In the same era, on the same channel, Reggie Perrin was staging his own more surreal rebellion against corporate conformity and middle-aged angst by faking his own suicide. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin1 is remembered for David Nobbs’ nifty scripts, splendid character acting (led by Leonard Rossiter as Reggie) and catchphrases such as ‘I didn’t get where I am today by . . .’.
There was also the running gag in which Reggie would march into his office, unsuccessfully throw his umbrella at the hatstand and announce to his secretary, ‘Eleven minutes late, Joan’, followed by a familiar railway excuse: ‘staff difficulties, Hampton Wick’; or ‘defective junction box, New Malden’; or ‘defective axle at Wandsworth’; or (finally) ‘Twenty-two minutes late, escaped puma, Chessington North’.2
Reggie was said to live in ‘Climthorpe’, but on TV he was regularly seen leaving his detached suburban villa, and marching past Frederick W. Paine’s funeral parlour to the station at Norbiton (just up the road from Surbiton) to catch a train due in at Waterloo at 0858, or more usually 0909 due to staff difficulties, defective junction box etc.
Perhaps the Goods and the Perrins knew each other socially. But unlike Surbiton, Norbiton is so obscure that most viewers alert enough to notice the name probably thought it was made up. It does exist, though, and has become popular among clued-up locals because it is in Transport for London’s Zone 5 compared to Surbiton’s Zone 6, making fares to Waterloo cheaper.
It’s hard for those of us who remember the original series to realize that if Reggie were real, he would have been long retired by now. In his day Norbiton would not have had self-storage warehouses, nightclubs, Japanese delis and Oriental fusion restaurants, as it does now. The commuters would not have carried BlackBerries, iPods, Nokias, Macchiatos or semi-compulsory bottled water. Frederick W. Paine is still in place though, rebranded as ‘funeral directors and memorial consultants’ with a new sign in fetching maroon.
If this doesn’t sound too much like a piece of Sherlock Holmes scholarship, Reggie’s train must have been what is now the 0828, due at Waterloo 0857. He sat with the crossword in a compartment of six. Now the train is a Class 455, with no toilets3 or first-class, essentially a glorified bus. The day I travelled, about fifty people were in my carriage from Norbiton and we ran out of seats at Raynes Park. Reggie would not have recognized his fellow-passengers. Only one was wearing a tie. But in his day, outward conformity sometimes disguised inner rebelliousness; this lot seemed the reverse, casually dressed, slavish in their attitude – and they lined up at the exact place to get into the open doors like well-trained dogs.
Only two were reading paid-for newspapers, though about fifteen were reading the give-away. Nearly half were women; at a guess, about a third were foreign. The train was efficient and on time; the passengers all looked tired, joyless and put-upon. Reggie would have recognized that all right.
Norbiton does not have much of a reputation but Surbi-ton’s image is accurate enough. It was probably the first suburb in the world to be created by the railway. The royal borough of Kingston upon Thames was a centre for the coaching trade, and uninterested in the blandishments of the new-fangled London & Southampton Railway. So the line was built through Surbiton, which was just a nearby hamlet, with a station originally called Kingston-upon-Railway, opened in 1838. And of course it grew.
Surbiton was dominated by commuters before the word assumed its present meaning (a person who holds a cheap or commutation ticket). And its function has not changed in 170 years. The last bowler hat may have retired and ties have almost followed, but there still cannot be much point in living here unless you take one of the ten trains an hour into Waterloo. The self-conscious 1930s modern station is much admired, though to me it seems far too reminiscent of a toy garage; the pub next door (The Surbiton Flyer) is characterless, like the rest of the high street. There are far better places to keep goats.
For Philip Unwin, however, it was a wonderful place to grow up. He was a publisher (his greatest business coup was unearthing the explorer Thor Heyerdahl’s account of the Kon-Tiki expedition) and part-time railway nostalgist and none of his memories is more evocative than his account of a well-off Edwardian family’s holiday from the old Surbiton station.
