Fire and Steam (10 page)

She then traverses Chat Moss ‘on which no human foot could tread without sinking and yet it bore the road which bore us'. Showing her extensive knowledge of the history of the line, she recalls ‘this had been the great stumbling block in the minds of the committee of the House of Commons; but Mr Stephenson has succeeded in overcoming it . . . we passed over at the rate of five and twenty miles an hour, and saw the stagnant swamp water trembling on the surface of the soil on either side of us.' Stephenson takes her down to the bottom of the Sankey viaduct so that she can admire the grand structure with its nine arches and he clearly he caught her attention, as she points out that his explanations
of the workings of the railway were ‘peculiar and original' but that ‘although his accent indicates strongly his north-country birth, his language has not the slightest touch of vulgarity or coarseness'.

Stephenson must have purred at the reception he got from this attractive young woman, just fresh from playing Juliet, compared with the roasting he had been given by the parliamentarians just five years previously. On the way back, as Stephenson was wont to do, he opened up the regulator and the engine raced up to 35 mph, ‘swifter than a bird flies' and, Kemble adds, ‘you cannot conceive what the sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible . . . when I closed my eyes, this sensation of flying was quite delightful and strange beyond description'. Yet, she stresses, she felt ‘not the slightest fear' as the ‘brave little she-dragon flew on'.

Kemble's description may be more artfully written than other contemporary reports but they were almost all equally enthusiastic. Yet there was still criticism from the odd self-interested curmudgeon like Creevey, representing the canal owners and stagecoach companies whose fears and opposition to the railway had proved well founded. The canal companies had tried to pre-empt the railway's arrival by cutting rates and improving the waterway as soon as the first Bill had been published. But nothing proved the case for the railway better than their subsequent behaviour. The Bridgwater Canal Company, which had reduced its tolls by 18d (7.5p) per ton in anticipation of the advent of the railway, restored its old level of charges as soon as the first Bill was defeated. It was an own goal, since the second prospectus for the railway exposed this example of monopoly exploitation and promised that the railway would reduce the price of coal by 2 shillings (10p) per ton, to the benefit of local citizens. The canal, which had delivered a fantastic 40 per cent rate of return to the Duke of Bridgwater for many years, would never do so again. Once the railway was completed, it was forced into cutting its rates permanently by a third. Nevertheless, for a time there was room for both methods of transport and the canal would remain profitable for many years.

As for the stagecoaches, within three months of the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester, over half the twenty-six on the route had ceased running, though of course there was still the rest of the country
to serve. Indeed, the number of stagecoaches nationally peaked in the mid-1830s, and only began their inevitable decline when the railways started to spread across the country. In response to the competition from the new railway, the surviving stagecoach owners slashed their fares to 10s inside and 5s outside, but even that was not competetive with the train, and all but one had stopped operating by 1832. In truth, the railway had done much more than merely poach passengers from the stagecoaches. The figures for passenger numbers show that the railway had developed its own market simply by making travel so much pleasanter, faster and cheaper. In 1830 the stagecoaches had a capacity of around 700 passengers per day, whereas in the three years between 1831 and 1833 the railway averaged 1,100 passengers daily. The Liverpool & Manchester was to the 1830s what the easyJet phenomenon is today, fulfilling a latent demand to travel at affordable prices.

The rapid demise of canals and stagecoaches, which were themselves relatively new forms of travel, demonstrated how the Industrial Revolution was accelerating the rate of social change. Indeed, the railways were the greatest product of the Revolution, and its major driver. Even though, as Nicholas Faith
⁶
points out, more miles of canals than railways were built in the ensuing decade, this was the most rapid example of obsolescence the world had so far seen: the railways would rapidly do to stagecoaches and canals what muskets had done to the longbow.

