As for the stagecoaches, within three months of the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester, over half the twenty-six on the route had ceased running, though of course there was still the rest of the country to serve. Indeed, the number of stagecoaches nationally peaked in the mid-1830s, and only began their inevitable decline when the railways started to spread across the country. In response to the competition from the new railway, the surviving stagecoach owners slashed their fares to 10s inside and 5s outside, but even that was not competetive with the train, and all but one had stopped operating by 1832. In truth, the railway had done much more than merely poach passengers from the stagecoaches. The figures for passenger numbers show that the railway had developed its own market simply by making travel so much pleasanter, faster and cheaper. In 1830 the stagecoaches had a capacity of around 700 passengers per day, whereas in the three years between 1831 and 1833 the railway averaged 1,100 passengers daily. The Liverpool & Manchester was to the 1830s what the easyJet phenomenon is today, fulfilling a latent demand to travel at affordable prices.
The rapid demise of canals and stagecoaches, which were themselves relatively new forms of travel, demonstrated how the Industrial Revolution was accelerating the rate of social change. Indeed, the railways were the greatest product of the Revolution, and its major driver. Even though, as Nicholas Faith6 points out, more miles of canals than railways were built in the ensuing decade, this was the most rapid example of obsolescence the world had so far seen: the railways would rapidly do to stagecoaches and canals what muskets had done to the longbow.
Others who expected to suffer from the railway found themselves profiting from it. Innkeepers were worried about the loss of stagecoach business and obviously those catering on remote stretches of highway solely for stagecoach passengers went out of business quickly. However, as always, innovation and new technology created opportunities as well as losses. Hostelries close to intermediate stops on the railway found that passengers were all too willing to use up the time with a drink or two. They even began to offer onboard services – a ‘serving wench’ was spotted soon after the opening at the Patricroft halt selling drinks and cigars from a tray to first-class passengers.
Given the Liverpool & Manchester’s instant popularity, it is hardly surprising that the railway was profitable from the outset. By the end of 1830, just three and a half months after opening, the railway paid shareholders an immediate dividend of £2 per £100 share. The directors clearly hoped to grant shareholders almost the maximum allowable under the Act, which had restricted annual dividends to a maximum of 10 per cent. In the decade and a half of independent operation, until the line’s merger with the Grand Junction in 1845, shareholders received an average of 9.5 per cent annually, amounting to almost two and a half times the price of their shares. Not a bad investment in a period of little inflation.
Many future railways would be equally useful and well patronised, but would never attain the profitability of the Liverpool & Manchester because of the higher costs of construction or because they did not serve large agglomerations separated by such short distances. Today, once the high capital cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure is taken into account, there are barely any profitable railways in the world due to competition from road transport.7
Receipts from passengers ran at twice the level from goods during the first few years, which was more a reflection of the railway’s success in attracting people to use the line than the absence of freight. It was perhaps the Rainhill trials where people were able to experience the excitement of speed for the first time and, as a consequence, the real potential of the railway, which was the turning point. In fact, because of a shortage of locomotives, the directors allowed passenger trains, with the occasional freight wagon attached, only during the first couple of months of operation. Stephenson had been unable to keep up with the demand for more locomotives, and catering for passengers was seen as the best way of building up patronage quickly. The first goods train ran in early December 1830, hauling cotton, oatmeal and malt to Manchester. Soon, the whole assortment of goods that were to become familiar on the railway were being carried on the Liverpool & Manchester, ranging from oil, spice, coffee and tobacco heading from the port to clothes, salt and Staffordshire pottery destined for the docks. By the spring of 1831, 150 tons of goods were being carried daily and in 1835 four times that level. Mail was carried right from the beginning under an agreement with the General Post Office – the start of a long tradition – and livestock, much of it from Ireland, was soon being transported in specially designed trucks. The carriage of pigs in their new wagons attracted the rather apt comment from the Liverpool Times that their accommodation ‘is a much handsomer and more commodious vehicle than those in which His Majesty’s liege subjects were accustomed to travel fifty years ago’.8
While putative railway promoters around the country were looking at the Liverpool & Manchester’s figures with great interest, there was no immediate rush to follow suit. For the most part, promoters were waiting to see whether the initial rush of enthusiasm for taking the train would be maintained. The early 1830s were a time of political uncertainty. In the towns, workers were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their dreadful conditions, while in the rural areas the rising numbers of labourers were being displaced by new technology such as threshing machines and were starting to protest. The pressure for the Reform Bill was reaching a head and there were major riots in Bristol and Nottingham, all of which created an atmosphere that was hardly conducive to investment in long-term projects.