For most of the day after the rush hour the middle platform was shut to the public while fast trains roared through but it was opened up for the fast Portsmouth train and for the ‘West of England Express’ (as the staff rather grandly termed the semi-fast corridor train for Exeter and Plymouth) . . . Even the stationmaster himself would usually be upon the platform to see these important trains away and to make sure a large party like ours found its ENGAGED carriage safely . . .
The first premonition of the delights to come was the titter-titter of the signal wires below the platform edge . . . Next came the loud ring of the big electric bell on the outside-wall of the waiting room . . . in another minute or so, the great moment was at hand and the front of the engine appeared round the gentle curve of the deep cutting by which Joseph Locke, builder of the line, had sliced through Surbiton Hill seventy years before.
Variety was one of the great charms of railways then, and the locomotive might be one of three or four different types from an old 4–4–0 or a newer 4–4–0 to one of the latest 4–6–0s designed by that fierce old Scot, Dugald Drummond. To be able to identify it correctly at some distance was an essential of boyish pride. As it approached, free-wheeling easily with steam shut off and the vacuum brake being applied, a bluish haze hung over the train . . .
Engine and its separate tender swayed independently for a second or two as they swept over the points, due probably to the three or four thousand gallons of water sloshing about in the tender, then in came the train. As usual it seemed to miss the platform edge by only an inch or two, wheels rattled heavily and rhythmically over the rail joints and over all was that delectable, unforgettable whiff of coal smoke, steam and warm oil.
There are no frock coats or 4–6–0s or whiffs of coal smoke at Surbiton now. And even South West Trains’ faster trains (whatever happened to that lovely word ‘express’?) are pretty sluggish and oppressively cramped. There was an incident, reported in the Sunday Times, on a train to Waterloo in 2008 when a particularly officious conductor ordered passengers to sit down. ‘Will all passengers sit down for their own safety,’ she barked. ‘Now! I’ve told you once already.’
There followed one of those rare and wonderful moments in modern British life: a Perrinesque show of spirit from members of the public against overbearing authority. Inured to standing, repeatedly told by officials to get used to standing and in any case uninterested in the small, squashed middle seats that had miraculously become available, the standing passengers stayed where they were.
‘It’s the rules, so sit down!’ screeched the conductor. ‘You’ve made your point,’ replied one commuter. ‘Now do shut up.’
The incident brought forth a suggestion from economist Dr Tim Leunig of the London School of Economics, who suggested ripping out all the seats in some commuter carriages and reinstituting third-class, with much cheaper fares, for those passengers content to stand. Now that would have brought a smile to the face of Philip Unwin, and any other railway historian of his era. Because . . .
Faster, Cheaper, Plusher
James Allport was general manager of the Midland Railway for all but three of the years between 1853 and 1880. He was one of the driving forces in the expansion of the company’s network north to Scotland and south into St Pancras. Then in the early 1870s, with the company mired in the heroic, hubristic battle to complete the Settle & Carlisle route, he suddenly broke free of the mental shackles that had imprisoned British railway thinking, and did so in two contrasting directions.
Aware that the Midland’s tortuous new line would never compete with its rivals on speed, he decided to trump them on comfort. In 1872 he went over to the US and met George Pullman, the pioneer of luxury train travel, and arranged for the Pullman company to operate sleeping cars on
the Midland. The new trains appeared in 1874 with great bronze lamps instead of what C. Hamilton Ellis called ‘smoky stinkpots’, an oil-fired heater and crimson plush . . . the British had never seen anything like it.
Allport brought in corridor trains and more comfortable six-wheel carriages, with twelve-wheelers for the Scottish run, all of which was within the rules of fair competition as understood by his rival managers. And before dining cars became general, he stopped his trains at Normanton, widely believed to have the least worst railway food in the country. Most crucially, he also announced that henceforth there would be third-class compartments on all Midland trains instead of confining the proles to the slowest services. In 1875 the Midland reduced its first-class fares, abolished second-class, and immediately upgraded its third-class carriages with upholstered seats and more acceptable legroom. This was not playing fair at all, and the other companies were very cross indeed. But they had to respond and, as a result, slatted seats were abolished throughout Britain, except on the ‘paddy trains’ reserved for the grimiest of pitmen and labourers travelling to and from their shift. Italians were still riding in such carriages a century later.
