In the trials, the Rocket performed peerlessly, living up to its name with Stephenson père at the controls and Locke as fireman. Back and forth it went over the 1.5-mile track, racking up average speeds of around 14 mph until, on the last leg, he let it loose, presumably as a way of showing all those tomfool lawyers and parliamentarians who had humiliated him how wrong they had been. The engine responded by averaging nearly 30 mph for the final run, demonstrating what good engineering could achieve as well as offering an exciting spectacle to the assembled gentry and peasantry who had never seen anything travel faster on land than a galloping horse or deer. The £500 prize was his, as was a commission to supply another four engines of the same design for the railway within the next three months, an onerous order which he fulfilled successfully bar a few weeks’ delay on the delivery of the final locomotive. And bigger and better locomotives were delivered in time for the opening.
Rocket is a tiny little engine that now sits rather glumly in London’s Science Museum,26 dwarfed by its far larger successors. But its impact was to be monumental as its success demonstrated the potential of steam locomotives, just as the Wright brothers showed the potential of aircraft with their short flight seventy years later. The Liverpool Mercury, which in anticipation of the trials predicted that the railway might ‘alter the whole system of our internal communications . . . substituting an agency whose ultimate effects can scarcely be anticipated’27 was to be proved right. The Scotsman was equally enthusiastic, stating pretentiously and clumsily: ‘The experiments at Liverpool have established principles which will give a greater impulse to civilisation than it has ever received from any single cause since the Press first opened the gates of knowledge to the human species’.28
Meanwhile, the railway had to be completed and opened. Now that the major issues over its operating methods were decided, the only remaining question was how quickly Stephenson could get the line open so that the railway started earning a return for its investors. Sections of the route had been completed and by mid 1829 eminent figures were given rides, even enemies of the railway like the MP Thomas Creevey who had crowed at the defeat of the first Bill. Now he reported that the ordeal of travelling on the railway was ‘like flying and it is impossible to divest yourself of the notion of instant death to all upon the least accident happening’.29 It gave the poor chap a headache which lingered for several days. His fellow campaigner Lord Sefton was apparently ‘convinced that some damnable thing must come of it’, but poor Creevey confessed that no one else seemed to think so.
Stephenson was intent on showing the power of his new locomotives and took a party of forty passengers over the ‘floating’ railway on Chat Moss, reaching the amazing speed of 30 mph on the return leg which passengers reported as remarkably comfortable. Trial runs were widely reported locally and, just as today, newspapers sought expert advice to assess the risks. A Doctor Chambers assured potential passengers that there was no cause for alarm even if the train reached 35 mph, and that their eyes would not be damaged by looking at the passing scenery.
The opening was scheduled for 15 September 1830, and by June the trackwork was sufficiently advanced to allow a full rehearsal from Liverpool to Manchester. Stephenson, driving one of his new locomotives, the Arrow, took a party of forty including the directors and, just to test the capability of his engine, he added wagons containing stone to give a weight of 39 tons. The journey took a mere two hours, and the return, when the stone was left behind, barely an hour and a half discounting stops. The engineering had proved itself.
Just as with the Stockton & Darlington, the opening of the line was truly a world event, attracting attention from around the globe, and would have gone down in history as a complete success had it not been marred by a tragedy that resulted in the first death of a railway passenger. The opening ceremony was planned as a grand parade, with all the available locomotives and carriages called into action to take the guests to the end of the line and back, watched by the crowds (a contemporary estimate in the Morning Post suggested a million, although given this amounted to nearly three times the combined population of the two towns, that appears to be a piece of journalistic licence).
