Brown. Railways were a menace to the country and threatened to throw thousands of honest men out of their traditional employments. They were wild and impracticable schemes foisted upon a gullible public by unprincipled speculators. He declared open war on the railway and hired a number of unemployed Wendle bow-hauliers to police his estate and remove, by force if need be, any suspicious loiterer who could not satisfactorily explain his business. ‘I would rather,’ the Earl declared, ‘see a highwayman or a burglar on my property than an engineer,’ and when the first party of engineers set foot on the Winterstoke estate for the purpose of making a preliminary survey they were promptly and resolutely attacked by the Earl’s posse who drove them off and smashed their apparatus. The survey was finally made with the greatest difficulty under the cover of moonless nights by engineers working as stealthily and furtively as poachers by the glimmer of dark lanterns. To-day, when the long expresses thunder through the Wendle valley it is interesting to recall this night-shrouded and conspiratorial scene, more suggestive of gunpowder, treason and plot than of any commercial undertaking, which was the first presage of their coming.
Just as James Brindley had judged the claims of the rival canal factions, so it was the great George Stephenson who was called in to settle the issue between the two railway committees. He decided in favour of the Winterstoke route, and the plan was adopted by the subscribers who appointed George and his son Robert engineers of the London & Earlspool Railway. The new Company ultimately won their long parliamentary battle against the opposition but at a terrible price, not only in legal costs but in monies paid to landowners such as Lord Winterstoke for the property they must needs acquire. No sooner had the London & Earlspool Railway Act received the Royal Assent than construction began, the works being let to different contractors along the route. The major engineering works were attacked by a great force of ‘navvies’ and labourers under the command of Robert Stephenson himself, but the line along the levels of the Wendle valley presented no constructional difficulty and the work was carried out by many small contractors who each, like the ‘overmen’ in the Darley Bank Company, employed their own ‘butty’ gangs.
The meadow below Ketton Farm where the ‘navigators’ of the Lobstock Canal had encamped seventy years before had long since disappeared under bricks and mortar, but west and east of the town, on the waste land between Hanger Lane and the river and near the ford below Summersend Farm, the railway gangs built their crude thatched huts of unbonded stone like two detachments of some invading army preparing for a long siege of the town. Though the contractors recruited much local labour, even the inhabitants of the Hanger Lane back-to-backs regarded the neighbouring shanty town with some suspicion, and as on the previous occasion, those who profited most by the invasion were the local innkeepers. The Bridge Inn at St. John’s had by this time been transformed into a large and prosperous posting house known as the ‘Hanmer Arms’, and here the thirsty hordes were actively discouraged. But in the bars of the ‘New Invention’, the ‘Woodcolliers’ and, in particular, ‘The Navigation’ where the Blenkinsop family still presided, trade quite literally roared, for the railway gangs were well paid by the standards of the day. Working with tireless energy they assuredly earned their pay however recklessly they might consume it, for the long low embankment of raw earth advanced down the south side of the valley with astonishing speed, crossing over Bridge Street (as the road over the new river bridge was now called) and the turnpike east of St. John’s by spans of cast iron set in massive stone abutments.
A branch connection was laid into the Darley Bank Works, for that Company had undertaken several large contracts for the railway. A great quantity of the wrought iron rails for this revolutionary road came from Peter Leeds’ furnaces and rolling mills, while on many of the spans of the bridges we may read to this day the cast inscription: ‘DARLEY BANK IRONWORKS 1837.’ But of far greater importance in the story of Winterstoke than these contributions, which might be termed part of the regular stock-in-trade of the ironworks, was the building of six locomotives at Darley Bank to the design of Robert Stephenson. Stephenson’s own locomotive works at Newcastle was so overloaded with orders for the new railways that contracts for the London & Earlspool engines were placed with a number of manufacturers among whom the Darley Bank Company, a firm on the line of route with a long experience of steam engine building, was an obvious choice. The contract marked the beginning of an important new chapter in the history of the Company.