Nevertheless several railways were being developed in conjunction with the Liverpool & Manchester. The eight-mile-long Bolton & Leigh had been completed in 1828 and effectively became the first branch line of the Liverpool & Manchester when it was linked via a third railway, the 2.5-mile-long Kenyon & Leigh, in 1831. On the other side of the tracks, heading south, the five-mile Warrington & Newton opened that year too, as the first stage of the long railway to Birmingham. The Stephensons, who seemed to throw up odd bits of railway in their spare time, were involved in the construction of all three of these smaller Lancashire lines. These railways were, however, separate entities, demonstrating in microcosm the complexity created by the unplanned and haphazard development of the railways that was to continue throughout much of the century. While the Liverpool & Manchester was clearly the largest concern, its directors still had to thrash out deals with the other railways over their running rights and other matters such as use of equipment and the condition of their locomotives. By the end of the 1830s, other nearby towns such as Wigan, Preston, St Helens and Runcorn had been connected to the railway, greatly boosting its usage but also increasing the complexity of administration and operations.
In various parts of the country, odd little stubs of lines had already been approved or were under construction by the time of the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester. The longest was another coal railway, linking the mines of Swannington and Coalville with Leicester, and the chief engineer was the twenty-nine-year-old Robert Stephenson. The railway, which carried both passengers and freight, was, at sixteen miles, half the length of the Liverpool & Manchester, and opened in 1832, a mere two years after it was authorized by Parliament. Fortunately, Stephenson senior insisted that it should be designed to his preferred 4ft 8½ins gauge, which meant that it could later easily become part of the extensive Midland Railway. A similar railway, to cater for the burgeoning cotton industry in Leeds and to provide traders with a better transport route for their goods to the port of Hull, was the Leeds & Selby, completed in 1834. These new lines, however, were limited in scope and largely catered for established freight routes rather than being perceived as part of a major nationwide network.
Around the whole of the UK, various pioneering railways were opening in a haphazard way, determined by the ability of local promoters and the availability of capital. New short lines opened in 1831 in Edinburgh and Dundee, both operated by cables and horses, showing tha
t the lessons of the Liverpool & Manchester had still not been learnt. Glasgow’s first railway, the Garnkirk & Glasgow, was operated by steam engines that had no cab for the driver and fireman, also opened that year. There was, too, the Dublin & Kingstown, the first railway in Ireland. However, England still had barely 100 miles of line by 1836: this included some strange little sections of railway such as that linking Whitstable and Canterbury in Kent and the first part of the much more significant Newcastle & Carlisle line, which had belatedly decided to adopt steam technology.
But why did the obscure little towns of Bodmin and Wadebridge in Cornwall get a railway before London? While in the capital building a railway would inevitably be a major undertaking, in provincial areas there was scope for individual enterprise to bear fruit quickly. In Cornwall, an enterprising local landowner, Sir William Molesworth, realized that it was the best way of carrying the limey sea sand from Wadebridge, which was much in demand further up the valley of the river Camel for use as fertilizer, and commissioned a survey. The single-track railway, built to the standard gauge, opened in 1834, funded largely by local shareholders who had put up the £35,000 capital. The seven-mile line, which boasted a couple of small branches, also carried passengers. Most notably, three excursion trains to Bodmin transported a total of 1,100 passengers to view the public execution of the Lightfoot brothers for murder in 1840.9 Similar local efforts would generate countless more small railways and, later, branch lines for the rest of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 7).
