Commuter City: How the Railways Shaped London

By David Wragg

On the eve of the railway age, London was the worlds largest and most populous city and one of the most congested. Traffic-clogged roads and tightly packed buildings meant that travel across the city was tortuous, time-consuming and unpleasant. Then came the railways. They transformed the city and set it on a course of extraordinary development that created the metropolis of the present day. This is story that David Wragg explores in his fascinating new book. He considers the impact of the railways on London and the Home Counties and analyzes the decisions taken by the railway companies, Parliament and local government. He also describes the disruptive effect of the railways which could not be built without massive upheaval. His study of the railway phenomenon will be thought-provoking reading for anyone who is keen to understand the citys expansion and the layout of the capital today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 19, 2010
• ISBN: 9781844685264

Book preview

Introduction

The slightest addition to the ordinary traffic of the City would make the streets impassable. The mere increase of the metropolis itself must bring about the same result, unless the main thoroughfares should be constantly widened.

The Times, 1863

‘I am happy to carry more people for more money,’ Sir Herbert Ashcombe Walker, the first general manager of the Southern Railway explained to the then John Elliot, his public relations assistant. ‘I don’t mind carrying fewer people for more money, but what you are asking me to do is to carry more people for less money, and that’s the way to go bankrupt. You will remember that won’t you?’

Elliot clearly did remember for, in later years, as Sir John Elliot, chairman of the Railways Executive and of London Transport, he oversaw organisations that were indeed carrying fewer people for more money.

But that is to move on almost 120 years from the early days of the railways in London in the 1830s to the one period when all of London’s scheduled passenger transport was in a single ownership, that of the state, whose public persona was that of the British Transport Commission. This was a rare and in fact short-lived period, following the nationalisation of Britain’s main line railways in 1948 and long before the break-up of the first British nationalised transport undertaking, London Transport, and the later privatisation of the railways.

We need to go back to the beginning. On the eve of the railway age, London was already the world’s largest and most populous city in the world. In 1801, a census of the Greater London area, somewhat larger in size than that of the Greater London Council, which was established in 1965, showed that there were 1,110,000 people living there. By 1841, this had more than doubled to 2,250,000, and the population continued to grow until it reached 6,381,000 in 1901; and eventually 8,187,000 by 1964.

During the early nineteenth century, London was already closely built-up, mainly in and around the twin cities of London and Westminster and the immediate suburbs. West of Marble Arch was open fields. Most of the development was north of the Thames, while south of the river the land was flat and marshy; but already areas such as Southwark contained a tightly-packed overflow from the more expensive, and healthier, accommodation available north of the river. While the Thames was a natural barrier to the south, to the north, some three to five miles back, there were heights such as those around Hampstead Heath, which also helped to define the limits of the old city, much of which dated from the Roman era. The spread of London downstream had already started, with the first enclosed docks built in the previous century.

The West End of London ended at Marble Arch, beyond which were large farms and small villages to the west, one of which was Paddington. Such development as lay to the west was along the banks of the Thames.

Onto this scene emerged the early railways, but at first their impact was hardly noticeable as London’s first recorded railway was the Surrey Iron Railway of 1803, which was horse-drawn and used solely for the conveyance of freight to and from the riverside at Wandsworth. Nevertheless, the congested roads and densely-packed property of all types meant that travel within London was difficult and time consuming, as well as often unpleasant. This was the driving force behind the first two London railways: the London & Greenwich, authorised in 1833 and opened between Spa Road and Deptford in February 1836, and then Spa Road to London Bridge that December, with Deptford to Greenwich in December 1838; and the London & Blackwall Railway, authorised in 1836 as the Commercial Railway, and opened after a change of terminus from the Minories to Fenchurch Street and a change of name to the London & Blackwall Railway, in 1840. To minimise the impact on the property along the routes, and overcome the problem of bridging the many streets and narrow lanes crossed by the lines, both railways were built on arches, with the London & Greenwich needing 60 million bricks and running over 878 arches. The LGR used especially low slung carriages to avoid the risk of them falling over the side of the viaduct, despite its walls being 4 ft 6 in high, while the LBR used cable haulage to avoid the risk that sparks from steam locomotives might set fire to the shipping or the cargo in the docks.

