Locke had appreciated from the time that he was first appointed as Chief Engineer to the Grand Junction, that there was always the possibility that it would form part of a through route to Scotland and in 1836 he published a report setting out his ideas: The London & Glasgow Railroad through Lancashire. He had a mental picture of where the line should go, though he had never carried out a proper survey. The first ‘official’ guide to the railway that was eventually built was written in 1855 by George Measom and it vividly describes the choice faced by the young engineer:
The genius of Joseph Locke showed itself. He grappled with the mountain region of Westmorland, and looked steadily at the summits and valleys which had deterred others. Whether to bend round by Kirkby Lonsdale and Appleby, or to keep more westward by Kendal and Penrith; whether to tunnel under the bleak Shap Fell, or to ascend the passes between its summit by steep inclines, or to avoid it altogether by a detour; whether to make tunnels and viaducts and embankments or steep gradients?
His eventual decision was to opt for the tunnel and Shap Fell. He never, it seems, even contemplated taking a more roundabout route along the coast.
George Stephenson also looked at the possibilities of heading north from Lancaster. He had taken an ‘ocular survey’ of likely routes, setting off on 1 August 1837. The first part of his journey took him up the east coast, after which he investigated the route that would cross Shap Fell and would follow the Lune Valley. He dismissed the Shap route as impractical in his report written on 16 August:
There is a very serious consideration which has not been sufficiently regarded by companies projecting Railways over high countries, namely, the great length of winters, the quantity of snow falling on high lands, and the length of time it remains upon the ground. These disadvantages coupled with the effect produced by the ice upon the rails, will, in my opinion, be an insurmountable difficulty to the passing of the Shap ridge, especially as the inclinations at the summit must be steep.
His preferred route was along the flat land of the east coast, which would be reached by building a barrage across Morecambe Bay. Although it was longer, he estimated that because of the difficulties of the inland route it would be just as quick, and would be considerably cheaper to build. He concluded, ‘I have no hesitation in expressing my decided conviction of the superiority of the Coast line.’
Arguments went backwards and forwards and Stephenson continued to find new objections to the Locke route, including stating that the route was ‘attained by pursuing the sinuosities of mountain valleys, where every now and then the direct course is obstructed by obtruding eminences which, after much cutting, still require to be passed round in considerable curves.’ He thought that even when travelling at ‘mailcoach speed’ the train was likely to be derailed. Locke ignored this criticism but did consider some alternatives to his original idea, though still keeping well inland. A third engineer, George Larmer, joined in the fray with yet another alternative, through Orton with a tunnel under Orton Scar. Still nothing much happened, and an exasperated citizen of Kendal, Cornelius Nicholson, who owned a local paper mill decided to make the case for the railway to be brought to his home town, and published a pamphlet to argue the case. The result was a public meeting and the formation of a separate Kendal Committee, who came up with yet two more routes. Someone at some time had to start taking decisions.
The whole question of what was to be the best rail route between England and Scotland was to be decided by a Royal Commission headed by Lt. Col. Sir Frederic Smith and Professor Peter Barley, a mathematician from the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. They not only had to decide between these competing schemes, but also as it was generally agreed at that time that one line would be quite enough to join the two countries, whether it should be built in the west at all. Stephenson’s preferred route was an early casualty, in part because the Admiralty objected to the construction of the barrage across Morecambe Bay. This would have come as no surprise to another engineer. Brunel had little but contempt for that body of men: ‘they have an unlimited supply of some negative principle which seems to absorb and eliminate everything that approaches them.’ Eventually they decided on the western line, but were still uncertain about the route up the Lune valley and suspicious about the practicality of the proposed tunnel. They also suggested that the line could usefully be brought nearer to Kendal, to the delight of Cornelius Nicholson. Unfortunately, by the time they reported, the country was undergoing a financial slump and there were no funds for railway construction of any kind. The different plans were put back on the shelf.
Eventually, a second Commission was appointed, and this time they were happy to agree that there was room for two routes to Scotland, and saw no objection to a line from Newcastle to Edinburgh. This spurred everyone into action. Public meetings were called and there was a new sense of urgency – things had to be agreed so that work could start before the rivals on the east coast established their route over the border and grabbed all the traffic. The agreed route was the one proposed by the Grand Junction with the co-operation of the Lancaster & Preston Junction: Locke’s route over Beattock summit, but without any tunnel. Everything finally seemed set for construction to start when new objections appeared. There was opposition from residents of the Lune valley, who didn’t want a railway at all, and Lord Lowther raised objections to the route passing through Lowther as it was too close to his magnificent Lowther Castle. Even some Grand Junction shareholders objected to the line, on the grounds that there weren’t enough people en route to make it pay ‘unless the crows were to contract with the railway people to be conveyed at low fares.’ But by the end of 1843 most objections had been withdrawn and the way was open to prepare a Bill for Parliament. It was passed the following year with no real scrutiny – which was just as well as plans had been drawn up so hurriedly that one section had actually been copied from an old county map. Finally work could get under way, but thanks to all the delays the east coast route being pushed ahead under the auspices of the Railway King, George Hudson, already had a substantial lead in the race to Scotland.