In retirement, Sir James, as he now was, looked back on these decisions in a manner that can only be read with justice to the sound of plaintive violins.
I have felt saddened to see third-class passengers shunted on to a siding in cold and bitter weather – a train containing amongst others many lightly-clad women and children – for the convenience of allowing the more comfortable and warmly-clad passengers to pass them. I have even known third-class trains to be shunted into a siding to allow express goods to pass. When the rich man travels, or if he lies in bed, his capital remains undiminished, and perhaps his income flows in all the same. But when the poor man travels, he has not only to pay his fare, but to sink his capital, for his time is his capital; and if he now consumes only five hours instead of ten in making a journey, he has saved five hours of time for useful labour – useful to himself, his family and to society. And I think with even more pleasure of the comfort in travelling we have been able to confer on women and children. But it took 25 years to get it done.
He would presumably never have convinced his board if this was intended as pure philanthropy. ‘Our only objects are to increase the profits of the Midland Company,’ the chairman E. S. Ellis assured worried shareholders, alarmed at the health of their seven per cent dividends. It was good business because passenger numbers were now increasing exponentially, and the growth was in third-class, not first.
Surbiton had not started an immediate trend, and there were very few new suburbs specifically created by the railway before 1870. But now they proliferated, especially to the north and east of London in places like Tottenham, Walthamstow and Edmonton. These old villages now had to house the very people bulldozed out of the inner city by the railway companies, who thus skilfully managed to convert them into regular customers. The main beneficiary was the Great Eastern Railway, which offered cheap fares and brought the working-class into London in huge numbers: Walthamstow had more than a hundred trains a day to London by 1914, including a half-hourly all-night service designed for Fleet Street print workers. Unlike Allport, the Great Eastern did not derive much pleasure from conferring comfort.
However, change was coming fast by the 1890s. Parliament became increasingly interventionist, and it became harder for railways to avoid all kinds of obligations, including cheap fares, and compensation to those who lost their homes. Politicians’ attempts to regulate the railways’ freight monopoly were more cack-handed and for a time led to higher prices rather than lower. Then they just imposed a price freeze, which caused terrible trouble later. But for passengers of all classes, the experience of travel at the turn of the century was far better than it had been. The broad gauge was finally abolished in 1892, and the country at last had a unified railway system. Five thousand men performed the conversion work over a single weekend, and ‘through the liberality of Mr Wills, of Bristol, one of the Great Western directors’ they were each served with 2oz of tobacco. Above all, trains were less uncomfortable, as we have seen, and they were faster.
During the mad, magnificent month of August 1895, the east coast and west coast lines started racing each other from London to Aberdeen, a journey that before the Forth and Tay Bridges had taken more than fourteen hours but was now just eight and a half.4 It thrilled the public, who flocked to the stations to cheer the combatants, and an excited Times correspondent who announced: ‘I can boast to have flown from the Thames to the Tay in the short darkness of a summer’s night.’ It appears to have been less of a thrill for some of the passengers trapped aboard these careering monsters, especially if they then got dumped on Dundee station at four in the morning. The battle cooled, although the renewed emphasis on speed persisted, not merely in the north but also in the west, where the Great Western had long considered itself above such childish tricks. Racing in slightly less obvious form continued until a serious crash at Preston a year later put a damper on the fun.
There was even a new competitor, a fourth line to the north, the Great Central – forced through in the 1890s by the splendidly combative Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, the Metropolitan Railway and the South Eastern Railway, whose dream was to put this ragbag portfolio together, slip a tunnel under the Channel and create a route from Manchester to Paris. He did achieve the first part of his aim, the Great Central, built through virgin country from Annesley Junction north of Nottingham to a new London station at Marylebone.