These early railways were not without their disruptive effect. They ran through slum areas so displaced many of the poorer sections of society, but did not offend the affluent and influential landowners. Railways could not be built without massive upheaval, not unlike major road schemes today, and the construction of their London termini proved as disruptive in their construction as an airport would be in modern times, and, of course, every new terminus needed its access lines running from the countryside, through the suburbs and through ever more densely-populated areas until at last the end was reached. Like an airport, the passenger terminus was just part of the whole, for there was usually a goods station, although both the London & South Western and the London Brighton & South Coast used their original, somewhat distant, London termini at Nine Elms and Bricklayers’ Arms respectively, for this purpose, and there had to be a maintenance area, in short, a locomotive depot, as well as carriage sidings and cleaning facilities.

Just what this all meant can be judged by the fact that, in 1854, the extension of the London & South-Western Railway towards the Thames from Nine Elms to the site of Waterloo meant the demolition of 700 houses for a narrower spread of tracks than exists today, while Waterloo itself was a far smaller terminus, reaching its present size with the addition of a further three stations before complete re-design and re-building between 1910 and 1920. Nevertheless, the attitude of the landowners was to undergo a massive change when the Great Western Railway began its advance towards Paddington and the London & Birmingham started to move towards first Camden and then Euston.

The arrival of the railways cannot be under-estimated. Even in the middle of the nineteenth century, the streets of the capital were so congested that, in 1867, no less than 3.5 million of the 8 million passengers using the terminus at Cannon Street were travelling solely between the City and the West End terminus of the South Eastern Railway at Charing Cross. The new railway was also competitive, charging fares of 6d first class, 4d second class and 2d third class, compared with 3d for the horse bus, while no doubt first class travel compared well with a handsome cab on cost, timing and comfort.

Parliament was determined that railway travel should be for everyone and not just the wealthy. It introduced the so-called Parliamentary Trains, charging a fare of just a penny a mile and exempt from the Railway Passenger Duty levied on fares, but the generosity of Parliament was not always appreciated by those who used them. In 1883, FS Williams wrote in Our Iron Roads:

To start in the darkness of a winter’s morning to catch the only third-class train that ran; to sit, after a slender breakfast, in a vehicle the windows of which were compounded of the largest amount of wood and the smallest amount of glass, carefully adjusted to exactly those positions in which the fewest passengers could see out; to stop at every roadside station, however insignificant; and to accomplish a journey of 200 miles in about ten hours – such were the ordinary conditions which Parliament in its bounty provided for the people.

Parliament was increasingly involved in the regulation of the railways, and in London this extended to what might even be regarded as an early interest in town planning. In fact, many of the railways arriving in the capital were adding to rather than solving the congestion and overcrowding. The House of Lords considered forcing the railway companies to build and use a single major terminus, but fortunately this was rejected as impractical and it would have resulted in massive upheaval and no doubt simply unimaginable chaos and congestion on the surrounding streets. Parliament then changed its mind and did an abrupt about turn and decided that any new railway termini would have to be outside the central zone, which left the stations at Charing Cross, Blackfriars and Cannon Street almost clinging to the banks of the Thames. The construction of Liverpool Street was allowed simply because it approached the City through a tunnel, and even then the Great Eastern had to provide especially low fares for those thought to have been displaced by the construction of the terminus.

The arrival of the underground lines produced a solution to the dispersal of the main termini and to movement around London, and even created a new series of suburbs, famously known as ‘Metroland’, but this in turn really pointed to further expansion of London. Then, just as the railway map was more or less complete, the electric tram suddenly undermined the railways, taking away a massive share of the inner suburban traffic. The more progressive railways retaliated with electrification, with both the London Brighton & South Coast Railway and the London & South Western Railway having a substantial electrified mileage operational before the First World War.