When these engines left the works they carried no numbers, but each bore on the polished mahogany lagging of their boiler barrels a brass name-plate. Hurricane, Sirocco, Mistral, Whirlwind, Tornado and Typhoon they were called, and no machines could have been more aptly named. For in them the craftsmanship which had hitherto embodied the new steam power in stationary beam engines of massive scale, had now harnessed it to a new, fleet purpose which gave to steam the wings of the wind. Fluted brass dome and flared chimney cap, slender safety valve casing and burnished steel railings on the driving platform, all displayed the classic proportions of the older beam engine fined down to a lightness and elegance no longer monumental but befitting the function of the new machine. Robert Adam would surely have approved, for beside their cumbersome predecessors these early locomotives are comparable in their grace and refinement of detail with the workmanship of Adam. And just as Robert Adam stood at the end of the golden age of architecture, so in these steam locomotives the association of art with engineering expressed itself for the last time.
The first of the six engines to be completed and the first to give the people of Winterstoke a glimpse of the steam locomotive in action was the Hurricane. At a speed which belied her name and did not betray her capabilities she rumbled cautiously to and fro over the new embankment on a single temporary line of rails hauling wagon loads of spoil, ballast and, later, sleepers and rails. It was not until the Wendle valley section of the L. & E.R. was officially opened to the usual accompaniment of speeches, luncheons, ox roastings and the liberal distribution of free liquor by the Com
pany that the steam locomotive really displayed its powers. The inaugural train consisted of no less than thirty four-wheeled vehicles; first there was a line of open ‘thirds’ which scarcely merited the name of coaches and were packed to suffocation by a standing crowd of swaying and shouting humanity; then came a rake of second-class coaches, roofed but open-sided above the waistline; next, like a row of stagecoaches, followed the exclusive closed ‘firsts’, and finally, well out of range of smoke and smuts, there came flat wagons bearing the open carriages of the gentry who, mollified by the blood money they had extorted from the Company, had consented to grace the occasion. At the head of this long, packed caravan of assorted vehicles, their brass domes and boiler lagging bands flashing in the sunlight, were the two engines Tornado and Typhoon, their engine-men, immaculate in the dignity of white cord suits and beaver hats, each standing proudly on his driving platform, hand on burnished regulator, like a captain on the bridge of his ship. This was the power and the glory, the new marvel of the age. No wonder the people who thronged the line-side all along the route cheered themselves hoarse as the great train, its flying pennants of steam lifting and dissolving into the blue sky, rumbled down the long perspective of rails that stretched straight as a sword blade down the valley. Although the train did not exceed thirty-five miles an hour, it appeared to travel at a rate fantastic to eyes that had seen nothing faster than a galloping horse. It must have been an anxious occasion for the two drivers, for the crowds along the line were quite incapable of estimating the speed of their approach, and although the day was not marred by any tragedy, there were many near misses.
That during the early years of its operation there were no serious accidents on the L. & E.R. was remarkable. For we must appreciate how absolutely unique and unprecedented a development this iron road was. In the safe control of trains of a hundred tons or more moving at high speed on a rail prescribed course over hundreds of miles of country, no experience gained on turnpike roads, canals, or even on the old tramways which were the railways’ ancestors was of any value. Semaphore signals, interlocking, the electrical block system, continuous brakes, track circuiting, all those developments which contributed so much to railway safety, were gradually evolved by experience of trial and error, but for the first few years of its existence, the L. & E.R. trains worked by guess and by God, and incidents which would have made a latter day traffic superintendent’s hair stand erect were accepted as part of the normal routine. ‘Policemen’ armed with flags or with signal lamps at night dispatched and controlled trains on the time interval system. The first locomotives were prone to suffer from a variety of teething troubles. Hence if a train failed to appear after the time interval had elapsed it would be assumed that it was in difficulties and any engine that happened to be available would be sent to its assistance along the wrong road. This meant that if the driver who had been sent to the rescue suddenly encountered the belated train speeding towards him he had to do some very rapid thinking—and equally rapid reversing. An engineer might decide to take out a locomotive for purposes of test or to examine part of the permanent way, while for some time an eminent scientist of the day who rejoiced in the name of Dionysius Lardner lurked about the line in the Wendle valley with a special train with which he was carrying out certain tests the exact purpose of which only he ever understood. Consequently there was always the possibility of encountering a train where no train had any right to be.
Although the L. & E.R. brought to the people of Winterstoke possibilities of long-distance travel which had never existed before except in the form of the stage-wagon or the stage-coach which few could afford, for some years it remained only a possibility for the majority. For the Company showed themselves singularly disinclined to cater for the third-class passenger until Parliament stepped in by compelling them to provide third-class accommodation on at least one train per day in each direction. Like so many cattle wagons, the third-class stock was marshalled in the two night goods trains which, before the advent of the ‘Parliamentaries’, spent the long night hours alternately stopping, shunting and crawling as they made their seemingly interminable way across England.