Others who expected to suffer from the railway found themselves profiting from it. Innkeepers were worried about the loss of stagecoach business and obviously those catering on remote stretches of highway solely for stagecoach passengers went out of business quickly. However, as always, innovation and new technology created opportunities as well as losses. Hostelries close to intermediate stops on the railway found that passengers were all too willing to use up the time with a drink or two. They even began to offer onboard services – a ‘serving wench' was spotted soon after the opening at the Patricroft halt selling drinks and cigars from a tray to first-class passengers.

Given the Liverpool & Manchester's instant popularity, it is hardly surprising that the railway was profitable from the outset. By the end of 1830, just three and a half months after opening, the railway paid
shareholders an immediate dividend of £2 per £100 share. The directors clearly hoped to grant shareholders almost the maximum allowable under the Act, which had restricted annual dividends to a maximum of 10 per cent. In the decade and a half of independent operation, until the line's merger with the Grand Junction in 1845, shareholders received an average of 9.5 per cent annually, amounting to almost two and a half times the price of their shares. Not a bad investment in a period of little inflation.

Many future railways would be equally useful and well patronised, but would never attain the profitability of the Liverpool & Manchester because of the higher costs of construction or because they did not serve large agglomerations separated by such short distances. Today, once the high capital cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure is taken into account, there are barely any profitable railways in the world due to competition from road transport.
⁷

Receipts from passengers ran at twice the level from goods during the first few years, which was more a reflection of the railway's success in attracting people to use the line than the absence of freight. It was perhaps the Rainhill trials where people were able to experience the excitement of speed for the first time and, as a consequence, the real potential of the railway, which was the turning point. In fact, because of a shortage of locomotives, the directors allowed passenger trains, with the occasional freight wagon attached, only during the first couple of months of operation. Stephenson had been unable to keep up with the demand for more locomotives, and catering for passengers was seen as the best way of building up patronage quickly. The first goods train ran in early December 1830, hauling cotton, oatmeal and malt to Manchester. Soon, the whole assortment of goods that were to become familiar on the railway were being carried on the Liverpool & Manchester, ranging from oil, spice, coffee and tobacco heading from the port to clothes, salt and Staffordshire pottery destined for the docks. By the spring of 1831, 150 tons of goods were being carried daily and in 1835 four times that level. Mail was carried right from the beginning under an agreement with the General Post Office – the start of a long tradition – and livestock, much of it from Ireland, was soon being transported in specially designed trucks. The carriage of pigs in their
new wagons attracted the rather apt comment from the
Liverpool Times
that their accommodation ‘is a much handsomer and more commodious vehicle than those in which His Majesty's liege subjects were accustomed to travel fifty years ago'.
⁸

While putative railway promoters around the country were looking at the Liverpool & Manchester's figures with great interest, there was no immediate rush to follow suit. For the most part, promoters were waiting to see whether the initial rush of enthusiasm for taking the train would be maintained. The early 1830s were a time of political uncertainty. In the towns, workers were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their dreadful conditions, while in the rural areas the rising numbers of labourers were being displaced by new technology such as threshing machines and were starting to protest. The pressure for the Reform Bill was reaching a head and there were major riots in Bristol and Nottingham, all of which created an atmosphere that was hardly conducive to investment in long-term projects.

Nevertheless several railways were being developed in conjunction with the Liverpool & Manchester. The eight-mile-long Bolton & Leigh had been completed in 1828 and effectively became the first branch line of the Liverpool & Manchester when it was linked via a third railway, the 2.5-mile-long Kenyon & Leigh, in 1831. On the other side of the tracks, heading south, the five-mile Warrington & Newton opened that year too, as the first stage of the long railway to Birmingham. The Stephensons, who seemed to throw up odd bits of railway in their spare time, were involved in the construction of all three of these smaller Lancashire lines. These railways were, however, separate entities, demonstrating in microcosm the complexity created by the unplanned and haphazard development of the railways that was to continue throughout much of the century. While the Liverpool & Manchester was clearly the largest concern, its directors still had to thrash out deals with the other railways over their running rights and other matters such as use of equipment and the condition of their locomotives. By the end of the 1830s, other nearby towns such as Wigan, Preston, St Helens and Runcorn had been connected to the railway, greatly boosting its usage but also increasing the complexity of administration and operations.