This is a history of the railway age and its impact on London and the Home Counties, as well as an analysis of the decisions taken by the railway companies, Parliament and local government within London. It shows how in 1906 Golders Green was a muddy country crossroads with hardly a building in sight, but after the Underground reached it the following year, it started to develop into a built-up, but affluent, suburb with a tube depot and a substantial network of bus services operating from the station forecourt and trolleybuses passing close by. It looks at the railways in peace and in war, when occupation by Londoners led to the authorities allowing the deep level tube stations to be used as night time air raid shelters, although as events were to show, these were far less safe than people thought. It looks at the way in which technology has not always come first to London, with the first high speed railway link worthy of the name not finally reaching its terminus at St Pancras until 2007. On the other hand, the popular desire for innovation was not always practical, which is why the Dockland Light Railway was built using ‘steel wheel on steel rail’, rather than some of the more exciting and exotic solutions proposed before construction began.

The railway network around London is complex, making a spider’s web seem logical by comparison. The problems of operating a dense commuter network are equally complex. Many of those travelling in overcrowded peak period trains cannot understand that the train in which they are travelling is losing money due to poor rolling stock utilisation, as much of it lies idle for most of the day, while the commuters can receive discounts of as much as 60 per cent on their season tickets compared to the standard fares.

Yet, while London was not created by the railway, its size and shape and growth during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was dictated by the railway, and only the railway enables the modern and overcrowded city to function.

Chapter 1

The Great Wen

My fellow-passenger had the highest of all terrestrial qualities which for me a fellow-passenger can possess. He was silent.

Jane Carlyle, on travel by coach

London dominates the south of England in a way that no other British city can match with regard to its own particular region. There is nothing new about this, the famous journalist and radical politician William Cobbett castigated London as ‘The Great Wen’, and today even the Oxford English Dictionary in its definition of the word ‘wen’, goes beyond the archaic ‘more or less permanent benign sebaceous tumour on the skin, especially scalp’, to ‘abnormally large or congested city’.

Cobbett’s unflattering appraisal tells us much about London. He died in 1835 at the dawn of the railway age. The fact is that London was not one of those places created by the railway, such as, most famously, Crewe, once a country village, or even enlarged by the railway, such as Derby, but like Bristol was made greater still by the railway. London existed for at least two millennia before the railway. It was selected by the Romans because it was the lowest point at which the River Thames could be crossed. As a natural route between the south and the rest of the country, it had to be protected and fortified. It became the capital of a newly-subjugated Roman province and then eventually of just a part of England after the country divided into a number of independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms after the fall of Rome. Before this, as the seat of Roman authority, roads radiated out from London, taking the short distances to the east and to the south, the much longer ones to the west, and the even longer routes to the north.

London’s importance during the Roman period was relative, as it was simply the capital of a distant colony. Things changed with the establishment of, first a united England, then later the United Kingdom, and then with London as the capital of the world’s greatest empire. The emergence of finance as a major industry in its own right, with subsectors such as banking, insurance, stock broking and ship broking, all led to the city establishing a truly global importance that stretched far beyond even Britain’s widespread colonial possessions. Even so, after the Norman Conquest in 1066, for the next five centuries, the eastern limit was around the Tower of London while the West End was largely open fields. When it developed, it was the City that was important to commerce while Westminster became important as the centre of government.

London was already a congested and overcrowded, even insanitary city by the Tudor period and by 1801 it had a population of 1,110,000 people, which had more than doubled to 2,250,000 by 1841. By 1901, the population had grown to 6,581,000. The topography varied, but around the Thames it was flat, often marshy, with much property built on reclaimed land, while to the north, the land began to rise, as it did to the south. Beneath the surface, there was thick, heavy clay. To put these figures into some perspective, in 1801, London was well over twice the size of Bristol or Edinburgh today. By 1841, the population matched that of Wales today and was more than a third of Scotland’s current population. London in 1801 had a population greater than that of some sovereign states, and that of 1841 even more so. By 1901, the population exceeded that of modern day Denmark or Switzerland, and was roughly three quarters that of Sweden.