The procession which gathered at the Liverpool end of the line on the morning of Wednesday, 15 September was truly impressive. There were to be no fewer than eight trains, carrying a total of thirty-two carriages, all hauled by a Stephenson locomotive and driven by his engineers. Stephenson, of course, drove the royal train. Well, it was not quite royal, more a VIP carriage, since the monarch had not turned up but the Prime Minister, that old war hero but nevertheless deeply unpopular Tory, the Duke of Wellington, was at the opening. His carriage was certainly fit for a king, as the Liverpool Courier enthused: ‘The floor [was] 32 feet long by 8 feet wide, supported on eight wheels, partly concealed by a basement [the understructure] ornamented with bold gold mouldings and laurel wreaths, on a ground of crimson cloth; an ornamental gilt balustrade extended round each end of the carriage and united with one of the pillars which supported the roof . . .’ and so on. Splendid it may have been, but unfortunately the carriage did not have permanent steps, only temporary ones which could easily be taken up in order to prevent misuse. The procession of trains pulled out of Liverpool one by one and Wellington’s, in the lead of course, made good time, reaching Parkside, seventeen miles down the track, in under an hour. As the engine took on water, the notables made the mistake of deciding to stretch their legs, despite prior warnings to stay in the train, and some fifty men got off and began milling around. Huskisson, who had fallen out with Wellington a couple of years previously, went up to him in an effort to make amends and hopefully get reinstated to the Cabinet. He must have thought that as he was a local MP who had supported the railway project his star was in the ascendancy and a chat with the top man would be just the ticket. But as he shook Wellington’s hand, a shout went up that an engine was approaching. It was the Rocket, driven by Joseph Locke. Most people climbed back on the train or, more sensibly, sought the refuge of the embankment. Huskisson, however, who had a gammy leg and was not very mobile, panicked and ran to the side of the Duke’s carriage but, without the benefit of steps, could not clamber up properly.
Poor Locke saw too late that disaster was inevitable. The trains were not fitted with any kind of brake, only the ability to throw the valve gear into reverse, rather as today’s aeroplanes use reverse thrust on landing, a process that could take ten seconds to put into effect. Instead of cowering in the space between the tracks where there was easily sufficient room, Huskisson grabbed at the door of the carriage which swung open, tossing him into the path of the Rocket. The sickening crunch as his leg shattered under the wheels was heard by all those around; the contemporary account in The Times refers to the wheel going over his left thigh and ‘squeezing it almost to a jelly’ – and it was immediately clear that ‘the poor man was mortally wounded’.30 Stephenson, reacting quickly, said he would take the stricken politician on towards Manchester to seek medical aid as rapidly as possible and thus turned his train into an ambulance. With three doctors tending the dying man, the train reached speeds of 35 mph, which Stephenson, never averse to milking a situation, said later was a world record. The speeding train provided a fantastic spectacle for the crowds, who had no idea of the reason for the urgency. Stephenson dropped Huskisson and two of the doctors at Eccles where they were taken into the vicarage – but to no avail. Despite the arrival of surgeons summoned by Stephenson, Huskisson died in considerable pain at 9 p.m.
The festivities continued largely as planned, including the banquet at the Adelphi Hotel, although the band was cancelled out of respect for poor Huskisson. There had been no doubt that the ceremonies should start and end at Liverpool where the enthusiasm for the railway appeared unalloyed. The quality of life of the working poor was perhaps a trifle better there, and the crowds were wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the new invention, whereas in Manchester contemporary observers noted that the procession was watc
hed ‘with looks of sullen or insolent indifference’.31 Indeed, the welcome in east Lancashire was far from warm. Despite the accident, the organizers had decided that it was prudent to continue the procession across the bridge at the river Irwell, with its huge Doric columns, and terminate at Manchester station, rather than disappoint the thousands lining the path of the railway. However, as the train progressed eastwards, the cheering on occasion degenerated into hooting and even stone-throwing at the carriages. There were clearly two factions among the crowd: those who opposed Wellington, many wearing tricolour cockades – showing their sympathy for the French Revolution – being matched in numbers by supporters who greeted the trains with wild cheers.
At Manchester, the mood of some of the crowd was so hostile that Wellington, who had only gone there reluctantly, remained in the safety of the carriage with his entourage rather than face the protesters, fearing that his presence might trigger another Peterloo, the nearby massacre of anti-Corn Law demonstrators by soldiers eleven years previously. On this historic day for Britain, and in fact the world, the great conqueror of Napoleon was unable to win over his own people and left Manchester defeated by their show of strength.