There was such an intense sense of urgency in the Lancaster and Carlisle camp that tenders for the construction contract were invited even before the Act had been obtained. In his biography of William Mackenzie (2004), David Brooke describes how the main contractors got together in a spot of price fixing. The cheapest estimate was supplied by John Stephenson, who had previously worked on the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway. The other bids were put in by Brassey and Mackenzie. But before any of them were sent to the Company, they persuaded Stephenson to increase the value of his bid and they would increase theirs, but would be still kept higher than his price. In return, they would receive a ‘bonus’ of £20,000. It would seem that Brassey and Mackenzie were not too keen on this difficult route, but wanted something out of the process. In the event, the company directors were reluctant to hand the whole contract to Stephenson on his own and persuaded the three of them to combine forces to undertake the work. So everything was now in place, with Locke as Chief Engineer, Errington as Resident Engineer and the newly formed trilogy of contractors to undertake all the construction.
Discussions about the route went on to the very end. Locke’s first plans had included a tunnel, but his distaste for tunnelling in general soon led to him considering alternatives. His final route did not please everyone. Among the most vociferous supporters of the line were the citizens of Kendal, but now their nearest station would be 2 miles away at Oxenholme. Instead of a tunnel, the new line would simply go up and over the hills, which would involve first of all a journey down the Lune gorge and a climb up Grayrigg to a height of 600 feet, the last part being a 2-mile run at 1 in 106. This was already an extreme gradient, but it was followed at Tebay by a 4-mile climb up Shap Fell at the unprecedented gradient of 1 in 75. After that effort, the 7-mile run down to Carlisle must have seemed quite modest at 1 in 125. Locke could have suggested that the loss of time involved in puffing up one side would
be saved by the high speed created going down, but that would have given many investors an alarming vision of a locomotive and its train dashing out of control down the steepest slope. He had, in fact, carried out experiments on gradients and had discovered that on a 1 in 250 slope, a carriage only just began to move, overcoming air resistance and friction. On any greater slope, a braking system would be essential. Like most engineers of that time, who had learned on the job rather than in the classroom, he relied far more on experiment than on theory. His experiments satisfied him that gradients needed to be taken seriously but that he was confident about safety.
The most likely objection to the proposed route over Shap was the obvious one: the gradient was simply too steep. He put the case that though it was difficult in the present state of locomotive development, a time would come when engines would climb the slope with little problem. He was right in his assumption, but it was not to happen in his lifetime, nor even in his century. His final argument, which probably persuaded the financiers of the Company, was that though it would be costly to run, the extra cost would be more than compensated by the reduced costs of construction. Again, he was right in the short term, but the costs of getting trains up to the Shap summit lasted well beyond the point where they were covered by construction savings. For many decades, banking engines had to be kept at Tebay to help in the long haul up the slope: a tedious job for the crews, who spent their days going up and down the same stretch of line over and over again.
The first sod was cut in the summer of 1844, just a month after the passing of the act and, by the end of the year, it was reported that 3,761 men were employed on the line, while 387 horses had been set to work moving spoil and bringing material to the sites. By then work was going on at seventy-five different sites along the whole route. It was only after work was well under way that the Company revised their original shortsighted decision to build the line as a single track, which would have had a disastrous effect on running an efficient service, and opted for a more conventional double track. This necessarily involved extra work and extra costs, especially on the most difficult work at Shap. The cutting there had to be blasted out of what was described as hard whinstone rock, something of a tautology, as ‘whinstone’ simply means hard rock and the name comes from the noise it makes when hit with a hammer. In fact they had to make their way through one of the hardest of all rocks, granite.
The cutting was a quarter of a mile long and sixty feet deep and involved the removal of 350,000 cubic yards of material. Five hundred men worked at Shap for two years and used 23 tons of gunpowder to blast their way through. A contemporary guide was probably an accurate representation of the attitude towards the navvies who carried out the dangerous work:
Few lives were sacrificed during the progress of this great work, considering the number of men engaged here, the length of time, and their kind of employment; and more especially their miserably deficient state of education, which when liberally given assists materially towards making more skilful workmen and better subjects.
The implication is that the men were too ill-educated to look after themselves properly and take care of their own safety. There was no suggestion that their employers might take some of that responsibility on their behalf. It was not that the contractors were bad employers by the standards of the time: it was generally accepted that accidents were unavoidable and probably the fault of the men involved. It is difficult to judge how the death rates compared on different lines, since accurate records were seldom kept. In fact Stephenson, Brassey and Mackenzie did far more for their navvies than many other contractors did at that time.