The presence of drinkable water in the northern heights ensured that medieval London was viable, which as just as well as the art of building aqueducts, and the controlling hand that ensured that these were built where they were wanted and whenever they were needed, had gone with the Romans and was not to return for some time. The city was already so big that it could no longer feed itself, and it drew in the necessary produce from the surrounding countryside. The so-called ‘Home Counties’ provided the food that Londoners needed to survive, and in so doing ensured that from the Middle Ages onwards, these areas enjoyed greater prosperity than much of the rest of England.

Old London

It is important not to have a rosy view of old London. Lacking sanitation, it was filthy, and while it is fashionable in this ‘green’ age to decry the motor car and its internal combustion engine, old London depended on horse power in the most literal sense, and so the streets were wet and smelly as well as noisy. Not for nothing is the crossing-sweeper a recurring character in Dickens, while outside the homes of the well-to-do, if one of the occupants was ill, straw was laid in the street outside to ensure peace. Victorian prints show the major thoroughfares effectively jammed by the sheer weight of horse-drawn traffic. Colourful in retrospect, this was clearly the age when the coachbuilders’ craft was at its highest, with even the humble horse-drawn bus being a work of astonishing strength and lightness. Yet, it was smelly and unpleasant, especially in summer. And the horse-drawn bus, we should remember, was no humble convenience as it was very much the mode of transport of the middle classes, who could afford the fares, while the working classes walked.

The one obvious relief to all of this pressure on the streets was the River Thames. This was the main source of many of the supplies needed by London. True, London grew as a great international trading port, and its growth matched that of the British Empire, but much of the cargo handled in London came from elsewhere in England and was intended for the consumption of Londoners and London business. Coal came from Newcastle by sea, and salted fish from ports much closer in East Anglia and Kent. It was not just cargo that came and went using the Thames. If one wanted to travel between London and, say, Edinburgh or Aberdeen, the more comfortable and sometimes safer alternative to the stage and mail coaches was by sea. By sea or by land, travel was expensive and slow. By land, there were the dangers of the highwaymen, but a more persistent danger was that of accident, and this was something that was also ever present when travelling by sea.

The Thames itself was also used on a regular basis for transport. None of this should make one believe that this was an idyllic age afloat anymore than ashore, for the truth was that the river was London’s main, and smelliest, sewer. Nevertheless, one could travel by boat from a number of piers along the river, aboard boats that were reasonably frequent, and competitive in time with such other transport as was available to the travelling public.

For all of these problems, in one sense the economy and life of London was better balanced than today. London was not just the seat of government, the centre of finance and commerce; it still had its own extensive manufacturing industry. Shipbuilding continued on the Thames, and there were ironworks. Manufacturing was not something conducted away from London, in the Midlands and the North. Even in comparatively modern times, manufacturing remained in London, with Vauxhall cars taking their name from what would now be regarded as an inner-London suburb, before moving to Luton. Commercial vehicles were built during the mid-twentieth century at Southall, and aircraft at Cricklewood.

Early journeys

People in earlier centuries travelled far less than is the case today. Travel was expensive and often fraught with hazard. This was due in part to the lack of a banking system, so one had to carry all one needed while away from home in the form of hard cash.

At first, even if one lived in a city, one walked or, if one was prosperous enough, rode on horseback. If one couldn’t ride, one was at a disadvantage until the introduction of the sedan chair to Britain in 1634 by Sir Richard Dunscombe. The conveyance consisted of a small cabin, smaller than a telephone kiosk but, fortunately, much lighter, which was carried by two men, known as ‘chairmen’, one in front and one behind, who lifted long poles on which the ‘chair’ was placed. The conveyance got its name from southern Italy and not from the French town of the same name. Quite why it took so long for such a conveyance to evolve was probably due to the need for something light to be constructed so that just two men were needed, rather than the team that would have been needed to lift a litter. By the eighteenth century, this was the conveyance of choice for those who could afford it, smoother and cheaper than a carriage, not much slower in the congested streets and able to use narrow alleyways and steps, and unlike the humble pedestrian, one was not splashed by horses as they trotted past.

