29 John Betjeman, London’s Historic Railway Stations, John Murray, 1972, p. 97.
30 Ibid., p. 99.
31 Jack Simmons, The Railway in Town & Country, 1830–1914, David & Charles, 1986, p. 47.
32 Walter Dexter, The Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. 3, Bloomsbury Nonesuch, 1938, p. 445.
EIGHT: Danger and Exploitation on the Tracks
1 Dr Crippen, who had murdered his wife, was caught despite travelling to America on a ship, thanks to radio signals being sent across the Atlantic requesting his arrest, the first time radio had been used in that way.
2 See O. S. Nock, Historic Railway Disasters, Ian Allan, 1966, p. 28, for a discussion of this issue.
3 As mentioned in a previous footnote, the working timetable is the one that shows the precise times of all trains, including specials, locomotives, goods and excursions, and frequently has different timings from those in the official public timetable.
4 L. T. C. Rolt, Red for Danger, The Bodley Head, 1955, p. 130.
5 That is, if something fails, then it automatically goes into safe mode, the most notable example being a signal.
6 See Adrian Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, John Murray, 1997, p. 255.
7 Ibid., p. 258.
8 Compulsory primary education was not introduced until 1880.
9 R. S. Joby, The Railwaymen, David & Charles, 1984, p. 184.
10 Helena Wojtczak, Railwaywomen, Hastings Press, 2005, p. 360.
11 Previously, the poor victim would have to pay not only for the doctor’s callout but also the splints and bandages, on the assumption that it was always their fault.
12 Joby, The Railwaymen, p. 184.
13 It was originally created as an offshoot of the Railway Clearing House and only assumed the name of Railway Companies Association in 1869.
14 Quoted in Michael Freeman, Railways & Victorian Imagination, Yale, 1999, p. 191.
15 Frank McKenna, The Railway Workers 1840–1970, Faber & Faber, 1980, p. 153.
16 One of the more obscure developments brought about by the railways was the change from drinking ale out of pewter tankards, which were more suitable for the capital’s stouts, to glasses.
17 For the first time ever, this can be seen by passengers as that area is now open to the public as part of the refurbished international station at St Pancras.
18 C. Hamilton Ellis, The Midland Railway, Ian Allan, 1953 (paperback edition, 1966), p. 63.
19 Jack Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales, 1830–1914, Leicester University Press, 1978, p. 84.
NINE: Speeding to Danger
1 O. S. Nock, 150 years of mainline Railways, David & Charles, 1980, p. 89.
2 Stanley Hall, Railway Milestones and Millstones, Ian Allan, 2006, p. 27.
3 C. Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History, 1877–1947, George Allen & Unwin, 1959, p. 17.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 The death toll of passengers from accidents in the 1870s was 394, beating even the 1910s, total of 391, even though it included the worst-ever accident, at Quintinshill, in which 227 perished.
7 Before the introduction of continuous brakes, long passenger trains would generally have more than one guard’s brake van.
8 They work in similar ways. With vacuum brakes, the pressure in the pipes is maintained lower than atmospheric pressure and application of the valve allows air in, applying the brakes. Air brakes have a higher pressure, and the valve releases air, reducing pressure and applying the brakes. Both are failsafe systems because when the line is broken, the brakes come on automatically.
9 O. S. Nock, Historic Railway Disasters, Ian Allan, 1966, p. 51.
10 L. T. C. Rolt, Red for Danger, 4th edn, David & Charles, 1982, p. 163.
11 Jack Simmons, The Railways of Britain, 2nd edn, Macmillan, 1968, p. 165.
12 For once, the railway is taken as the default means of travel, as the neighbouring bridge for motor vehicles is called the Forth Road Bridge.
13 Roger Fulford, ‘Racing to Scotland’, in Bryan Morgan (ed.), The Railway-Lover’s Companion, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963, p. 104.