In various parts of the country, odd little stubs of lines had already been approved or were under construction by the time of the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester. The longest was another coal railway, linking the mines of Swannington and Coalville with Leicester, and the chief engineer was the twenty-nine-year-old Robert Stephenson. The railway, which carried both passengers and freight, was, at sixteen miles, half the length of the Liverpool & Manchester, and opened in 1832, a mere two years after it was authorized by Parliament. Fortunately, Stephenson senior insisted that it should be designed to his preferred 4ft 8½ins gauge, which meant that it could later easily become part of the extensive Midland Railway. A similar railway, to cater for the burgeoning cotton industry in Leeds and to provide traders with a better transport route for their goods to the port of Hull, was the Leeds & Selby, completed in 1834. These new lines, however, were limited in scope and largely catered for established freight routes rather than being perceived as part of a major nationwide network.

Around the whole of the UK, various pioneering railways were opening in a haphazard way, determined by the ability of local promoters and the availability of capital. New short lines opened in 1831 in Edinburgh and Dundee, both operated by cables and horses, showing that the lessons of the Liverpool & Manchester had still not been learnt. Glasgow's first railway, the Garnkirk & Glasgow, was operated by steam engines that had no cab for the driver and fireman, also opened that year. There was, too, the Dublin & Kingstown, the first railway in Ireland. However, England still had barely 100 miles of line by 1836: this included some strange little sections of railway such as that linking Whitstable and Canterbury in Kent and the first part of the much more significant Newcastle & Carlisle line, which had belatedly decided to adopt steam technology.

But why did the obscure little towns of Bodmin and Wadebridge in Cornwall get a railway before London? While in the capital building a railway would inevitably be a major undertaking, in provincial areas there was scope for individual enterprise to bear fruit quickly. In Cornwall, an enterprising local landowner, Sir William Molesworth, realized that it was the best way of carrying the limey sea sand from Wadebridge, which was much in demand further up the valley of the
river Camel for use as fertilizer, and commissioned a survey. The single-track railway, built to the standard gauge, opened in 1834, funded largely by local shareholders who had put up the £35,000 capital. The seven-mile line, which boasted a couple of small branches, also carried passengers. Most notably, three excursion trains to Bodmin transported a total of 1,100 passengers to view the public execution of the Lightfoot brothers for murder in 1840.
⁹
Similar local efforts would generate countless more small railways and, later, branch lines for the rest of the nineteenth century (see
Chapter 7
).

At last London got a railway in 1836 when the first part of the London & Greenwich opened to the public. It marked a radical departure from all the earlier railways, being built in an already developed area with the idea of catering for nascent commuter traffic. Moreover, the railway faced the added disadvantage of having to compete with the well-established boat traffic on the Thames. Like their predecessors, the promoters had to face down the pessimists, such as the
Quarterly Review,
which commented: ‘Can anything be more palpably ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage coaches . . . we will back Old Father Thames against the Greenwich railway for any sum.'
¹⁰

The 3.5 mile railway was a remarkable achievement, built on top of 878 large arches to avoid using up land and interfering with the busy street pattern below. An amazing 60 million bricks were used in the construction of the line which took five years to build. The 400 navvies working on the line used more than 100,000 bricks per day, causing a shortage for other construction activity in London. That run of arches remains the longest in Britain and the construction method set a trend in London, which eventually acquired twenty five miles of these railways in the sky, and in several other cities. Initially the London & Greenwich directors hoped that people would be persuaded to rent the arches for housing but were soon dissuaded of this notion, a decision for which the capital's scrapyard dealers and car breakers have been grateful ever since.
¹¹