The next development was the short-stage carriage, which ran between points, usually an inn, with the operator having first obtained a licence from the Board of Stamps. This was also expensive and required pre-booking, while the choice of routes was limited. This was the urban version of the stage coach, the town bus as opposed to the inter-city motorway coach. The use of the Commissioners of Stamps as what would today be described in British terms as traffic commissioners was no doubt a reflection of the primitive means of licensing and revenue-raising by the government of the day, when widespread taxation was generally unknown and evasion much easier than today. The operators of stage coaches and of omnibuses paid the stamp duty according to the number of passengers carried plus an annual mileage levy, which was during the early years set at 3d per mile.

When the Metropolitan Police was formed as a result of Robert Peel’s Metropolis Police Improvement Act 1829, the police were not concerned with the licensing of vehicles, whether plying for hire or not. The first thousand police officers, or ‘Peelers’, who started their patrols on the evening of 29 September 1829, had other more pressing matters to attend. Later, the Metropolitan Police was to have an extensive involvement in the licensing of hackney carriages and buses, and even after the Road Traffic Acts of 1930 and 1933, in London they uniquely remained responsible for the licensing of bus drivers and conductors, while elsewhere this was a matter for the traffic commissioners.

The Public Advertiser, on 18 January 1772, informed its readers of a ‘new contrived coach’ which could carry up to fourteen passengers at 6d each (2.5p in today’s money, but at the time, fifteen shillings a week was a good wage) and which would run between Charing Cross and the Royal Exchange. This was clearly another development of the short stage as the passengers entered the single enclosed compartment using side doors while the remainder sat outside either alongside the driver or at the back over the parcels and luggage.

The London omnibus

The bus, as we know it, had its origins much later, more than half-a-century in fact, when on 3 April 1829, one George Shillabeer advised John Thornton, Chairman of the Board of Stamps, that he was building ‘two vehicles after the manner of the recently established French omnibus, which when completed I propose starting on the Paddington Road’. Shillabeer was a coachbuilder by trade, and this no doubt made it easier for him to bring such an innovation to London. Unlike the stage coaches, short or not, his carriage was a long box-structure set high off the ground and entered by three steps and a door at the end. Instead of booking at an inn or a coaching office nearby, fares were collected by a conductor who stood on the steps. Inside, there were longitudinal seats for eighteen passengers, nine on each side. Three horses abreast provided the propulsive effort for this vehicle, described by the Morning Post on 7 July 1829 as ‘a handsome machine, in the shape of a van with windows on each side, and one at the end’.

While the stage coaches often bore names, the early horse bus was far more practical: along the sides, between the windows, were panels describing the route taken. The sides were half panels, half windows, while below the windows was the single word, in capital letters just eight inches high, ‘OMNIBUS’. The route details were important because, far more important than the design of the vehicle, was its means of plying for hire. No longer did intending passengers have to call at a coach office and wait for a departure, but instead they could flag down the omnibus in the street, pay a fare on boarding, and ask to be set down wherever they chose, even after riding for just a short distance. No sooner had George Shillabeer started operations between Paddington Green and the Bank, on 4 July 1829, than the established operators claimed that his action was illegal. It wasn’t, as Shillabeer had been careful to ensure that his carriages were licensed, but any doubt was soon removed as the Stage Carriage Act 1832 authorised the operation of omnibus services. Further legislation in 1838 required the licensing of drivers and conductors working within ten miles of the General Post Office, who had to wear numbered badges. In addition, the conditions of the original act of 1832 were tightened up, requiring all buses in London to carry the words ‘Metropolitan Stage Carriage’, the Stamp Office number and the number of passengers the vehicle was allowed to carry under the conditions of its licence, painted on both the outside and inside. A Registrar of Metropolitan Carriages was appointed by the Home Secretary.