At last London got a railway in 1836 when the first part of the London & Greenwich opened to the public. It marked a radical departure from all the earlier railways, being built in an already developed area with the idea of catering for nascent commuter traffic. Moreover, the railway faced the added disadvantage of having to compete with the well-established boat traffic on the Thames. Like their predecessors, the promoters had to face down the pessimists, such as the Quarterly Review, which commented: ‘Can anything be more palpably ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage coaches . . . we will back Old Father Thames against the Greenwich railway for any sum.’10
The 3.5 mile railway was a remarkable achievement, built on top of 878 large arches to avoid using up land and interfering with the busy street pattern below. An amazing 60 million bricks were used in the construction of the line which took five years to build. The 400 navvies working on the line used more than 100,000 bricks per day, causing a shortage for other construction activity in London. That run of arches remains the longest in Britain and the construction method set a trend in London, which eventually acquired twenty five miles of these railways in the sky, and in several other cities. Initially the London & Greenwich directors hoped that people would be persuaded to rent the arches for housing but were soon dissuaded of this notion, a decision for which the capital’s scrapyard dealers and car breakers have been grateful ever since.11
It was a stunningly ambitious scheme that cost nearly £1m, virtually the same as the Liverpool & Manchester which was nine times longer. For operational reasons, involving the shared use of the line out of London, in 1850 the London & Greenwich started running trains on the right-hand side, a little curio since it is the only British railway ever to do so (and the practice continued until 1901). As ever with new rail lines, the London & Greenwich was opened with great fanfare, special trains, speeches by notables, a brass band (provided by the Scots Fusiliers) and the inevitable banquet. Although the railway was the first to be devoted solely to passenger transport, its developers still did not dare commit themselves entirely to the concept and hedged their bets by building a ‘pedestrian boulevard’ alongside the railway, charging users a penny toll. To allay passenger fears about the dangers of travelling on top of the endless viaduct, the trains were designed with a special low centre of gravity to reduce the risks of toppling over the 4½-foot parapet walls. However, fears must have been overcome as the railway was soon joined by the London & Croydon, with a separate station alongside at London Bridge. Passenger numbers built up rapidly with 1,500 people per day using the railway and the ‘boulevard’ was quickly replaced by additional tracks. Nevertheless, the line struggled to make a profit until a much wider network of suburban services built up in south London in the 1850s to cater for the growing job market in the city centre of London.
While all these lines were pioneers in one way or another, helping to establish the viability of the railway concept, the big project in the offing was the construction of the main line railways which still form the spine of the network today. Because of the political uncertainties in the early 1830s and the sheer scale of the task, it would be eight years before another major new railway would join together two major conurbations like the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Then there would be two in quick succession, first the Grand Junction and then the London & Birmingham. They would both be grander in scale and scope than anything that had come before and would involve their promoters and builders in overcoming much greater obstacles than their predecessors had faced.