14 Ibid., p. 107.
15 Nock, Historic Railway Disasters, p. 78.
16 Adrian Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, John Murray, 1997, p. 191.
17 It was an even greater achievement than the figure of 213 miles suggests, since there was nearly twice that amount of actual track involved. Nothing approaching this scale of operation could be carried out today even with the greatly increased level of mechanization.
18 With the exception, since its opening in 2007, of the twelve-mile-long tunnel on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link between St Pancras and Barking, which has a brief open section about halfway at Stratford.
19 Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, p. 231.
20 Although some commentators feel the times were suspect and the locomotive only reached 99 mph.
21 As named by The Times, cited in Nock, 150 Years of Mainline Railways, David & Charles, 1980, p. 84.
22 The Times, 14 September 1895.
23 Alan A. Jackson, London Termini, Pan Books, 1972, p. 225. The present lavish station was not opened until after the First World War.
24 Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History, 1877–1947, p. 16.
25 Nock, Historic Railway Disasters, p. 80.
26 Ibid., p. 84.
TEN: The Only Way to Get There
1 Jack Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830–1914, Leicester University Press, 1978, p. 93.
2 John Pendleton in ‘The Last Main Line’, in Our Railways in The Railway-lover’s Companion, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963 p. 111.
3 Ibid., p. 113.
4 Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830–1914, p. 93.
5 Although a few heavily used freight routes were built in the twentieth century and lines were being built right up to the 1960s to serve new collieries and ironstone quarries.
6 John Betjeman, London’s Historic Railway Stations, John Murray, 1972, p. 177.
7 With the completion of the Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Hampstead railway in 1906–7, no further line was built in central London until the Victoria line opened in 1968 and the Jubilee line completed in 1999.
8 Today, they are not much faster: even using high-speed trains with a top speed of 125 mph, most services, which have slowed since privatization so that companies can avoid being penalized for lateness, take around an hour and three quarters, but this does include stops as there are virtually no longdistance direct trains.
9 Now that route is usually covered at a rate of 100 mph.
10 Philip Unwin, Travelling by Train in the Edwardian Age, George Allen & Unwin, 1979, p. 13.
11 As some trains do today, such as at Watford for long-distance services leaving Euston.
12 The Lancashire & Yorkshire alone used three different systems.
13 Cited in Roger Burdett Wilson, Go Great Western, David & Charles, 1970, p. 24.
14 David St John Thomas, The Country Railway, David & Charles, 1977, p. 113.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., p. 107.
17 Ibid., p. 116.
18 Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830–1914, p. 110.
19 Jack Simmons, The Railways of Britain, 3rd edn, Macmillan, 1986, p. 31.
20 The main line railways each had between £30m and £200m of capital by the turn of the century. Terry Gourvish in Railways and the British Economy 1830–1914, Studies in Economic and Social History, Macmillan, 1980, p. 9, says the capital of the railways in 1913 was £1,330m, with income of around £140m.
21 Gourvish, Railways and the British Economy 1830–1914, p. 10.
22 The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, the General Railway Workers’ Union and the United Pointsmen and Signalmen.
ELEVEN: Fighting Together – Reluctantly
1 Actually forty-eight smaller companies, out of the total of 178, were left to
their own devices.
2 Adrian Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, John Murray, 1997, p. 302.
3 Suggesting there was a bit of padding in the timetable, although that is normal practice on many parts of the rail network today.
4 Quoted in Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, p. 302.
5 Quoted in C. Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History 1877–1947, George Allen & Unwin, 1959, p. 301.
6 Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, p. 301.
7 Jack Simmons, The Railways of Britain, 3rd edn, Macmillan, 1986, p. 34.
8 Ibid., p. 35.
9 According to the local LibDem MP John Thurso, although the road is also considerably shorter in distance.
10 Oddly, it was allowed twenty-two hours southbound.
11 Another was built at Southampton.
12 This number includes wounded German prisoners of war.
13 Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, p. 306.