A substantial degree of freedom was still accorded operators. There was no restriction on the number of buses any one operator could have, or where they would operate. As with shipping, which allowed a similar free for all, it soon became obvious to those involved that collaboration was better than all-out competition. It also became obvious that cooperation in this way meant that operators could serve more routes and that improved frequencies could be offered to the passengers. Starting as early as September 1831, operators began to group themselves into associations, each operating a route or a group of routes. Vehicles began to carry the name of the route or of the district served rather than that of the proprietor: this was the start of the practice of bus operators tending towards geographical names rather than the names of the owners, a practice that was largely reserved for tour and private hire coach operators, with a few exceptions.

When the railways arrived later, geographical names, and often ones that were highly descriptive, became the standard, while London and the Thames were important to the very imprecisely-named General Steam Navigation Company, mentioned in Charles Dickens’ Sketches by Boz.

The earliest use of the abbreviated and meaningless term ‘bus’ was recorded in 1832.

While Shillabeer’s first two vehicles used three horses, his subsequent vehicles and those for other operators were built to be drawn by two horses. At first all passengers were accommodated inside, but gradually the practice grew of having a row of passengers seated first beside and then behind the driver, following stage coach practice. While popular belief has it that the practice of riding on the roof or ‘outside’ dated from the Great Exhibition of 1851, and the first great influx of visitors to London, it is clear that the practice started much earlier. During the 1840s, many of the newer buses were less box-like and had curved roofs, and at busy periods many male passengers would climb onto the roof and sit back to back, noted by Alfred Crowquill in November 1845 as being ‘…something after the sitting fashion of a batch of undertaker’s men going to a country job’. The next step was to build buses with a clerestory roof to improve headroom and ventilation inside, and this provided a longitudinal seat, with the first of these put into service in April 1847 by the Economic Conveyance Company.

Initially, routes were short and a flat fare was charged, but as longer services were provided, graduated fares became more commonplace, often with a starting fare of just 2d. A variation was that, following stage coach practice, those riding outside paid just half the fare of those riding inside, and soon a fare of 2d per mile inside and 1d per mile outside became standard. Access to the roof was by iron foot rungs, so it was certainly not an option for the Victorian lady with her long flowing dress. But not all bus proprietors welcomed the carriage of passengers ‘outside’, especially as the new buses were heavier and placed a greater strain on the horses, reducing the number of journeys they could perform daily, while higher stamp duties were also levied and, of course, for much of the time the outside space was not needed. It was no doubt helpful that the stamp duty was reduced from 3d to 1½ d per mile in October 1842. The Great Exhibition persuaded the more conservative omnibus proprietors that using the roof space was an economic necessity and those buses without roof seats had an improvised seat provided by the simple expedient of nailing a plank along the apex of the roof, which promptly became known as the ‘knifeboard’.

Life inside was by no means comfortable, with the vehicles riding roughly over cobbled roads. It was not until 1853 that interior lighting was required, and even then it usually consisted of no more than a small colza lamp hung on the door, so that when the door was opened for passengers to board or alight, the interior once again plunged into darkness. The lamps were provided by James Willingham & Company, for a charge of 4d per day, and until 1870, the charge was paid by the conductor.

For those travelling ‘outside’, there was always the risk of falling off until side rails became commonplace. Fortunately, speeds were slow, and overall journey times were between 4 and 6 mph. This was blessing, for when it rained, the only shelter was one’s own umbrella, and this could be put up with no more concern about it being blown inside out than if one was walking.

The Board of Stamps lost its licensing function in October 1847, when this was transferred to the Commissioners of Excise.

Taking to the river

The steamboat arrived before the train, in terms of evolution. The General Steam Navigation Company (later acquired by a much grander shipping line, P&O) boasted that it dated from 1824, before the first steam railways. The River Thames had been an important thoroughfare in London as the city grew and the roads became more congested. In his diaries, Samuel Pepys and his associates made frequent use of the river, being rowed by boatmen, and no doubt this was a comfortable if expensive means of travel. The steamboat changed this, being larger and cheaper, and capable of coping with high winds and strong spring tides.

In London, during the 1840s, there was a steamboat service between London Bridge and Westminster, with a departure at the staggering frequency of every four minutes. The journey took just fifteen minutes, far less than it would by any form of public transport today, and cost an old penny, far less than the then alternatives. Slower boats served intermediate piers. In all, there were some forty-five riverside piers between Hampton Court and Southend.