One of the most important features of the railway’s uniqueness was the fact that the Company who built and owned the new iron road also owned and worked all the traffic upon it. Hitherto river navigations, canals, turnpikes and tramways alike had been open to any carrier who cared to use them provided he paid the prescribed tolls to the proprietors. It was accepted as a first principle of inland transport that for an owner of any highway to act also as a carrier upon it would be to establish an unjust monopoly by enabling him to compete unfairly against the private trader. It was upon this principle that the canal companies had been prohibited by Parliament from acting as carriers. When the Liverpool & Manchester Railway Act was passed the same principle was recognized, and in theory private traders were at liberty to run their own trains on the line on payment of tolls. But it was realized at once by the railwaymen, and much more belatedly by Parliament, that the old system was not applicable to the new road; that it would be fraught with every kind of peril and reduce any attempt at order to chaos. Nevertheless, the old idea of a free highway died hard. Dr. Dionysius Lardner’s experimental train, and the special trains kept for their exclusive use by some members of the aristocracy were legacies of it. Another much longer-lived legacy were the fleets of privately owned goods wagons which made their appearance.
In the competitive battle with the canals which rapidly developed, the ability of the railways to operate their own traffic proved an invincible weapon. A system which was controlled by a great number of small companies with no common policy, which lacked uniformity of draught and lock gauge and whereon traffic was handled almost exclusively by a great number of small local traders could not hope to compete successfully for long-distance traffic against the railways. With the sole exception of the adoption by the Great Western Railway and its far western protégés of Brunel’s 7-foot gauge, the railway engineers recognized the importance of gauge uniformity. George Stephenson, the father of railways, believed implicitly from the moment of birth that his child would one day become a giant, straddling the world. In the more parochial and self-sufficient England of the eighteenth century, James Brindley, the father of canals, had looked upon his waterways as children of their region only. Long-distance rail traffic was soon aided, not only by uniformity of gauge but by the establishment of a Railway Clearing House to handle and apportion the revenue from traffic consigned over several companies’ lines. The canals never provided any such facility but they did make an attempt to fight back.
While the London & Earlspool Railway was still building, the proprietors of the Lobstock Canal and those of the coast-to-coast waterway with which the Lobstock connected agreed to join forces in face of the common enemy. They applied to Parliament for powers, not only to amalgamate but also to become carriers, and as a result the Midshire Union Canal Company and the Midshire Union Canal Carrying Company were formed. For the quicker handling of general merchandise, the new Carrying Company launched a fleet of light ‘fly boats’, worked by all-male crews as opposed to the family boat system, and these plied day and night throughout the system. With this introduction the local canal proprietors must have felt more confident for a while, but, as Peter Leeds had suspected, Lobstock was not destined to remain for very long a canal stronghold.
Although the railway companies avoided many of the mistakes of their predecessors, in their relations with each other it took them a long time to learn that co-operation paid better dividends than a state of more or less open warfare. The old conflict between the Lobstock Canal Company and the proprietors of the Wendle Navigation was a trivial brawl compared with the scale and ferocity of the attacks launched upon each other by rival railways. In view of the prevailing commercial philosophy this was only to be expected. Winterstoke became a strategic point in one of these battles. Sometimes the town benefited as a result, more often it did not; as for t
he contending companies they never benefited at all.
That the immediate success of the new railways led to an orgy of wild speculation in which fortunes were won and many more fortunes lost on worthless schemes is well known. The speculative boom in canals of the early 1790’s pales into insignificance beside the follies of the so-called ‘Railway Mania’. Winterstoke had its share of rowdy public meetings, of proposal and counter-proposal, but when all the speculative bubbles had burst, one important railway scheme remained and succeeded in obtaining the necessary public support despite the temporary slump which followed the exposure of George Hudson, the ‘Railway King’. This was the Great North-Western Railway which was to provide a more direct central route between London and the North. So far as our immediate district is concerned, the new line was planned to pass through Church Ambling, Winterstoke and Lobstock. This was a far more difficult line of country than the promoters of the London & Earlspool had ever envisaged, but railway engineers had rapidly gained confidence, both in their own ability to overcome natural obstacles, and in the power of the steam locomotive to surmount gradients.
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