It was not so much Luddite fear of the machine that had stimulated the crowd’s anger but rather a wider antipathy to Wellington’s government which, despite the all-too-obvious penury and suffering of large sections of the population, was adamantly resisting any attempts at social reform. The fact that many of the protesters held banners advocating ‘Vote by ballot’ and ‘No to the Corn Laws’32 suggests that it was not opposition to the railway that had attracted their ire. At the time of the opening, Manchester had no parliamentary representatives, while tiny Newton, through which the line passed, had two, a reflection of the rotten borough system that was in desperate need of reform. The masses were never going to get change from Wellington and perhaps he could be called the railway’s first political casualty when, two months later, he resigned in favour of the more reform-minded Earl Grey. Nor did the experience whet Wellington’s appetite for rail travel as the old curmudgeon did not venture on the tracks for a further thirteen years, arguing that railways would simply ‘encourage the lower classes to travel about’ and that the roads, improved by the likes of Macadam, would prevail. They eventually did, of course, but not in the lifetime of the old Duke.
To this day, Huskisson’s death continues to mask the true importance of the event by grabbing the headlines. The tragedy was not even reflective of the risks faced by passengers; after all, Huskisson had disobeyed instructions not to leave the train. It is perhaps no coincidence that in Britain the railway authorities have always been far more reluctant to allow people on to the tracks than their foreign counterparts, where it is considered to be of little concern.33
The Liverpool & Manchester Railway was never conceived as a self-contained entity, nor as the summit of railway building. Quite the opposite. Even the prospectus published initially for obtaining parliamentary approval envisaged branch lines to the prosperous town of Bolton and the industrial area of St Helens. As Peter Parker, widely regarded as one of the greatest chairmen of British Rail, put it, with a hint of his characteristic mischievous humour, ‘the world is a branch line of the pioneering Liverpool Manchester run’.34 All the elements which made up a ‘proper’ railway were found for the first time in the Liverpool & Manchester: locomotives hauled passenger and goods trains on a double-tracked railway linking two major towns. It was truly the start of the railway age, but despite its success, rather like the stuttering start of a big steam engine on damp rails, it would take several years before the process of building a national railway network really got under way. In the meantime, the people of the north-west began to get the railway habit.
TWO
GETTING THE RAILWAY HABIT
The grand opening ceremony of the Liverpool & Manchester railway, the meticulous engineering skill and the £1m of capital that had gone into the project were still not sufficient to guarantee its success. Far from it. This was an entirely new idea, completely different in scope and ambition from the coal-dominated Stockton & Darlington. Now that the railway was built, would anyone use it?
The answer was unequivocally yes, but not in the way that its promoters envisaged. While the original motivation for its construction had come from Liverpool merchants seeking to reduce the cost and time of transporting their goods, the line would become, unlike its predecessors, primarily a passenger service. The people who flocked to the railway proved to be the mainstay of the business as the goods traffic took longer than expected to build up.
Travelling by train was an utterly novel experience and it is remarkable how many of the customs and practices of rail travel developed in the early days of the Liverpool & Manchester survive to this day. At first, buying a ticket was a major enterprise. For some unaccountable reason, tickets had to be bought a day in advance and passengers had to give their name, address, age, place of birth, occupation and reason for travelling! As one historian of the line suggests, it was ‘more a passport than a ticket’,1 but the flocks of passengers arriving to take the train soon put an end to this onerous requirement, with simple tickets bearing the passenger’s name being provided instead. All tickets included the reservation of a specific seat, a railway practice that endured for many years until rendered impractical by the sheer number of passengers. On the back of the tickets were heavily printed lines as destination guides to help passengers who were illiterate.