THREE
JOINING UP BRITAIN
With the opening of the London & Greenwich in 1836, the story moves further south. There were good reasons why the early railways had been developed in the north: not only was the demand for better transport great, but that was also where the liquid capital, the enterprise and the engineering skills could all be found. However, with the success of the Liverpool & Manchester, the potential benefits of railways to the rest of Britain became too obvious to ignore and groups of promoters formed in major towns across the country. While it had become clear that Britain was to get a national rail network, its precise nature and routes would be thrashed out in the rather archaic and chaotic parliamentary process. Parliament would set rules for these new companies, restricting them in various ways, but would not initiate the creation of any railway; neither would the government, which showed no interest in determining where the railways would go, let alone planning a network. This was in marked contrast to other European countries where the state played a far more active part in the process. In Belgium, the only country where the railways developed as quickly, after the first line opened in 1835, the government laid out the shape of the network with four main lines departing from a central hub and funded their construction.1
But at least the financing of schemes had been made easier. Until 1826, only the Bank of England was accorded joint stock status, in other words, allowed to have a multitude of investors underpinning its financial activities. Other banks were until then restricted to the amount of capital that could be raised by six people, but once the regulation had been removed several banks operating on the joint stock principle quickly emerged. Moreover, railway companies had a privileged position in relation to other enterprises. Until 1860, they were the only type of companies that could raise capital from more than five people, a restriction imposed on manufacturers following the South Sea Bubble collapse in the eighteenth century. This ensured that the railway companies were the most favoured alternative investment to government stocks. While, at best, the latter yielded 4 per cent, people with a bit of spare cash saw that the Liverpool & Manchester was paying dividends of just under 10 per cent. Crucially, too, railway investors were protected right from the beginning by limited liability – in other words, they could not be held responsible for any losses beyond the amount they had already paid for their shares.
With the creation of a more accessible banking system and the return of a stable political climate, the railway promoters began pushing their schemes once again. The eventual passage of the Reform Act of 1832 had given the vote to a quarter of a million more people, and this important measure began the move towards a democratic society, a process that was speeded up by the arrival of the railways. The feeling that society was changing, coinciding with a brief period of bright economic prospects, encouraged the development of a succession of major new railway projects on a far grander scale than the Liverpo
ol & Manchester. Between 1833 and 1836, a series of Bills were passed by Parliament that were to lay the foundations of the main line network.
The most important were two railways which, though promoted separately, were always envisaged as a joint operation and eventually created a line that ran from London through Birmingham and on to Liverpool and Manchester. The southern part was the London & Birmingham, a 112-mile railway from Euston through Watford, Rugby and Coventry to Birmingham. There it was to meet the 78-mile Grand Junction which ran through Staffordshire to join the Liverpool & Manchester at a junction near Warrington. Again, the Stephensons were ubiquitous. George was the chief engineer for both projects but in practice Joseph Locke did most of the work on the Grand Junction and Robert Stephenson was responsible for the London & Birmingham. The combined two railways were to be six times longer than the Liverpool & Manchester and therefore far more expensive to build, but from the outset the financial case was very strong since the two railways would link up the four major conurbations in the country. Raising the money, therefore, was not the biggest obstacle faced by the promoters; rather, it was the forces of reaction, the landowners and canal owners with their vested interests.
The first attempt at a Bill for the railway between the two Lancashire towns and Birmingham collapsed when the government fell over the failure to push through the Reform Bill. When the Bill for the Grand Junction returned to Parliament, the usual opponents argued strongly against its authorization but surprisingly those who stood to gain so obviously from the cheaper and quicker transport – the Staffordshire iron and pottery makers – jumped on the bandwagon and tried to extract their tuppennyworth, demanding exorbitant sums for land as well as compensation for disturbance. Opposition may have been boosted by the fact that the Grand Junction was a project initiated from the north end of the line, without the involvement of any prominent Birmingham or even Midlands investors, and therefore the local benefits were not immediately apparent. Remarkably, a key objector was James Watt, none other than the son of the great steam-engine pioneer and the owner, thanks to his father’s legacy, of considerable canal interests. He lived in Aston Hall and refused to cede any of his land to the railway company. Reluctant to force a confrontation in Parliament with such a powerful opponent, the company was obliged to reroute the line around the estate to connect with the London & Birmingham at Curzon Street in a station alongside the Grand Junction’s terminus. This was a far less convenient arrangement since it made through-running of trains impossible, and forced passengers to suffer the hassle of changing trains at Birmingham. Moreover, the station was a mile away from the city centre, a journey that cost a shilling in a hackney cab. It was replaced in the 1840s by New Street station, which did allow through-running but Curzon Street’s impressive classical façade survives to this day.2
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