It is hard now to realise just how remote and wild this region was at the time. Today the railway is overshadowed by the M6 and cars zoom along with no awareness of gradients or problems. But then it was inhospitable and only thinly populated, though there was a scheme to turn Shap into a fashionable spa, hopefully named Shap Wells. It never materialised. To meet the men’s needs the contractors built huts with sod walls and thatched roofs, described by the Railway Record as offering a standard of comfort ‘which surpasses all belief’, unlikely as it may sound. They also provided a church and school room. The navvies gave their little settlement names with a nice touch of irony – Regent Street and Hanover Square were two of the thoroughfares lined with their mud hovels.
With so many hard-working, hard-living men crowded together, there were inevitably some hard cases who caused trouble. The neighbourhood where the work was being carried on was plagued by accounts of drunken behaviour, especially after the monthly payday. There were also more serious claims of theft and even rape. There was little the authorities could do. There were few police – no more than eight special constables on the whole line. When a fight broke out between eight navvies, the local constable refused to arrest them on the very reasonable grounds that he didn’t have a gaol to put them in. The most serious problems occurred due to rivalries between the different groups at work – English, Scots and Irish. The English, it was said, were happy to join in any fight that was going but the real antagonism was between the Scots and Irish. In part it was the old antagonism between Protestant Scots and Catholic Irish, but there was a more mundane cause of hostility. The Irish were accused of working for lower wages. There were frequent skirmishes and the contractors did their best to keep the three groups apart. But the biggest trouble of all began with a minor incident.
At workings near Penrith an English ganger ordered an Irishman to stop working with a pickaxe and start using a shovel. He refused and the Irish on the site were told to leave. The next day, the Irish returned in force: an estimated 500 turned up armed with picks and shovels and the English wisely disappeared. The Irish returned to Penrith and the word came that 2,000 English navvies were about to attack them. This time it was the Irish who were outnumbered. Most of them fled the scene, but a few tried to remain in hiding in Penrith. A dozen of the Irish were found in a lodging house and brutally attacked: ‘It was a regular butchery, and could be compared with nothing else than turning rats into a box and as many laying on with sticks as could get near them.’ One of the most violent ringleaders, John Hobday, was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years transportation.
A select committee was set up by Parliament to enquire into the conditions of the navvies, but was largely concerned with their moral welfare. Among those giving evidence was the Rev. William St George Sargent who had been appointed by a benefactor to act as chaplain to the navvies, but scarcely had a good word to say about them. His main complaints appear to have been that they didn’t know their Bibles and were likely to be living with women without the benefit of an official marriage, all of which was probably true. It is easy to get a picture of them, as indeed they were described in the report of 1846, as ‘degraded brutes’ living ‘like savages’. But it is as well to remember that while the local press recorded every misdemeanour, no one was interested in reading accounts that simply said – thousands of men at work, getting on with the job peacefully and quietly. There were troubles, but others took a very different view of the men. A reporter from the Railway Record wrote: ‘I never saw so great a number of the finest and stoutest workmen together. They are the admiration of all.’ They were the men who had the strength and the skills to turn Locke’s grand plans into physical reality.
What is indisputable is that the work was carried out with extraordinary speed. By 1846 in the dash to beat the eastern route, the workforce had grown to almost 10,000 and work was going on day and night. By 5 November the directors were able to make the 70-mile journey from Lancaster to Carlisle and on 15 December the line was officially opened with all the usual ceremonies. It had been a triumph for Locke who had planned the route, Errington, the man on the ground, the three contractors and for the thousands of men from navvies to skilled carpenters and masons who had made it all possible. At the heart of this success, however, was Locke’s planning. One can have an army of workers but unless it has been made crystal clear as to e
xactly what they are supposed to do, the result is as liable to be confusion as progress. The engineer had not only drawn up his plans with care, but had ensured that everything was clearly explained to the contractors with carefully written instructions and specifications. Everyone knew what was required and Locke and Errington made sure between them that the instructions were fully and correctly followed. It also helped that the engineers were not having to deal with several small contractors but with a consortium of proven talents and experience.
The emphasis has inevitably been on the Shap cutting and climb, but there were other immense structures to be completed along the way. One of the first, on leaving Lancaster was the viaduct across the Lune, which was originally built with seven stone arches on the south bank and one on the north bank, in between which were three timber spans rising 55 feet above the river. Unusually for a railway viaduct it also had a footbridge, separated from the tracks by railings. It was not destined to last long in that form: most of the timber was soon being replaced, originally with wrought iron. There have been further changes since, and Locke’s original viaduct is little more than a memory. The next major obstacle was the deep cutting on the approach to Carnforth. The station achieved fame in the twentieth century as the setting for the movie Brief Encounter. The refreshment room where Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson met has now been restored to look just as it did on film and has become a heritage centre.
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