The initial service was fairly unambitious but as it was the world’s first regular train service between major towns, predicting demand was all but impossible. There were three first-class trains per day departing from the two termini at 7 a.m., noon and 4 p.m., with room for just under a hundred passengers each paying a fare of 7s (35p) single. Second-class trains, leaving at 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., were introduced a few days later with a fare of 4s (20p), still relatively expensive for the working classes whose wages were often less than £1 per week. Services were added regularly so that by 1835 there were nine daily passenger trains in each direction, as well as various specials. There was, as yet, no notion that the great masses, who had mostly never travelled beyond walking distance from their homes, would be able to use the railway. Third class, designed to accommodate them, would only come a decade later.
However, cannier members of the working class realized that rules are meant to be circumvented. Manchester weavers worked out that they could reduce the time spent carrying their loads to their customers by using the train, but the fare was too high. So groups of three gave their bundles to one of their number to carry on the train until the railway company got wind of this wheeze and restricted passengers to one pack each. The brave weavers challenged the ruling by boycotting the line and eventually the company, eager not to lose their custom, backed down, a rare early victory by passengers in the face of the monopolistic railways.
Anyone with a few bob to spare must have readily paid the extra to sit in first class. While the first-class carriages were mostly fully enclosed and had leather-upholstered seats, second class, until 1834, consisted of benches in open wagons, squeezing four passengers abreast, exposed to the sun and rain and, worse, to the burning sparks and soot from the engine, risking damage to their clothing and even hair. Oddly, a few of the early first-class coaches were left unprotected on the sides but that was soon changed when too many smart and expensive clothes were ruined by the fiery emissions of the engine. As with the Stockton & Darlington, the first-class carriages, which had three compartments taking six people each, still looked like stagecoach bodies and appeared rather unstable as they were perched on two sets of wheels mounted close together. Not surprisingly, the journey was pretty bumpy, not just due to the weakness of the springs and the vagaries of the track, but because the carriages were linked by simple chains which meant that nothing prevented them hitting each other as the train accelerated or slowed down. To cushion the blows, the seats in first class, which were separated
by armrests, had strong leather mufflers for the head but this was not enough to stop the well-to-do from complaining loudly.
Nevertheless, they were well treated, pampered even, by today’s standards. Omnibus connections, horse-drawn, of course, to the city centre were available gratis at both ends of the journey, and porters were on hand at the stations to carry their bags. Tips were expressly forbidden on pain of dismissal of the poor porter, which must have been a difficult rule to enforce since travellers on stagecoaches were in the habit of paying regular tips to ensure a comfortable seat or a safe place to put their luggage. And the porters, who were paid a trifling couple of shillings a day (one passenger’s fare would easily cover that), could certainly have done with the extra cash.
Here again, the Liverpool & Manchester was establishing a tradition that would prove durable: the employment of a tightly controlled workforce that was expected to be loyal. The workers were uniformed and had to submit to military-style discipline with the company issuing ‘orders of the day’ early every morning. They could be sacked instantly for any serious transgressions or, for more minor offences, have their wages docked with ‘fines’. In contrast, as experienced railwaymen began to be sought by other companies, they had to give three months’ notice if they wanted to leave, a rule designed to prevent poaching. Selection of employees was haphazard, often through word of mouth or friendship, with ex-military men particularly sought after, and training was non-existent. The hours were long, often between sixteen and eighteen hours per day for six days a week; so long, in fact, that they were later seen as a safety problem which needed to be addressed by legislation (see Chapter 10). In compensation, the wages were high with railway labourers receiving twice the pay of their equivalents on the farms. The drivers, enginemen as they were known, quickly established themselves as an elite of the manual workforce, earning as much as £2 per week, and developed that independence of spirit necessitated by the difficult task of keeping these complicated and frequently misbehaving engines running smoothly. There were injunctions not to run too fast, as witnessed by the fate of one Simon Fenwick who in 1832 found himself at a disciplinary hearing for having completed the journey in 68 minutes, rather than the two hours recommended by Stephenson as a measure to limit wear and tear of the track and locomotives. There was, too, an officer class, the clerks and managers who worked in offices wearing white shirts and suits, but even they started out, as lads, on a mere 5s (25p) per week.
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