Just about everyone tried to stop the Great Central. The only substantial places it served were Nottingham, Leicester and Rugby, all of which, as the other companies argued, had plenty of trains already. And he had a far more influential opponent than his bleating rivals: the Marylebone Cricket Club, since he was planning to blithely run his trains across the Nursery Ground at Lord’s. But Watkin knew how to make a deal, eventually got the right to tunnel underneath Lord’s (in exchange for giving MCC the site of the nearby Clergy Female Orphanage School), and one way and another got the route open in 1899. No one else seemed to know quite what it was for. There was talk about the northern coalfields and the Grimsby fish docks but the Great Central never paid a dividend, and most of it was despatched in Dr Beeching’s cuts, against only token opposition, less than seventy years later.
Its remnant, the Chiltern Line, still rumbles under Lord’s on its way to the gin-and-tonic belt of Buckinghamshire. And Marylebone now has the charming new service from Wrexham and Gobowen to cheer things up. But it has always been a very subdued terminus.
Watkin was right enough about the need for a Channel Tunnel, though it is characteristic of British railway history that the visionaries see the right things at the wrong time. The Great Central was built to a higher specification than most earlier lines, with more space. If it existed now, it would never be closed: it would be a vital freight route to Europe, unclogging the other routes. Watkin was a hundred years ahead of his time. He had some idea about the twenty-first century but, like his competitors, had not got the foggiest what was about to whack him over the head in the twentieth. In 1899 there were only thirty-three petrol stockists for all the automobiles in Britain.
The Absurdity! The Impertinence!
In 1900 an article appeared in the Railway Magazine with the cheering title ‘Decline and Fall of Britain’. This might have referred to just about anything: in this case it was the relative speeds of express trains. Ten years earlier, said the author, Charles Rous-Marten, a study had shown that British trains were the fastest in the world: ‘it was a case of England first, and the rest nowhere!’
But, he went on, ‘the hard, unpalatable fact is that we are as completely beaten now as all other countries then. It is childish and unworthy to blink at the truth’. Despite the higher speeds of the 1890s, Britain had been overtaken: it had five express runs, that is between individual stations, scheduled at more than
55mph, compared to twenty-six in the US and twenty-seven in France. The US had four runs over 66mph. The figures for complete journeys were even more damning. A ‘home-made humiliation’, Rous-Marten called it, ‘if smartness and progress be any credit or advantage to a nation’.
If he found those figures humiliating, it was lucky Rous-Marten was not around in 2008 when only one train in Britain, the Eurostar, could go even half the speed of the Shanghai maglev. But, all in all, Britain’s railway companies were not in triumphalist mood at the start of the new century.
On 1 January 19015 there was news in the financial columns of a boom in American railroad shares: ‘the reports of the Vanderbilt Western lines for the calendar year have served to add to the feeling of confidence and strength so widely prevailing’. Meanwhile, their British equivalents were deflated, with dividend cuts expected later in the year. And the reality was grim too, with terrible New Year weather causing floods, landslides and a near-disaster on a weakened bridge in Leicestershire.
Two years later the £100 stock of the largest British company, London & North Western, had fallen further from £179 to £169, and at the annual meeting, Lord Stalbridge, the chairman, was stung by criticism from dissident shareholders who were advocating the introduction of American business and accounting methods that would offer a clearer breakdown of the firm’s various activities.
‘Is it just or reasonable,’ Stalbridge enquired, ‘that the management of your railway, conducted as it is by highly experienced officials, who have had a life-training in the service, and who have been selected because of their special qualifications for the positions they occupy, should be condemned wholesale by gentlemen who have no practical acquaintance with these difficult and technical questions?’
‘The absurdity, not to say the impertinence of this attitude!’ responded one of his critics, Percy Williams, in a tract called Our Decrepit Railway System. The London & North Western had long had a reputation, as the Manchester Guardian put it, for both autocracy and complacency: ‘Its brains and influence appear sometimes to be more earnestly engaged in discovering and creating obstacles to progress than in removing them.’ And, as the leader of the industry, it must be seen to a large extent as its embodiment.
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