14 Ibid., p. 304.
15 Ibid., p. 303.
16 Quoted in Frank Ferneyhough, The History of Railways in Britain, Osprey Publishing, 1975, p. 162.
17 The points had to be within 250 yards of their lever and the signals no more than two miles away.
18 Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, p. 310. In order to protect their workers from the criticism that they were dodging military service – many railwaymen were insulted in the streets or sent white feathers – the companies in both wars produced badges carrying the words ‘Railway Service’ to show the men were not cowards.
19 Although they comprised 29 per cent of the workforce at the outbreak of the war.
20 Helena Wojtczak, Railwaywomen, Hastings Press, 2005, p. 44.
21 Although some women did clean engines during the war, a job which normally was the first step on the ladder to becoming a driver, they were all forced out of these jobs soon after the armistice.
22 According to John Westwood in Railways at War, Osprey Publishing, 1980, p. 170, by the end of the war, fifty-two restaurant car services, a seventh of the pre-war total, survived.
23 O. S. Nock, Historic Railway Disasters, Ian Allan, 1966, p. 107.
24 The cost of living was then 106 per cent higher than at the start of the war.
25 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 165.
26 The rail companies had to pay 25 per cent of the early war bonus but later the government covered all the increase.
27 Wojtczak, Railwaywomen, p. 117.
28 Edwin Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, Selwyn & Blount, 1921.
29 Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History 1877–1947, p. 304.
30 Michael Bonavia, The Four Great Railways, David & Charles, 1980, p. 9.
31 C. F. Klapper, Sir Herbert Walker’s Southern Railway, Ian Allan, 1973, p. 12.
32 Ibid., p. 93.
33 Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, p. 317.
TWELVE: Compromise – The Big Four
1 Adrian Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, John Murray, 1997, p. 315.
2 This was a locospotters’ paradise as there were 404 different classes of locomotives!
3 A very early use of this American term in a UK business.
4 C. Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History, 1877–1947, George Allen & Unwin, 1959, p. 329.
5 The initials of the LMS and the LNER are used throughout this chapter as these companies were commonly known by their acronyms.
6 Michael Bonavia, The Four Great Railways, David & Charles, 1980, p. 34.
7 Ibid., p. 66.
8 Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History 1877–1947, p. 321.
9 Third-rail systems are powered by d.c. (direct current) while overhead systems can use either direct current or alternating current (a.c.).
10 This was a factor in the 1999 Ladbroke Grove train crash where it is thought the driver of the Thames train that went through a red light had difficulty seeing the signal because of relatively new gantries installed for Heathrow Express services.
11 Jack Simmons, The Railways of Britain, 2nd edn, Macmillan, 1968, p. 38.
12 Cited in Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History, 1877–1947, pp. 325–6.
13 Today, with around a third of route mileage, the electrified proportion of the British network is well below that of comparable European countries, which average at least half and in some cases far more.
14 The Southern did receive government help in 1935 with a £45m loan towards its electrification programme.
15 Bonavia, The Four Great Railways, p. 6.
16 The unions representing miners, railway workers and dockers had formed a triple alliance vowing to support each other in the event of industrial action.
17 Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History, 1877–1947, p. 340.
18 Interestingly, today’s figures are similar with 1.1bn journeys in 2005 on a much smaller network but with a far bigger population – though there is some double counting as now journeys involving a change are counted as two, which they were not in the days of the Big Four.
19 Philip Unwin, Travelling by Train in the ’Twenties and ’Thirties, George Allen & Unwin, 1981, p. 59.
20 I remember travelling on these trains as a boy in the 1950s and being served teacakes and scones by incredibly friendly and efficient waiters.
21 Unwin, Travelling by Train in the ’Twenties and ’Thirties, p. 14.
22 Quoted in Bonavia, The Four Great Railways, p. 100.
23 Geoffrey Freeman Allen, The Illustrated History of British Railways, Basinghall Books, 1981, p. 116.
24 Bonavia, The Four Great Railways, p. 110.
25 It was the modern version of that train which was involved in the Ladbroke Grove train disaster in which thirty-one people were killed in October 1999.