This may have been an agreeable form of transport on a fine day, provided that it wasn’t too hot as one was travelling along London’s main sewer, but in fact, it often wasn’t. One expects the popular media and politicians to give every form of transport sharp criticism, ignorant of the practicalities, but the journal, The Engineer, with a far more knowledgeable editorial staff, described the Thames steamers as ‘…shamefully mismanaged, dirty and lubberly handled, to the risk of life and limb’. Matters did not improve with competition from the railways and the horse omnibus, as during the 1860s, by which time these vessels were managing around 12 miles per hour (more than a modern bus in the centre of London), the same journal described the accommodation as being somewhat ‘…inferior to that of a third-class railway carriage’.

One thing that would not have changed, however, between the late seventeenth century and the late nineteenth century, that would have made river travel hazardous, was the London fog. No radar, not even the comfort of a reassuring signal, for the traveller by river. In fact, the fog of the 1860s would, if anything, have been far worse than that of the 1660s.

Inter-city travel before the train

For us today, it is hard to realise just how important an advance the railway was when it first appeared as a form of public transport, breaking out from its early existence in quarries. Business had been transformed during the previous century by the arrival of the canals, dramatically cutting the costs of moving bulky goods such as coal, but canals were slow and expensive to build, facing considerable problems when forced through steep hills or over deep valleys and always demanding the provision of large quantities of water. That the canal system slashed the costs of bulk commodities such as coal so dramatically only shows just how difficult and costly transport, usually by packhorse, was before the eighteenth century. The railway was easier to build and to operate, and from the outset it was far faster than any form of transport then known.

The railways arrived on the scene at a time when few people made lengthy journeys, with most going no further than the nearest town. The Christmas card glamour of the long distance stagecoach or its rival the mail coach, first introduced in 1784, was in reality so harsh and bleak, as well as being expensive, that it was not to be undertaken lightly. In winter, coaches squelched through mud or could be overwhelmed by snow, or find bridges swept away by rivers in flood, while in summer, the roads were baked hard and the coaches banged from one deep rut to another. Coaches could, and sometimes did, overturn or get blown off an exposed stretch of road. Competition on the busiest routes could see some wild driving with more than one stage coach reduced to matchwood in an accident. The arrival of the turnpike trusts in the early eighteenth century, due to much improved road building and mending techniques, brought a considerable improvement, except that stretches of non-turnpike highway were still to be found between the turnpikes, themselves not wholly popular amongst those who had always used the roads free of any charge or taxation and who were damned if they were going to pay anything now, even for better roads.

Passengers froze in winter despite heavy clothing, blankets and foot warmers, and sweltered in summer, longing for the next stop and liquid refreshment. Those outside fared worst, and even on a good road could not seek solace in sleep because to nod off was to fall off! Another consideration on any journey was one’s fellow passengers, especially if travelling inside, for which privilege one paid double.

Meals were served at inns, and at many of them, passengers were treated to rotten food badly prepared by unscrupulous proprietors well aware that they had a captive market. The hungry customers, perhaps on a journey taking as much as sixty hours, paid their money and were often cheated. Passengers had to eat and drink, and relieve themselves, in as little as twenty minutes before being hurried back to their coach. Few were regular travellers. Scolding hot soup would be served, so that customers would not have much time for subsequent courses, for which much of the food, as a result, was often stale. If one was contemplating a journey from, say, Edinburgh or Newcastle to London, it was worth considering going by sea, and coasting voyages were indeed an option. So too was travel by canal barge, on the relatively few routes served, but slow.

In the 1830s, at the dawn of the railway age, a passenger from London to Newcastle on the Lord Wellington coach would be charged £3.10s (£3.50p) for the 274 mile journey, a fare of just over 3d (1.25p) per mile, for an outside seat. Ignoring inflation, this fare was exactly the same per mile as the standard rate for a second class railway ticket in the early 1960s