26 Pacific is the name given to engines based on the wheel arrangement of 4-6-2, which means there are four bogie wheels, six large driving wheels, and two trailing wheels at the back. This very common type of locomotive was first developed by the Southern Pacific in the USA.
27 Today’s schedules give a best service from London to Glasgow at just under four and a half hours.
28 Unwin, Travelling by Train in the ’Twenties and ’Thirties, p. 61.
29 Don Hale, Mallard, Aurum Press, 2005, p. 44.
30 It has some similarities with Johnston, the typeface designed for the precursor of London Underground in 1915, and which, slightly updated as New Johnston, is still in use today.
31 The history is set out in Roger Burdett Wilson, Go Great Western, David & Charles, 1970.
32 Long before the idea of ‘integrated’ transport became a politicians’ catchword.
33 Simmons, The Railways of Britain, p. 41.
34 For more detail on London Transport’s 1930s heyday, see Christian Wolmar, The Subterranean Railway, Atlantic Books, 2004, chapter 13, pp. 254 ff.
35 Simmons, The Railways of Britain, p. 42.
THIRTEEN: And Then There Was One
1 It was intended to mean that munitions trains should have priority!
2 Helena Wojtczak in Railwaywomen: exploitation, betrayal and triumph in the workplace, Hastings Press, 2005, p. 185, cites the case of a woman signal worker who was receiving £5 10s after deductions compared with just £1 10s as a teacher.
3 Reg Robertson, Steaming through the war years, Oakwood Press, 1996, p. 5.
4 David Wragg, Signal Failure, Sutton Publishing, 2004, p. 100. The Great Western had, in fact, supplied the least, just forty compared with Southern’s fifty-five.
5 C. Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History, 1877–1947, George Allen & Unwin, 1959, p. 377.
6 ‘Knowing the road’ is essential for safety as the driver needs to know all the features of a track, such as the position of signals, the gradients and the curves, to be able to operate safely and therefore a driver is not allowed to be in control of a train on tracks where he has not been before.
7 There is a fantastically detailed article on compiling timetables by G. E. Willi
ams in H. A. Vallance (ed.), The Railway Enthusiast’s Bedside Book, B. T. Batsford, 1966, p. 33. The diagram was often done with the help of weighted strings pinned to the top of a board with the x axis as time, and the y axis the route, a simple but time-consuming effort.
8 Wojtczak, Railwaywomen, p. 151.
9 This is virtually the same number as in 2006. As mentioned in the previous chapter, today’s network is about two thirds the size, while the population is nearly double, and of course the market share of the railways is now far smaller.
10 O. S. Nock quotes this himself in his 150 Years of Mainline Railways, David & Charles, 1980, p. 134.
11 The formula was based on pre-war revenues and ranged from 34.3 per cent for LMS and 23.6 per cent for LNER to 15.5 for Great Western, 15.4 per cent for Southern and 11.2 per cent for London Transport.
12 Terry Gourvish, British Railways 1948–1973, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 16.
13 These figures are from the official history of British Railways: Terry Gourvish’s British Railways 1948–1973, p. 5.
14 According to Terry Gourvish, precise financial and usage details during this period are difficult to obtain because of the complex accounting arrangements established by the government.
15 Hansard, House of Commons, 17 December 1946, Vol. 439, col. 1809.
16 Gourvish, British Railways 1948–1973, p. 27.
17 In compensation for the forgone profits in the war, and the damage caused to the railways, British Railways was eventually given around £210m for investment.
18 The name British Railways had no official status until the 1960s as the organization was technically the Railways Executive of the BTC.
19 My personal copy of the ABC is dated 1963, when there were still thousands of steam locomotives and ‘bunking’ a shed with its engines in steam and the complete absence of security was a memorable experience.
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