The Railway Haters

Opposition To Railways, From the 19th to 21st Centuries

David L. Brandon, Alan Brooke

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Transport
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526700223
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Rail Transportation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This unique social history examines 200 years of controversy surrounding British Railways—from the dawn of industrialization to contemporary light rail. During the Industrial Revolution, the power of landowning aristocrats was challenged by the emergent wealth and influence of the urban middle class. There was no greater symbol of this seismic shift in society than the British Railways Companies. Railways, with their powers of compulsory purchase, intruded brutally into the previously sacrosanct estates and pleasure grounds of Britain's traditional ruling elite. Aesthetes like Ruskin and poets like Wordsworth ranted against railways; Sabbatarians attacked them for providing employment on the Lord's Day; antiquarians accused them of vandalism by destroying ancient buildings; others claimed their noise would make cows abort and chickens cease laying. And while the complaints have certainly changed, railways have continued to provoke debate ever since. Arguments have raged over railway nationalization and privatization, about the Beeching Plan to increase efficiency, and around urban light rail systems. Examining railways from their beginnings to the present, this book provides insights into social, economic and political attitudes and emphasizes both change and continuity over 200 years.

CHAPTER ONE

The Impact of Industrialisation and Urbanisation on Britain

From approximately 1830 to 1900, many of Britain’s towns and substantial tracts of her countryside were transformed as railway lines carved their way over, through and under them, their appearance and character changing radically.

It is necessary to appreciate the sheer dynamism of the economic forces being applied in this period as Britain became, for a few decades in the mid-century, the leading economic and industrial power in the world. Railways were both a product of and a great contributor to this dynamism.

The process of developing an economy dominated by manufacturing industry required, among other things, a disciplined workforce able to comply with the new, demanding and highly uncongenial requirements of factory and workshop employment. Railways in particular, with their essential emphasis on safety, needed an almost military-style discipline from the workforce. The work regimes desired by management could not be imposed simply by authoritarian methods. It was necessary to try to win, or at least control, the hearts and minds of the workforce by ideological means. The churches, chapels, mechanics’ institutes, the concept of self-help and the provision of controlled, commercialised leisure were counterpoised to the old folkways of anarchic sports, heavy drinking, ‘St Monday’ and bawdy, potentially riotous communal entertainment. A new popular culture had to be created to obtain the consent, often given grudgingly, of the workforce required by the emerging industrial society.

Although there were places that did not want anything to do with railways, at least in the early years, a general feeling emerged that to be connected to the railway was also to be connected to the wider world. Not to be connected could mean economic stagnation or decay. There are parallels with current debates which predict dire consequences for the economy if HS2 is not built. It became obvious from the 1830s that, overall, railways contributed to economic growth. Most people wanted to benefit from that growth. Some disruption, even annoyance, was a small price to pay. If existing companies displayed little interest in providing a railway connection, local business people and others might raise funds to promote and build a line that was nominally independent, at least to start with. This was done for various reasons, not the least of which was the fear that their local economy would stagnate or even go into decline if it did not have railway links to the wider economic world.

There might be quite dramatic reductions in the price of coal in certain towns after a railway had been opened. Local farmers might be able to get livestock quickly and easily to larger and more lucrative markets. Examples of the beneficial impact of new railways on specific places and their economies could be given. Equally, examples could be provided of other, less beneficial effects of the coming of the railways on various aspects of town and country economic and social life. The development of the railway network gave access to large producers from the bigger towns. They could now penetrate established rural and country-town markets. Big producers often enjoyed significant economies of scale. The creation of a comprehensive railway network, providing a reasonably cheap transport infrastructure, assisted the tendency towards local types and styles of commodities made by small-scale local producers being edged aside by manufacturers operating on a regional or even a national basis and on an increasingly large scale. Local styles of clothing and of building materials, for example, began to disappear. Retail chain outlets spread across the country at the expense of small, family-run local shops. Occupations such as those of wheelwrights, blacksmiths and thatchers went into gradual decline unless they could carve out a specialist niche in the market. Over a period of only a few decades the world of the small local craftsman, producer and retailer was to be transformed and many of them must have rued the day when they had supported the local railway project or even sat down at the celebratory banquet when the line opened.

Railways were blamed for creating dull, monotonous suburbs. Street after street of largely uniform houses were laid down in the late nineteenth century. Wood Green and Hornsey in North London are often cited as examples but the accusation is a false one. It was the presence of the railway which encouraged speculative builders to erect housing for clerical and better-off artisans who could afford to commute short distances but required relatively cheap housing. Such people were in regular work and did not need to tout for hire on a daily basis like so many manual workers, notoriously but by no means exclusively those seeking work in the docks. These new-build districts were characterised as lacking a sense of community with each family being wrapped up in its own domestic bubble and the paterfamilias being out all day earning his crust in the City or Central London. Even if such a view of the nature of these districts was true, blaming the railways was a bit like blaming the messenger. Such an accusation might have been more accurate had the railway companies had been legally permitted to buy land for development close to projected railways. Few companies obtained such powers.

It was also alleged that railway development was exacerbating or at least emphasising class differences. The medieval town, it was alleged, and medieval London in particular, saw rich and poor live cheek-by-jowl. Now whole districts were given over to occupation by members of the same class partly at least because they liked to cluster with their own kind. The poor had little option. Suburbs developed, the character of which closely reflected the income of their inhabitants. Close to the centre were the dwellings of the poor, whose impoverishment and often casual employment, meant they needed to be near their employment. Lower middle-class people lived in the likes of Wood Green, more affluent middle-class elements lived in Surbiton or Sidcup and the rich could live where they chose, usually in the sylvan and healthier outer districts. Of course, this is a pattern rather than an immutable formula. By no means all the main-line companies that served London initially showed much interest in developing short-haul traffic in the capital’s environs. The London & North Western and Great Western were examples. Others, admittedly, saw a potential market in suburban traffic. The building of a line through largely rural terrain in outer London was, however, no guarantee that rapid residential development automatically followed, the Fairlop Loop of the Great Eastern Railway being evidence of this. Comments on ‘monotonous’ suburbs and the existence or otherwise of class divisions evidenced by the growth of such suburbs are, after all, subjective.

The one early railway company that will always be associated with property development was the Metropolitan Railway. It gained legal entitlement to do so in 1874. It started granting building leases and selling ground rents at Willesden Green and by the 1900s was actively building houses as far out from the centre as Pinner. After the Great War, the Metropolitan established the Metropolitan Railway Country Estates which engaged in large-scale development of housing for middle-class commuters all the way into leafy Buckinghamshire. ‘Metroland’ as this became known provoked accusations that the railway was engaged in building residential districts lacking character but, over time, some of these have come to be regarded with affection and the gentle, not unkind mocking that was so characteristic of John Betjeman.

Care needs to be exercised when making statements that the opening of a particular railway led to such and such economic change in a specific location. Many assertions may be true but hard quantitative evidence to support them is often hard to produce, being partial, unreliable or non-existent. An example of a tendency which lacks quantifiable evidence can be provided by changes that occurred in Northumberland. There, much arable land was being converted to pasture for sheep farming in the nineteenth century. This benefitted farmers but because livestock rearing required less labour than arable farming, the effect was to make farmworkers redundant and intensify rural depopulation with a drift away to the industrial towns. The railways were welcomed by the farmers because they could get their stock quickly and easily to a wider range of markets. Carriage by rail ended the loss of weight that took place when livestock was driven long distances overland. Clearly, the railways benefitted many of the local farming fraternity but forced the rural proletariat to seek employment and housing elsewhere. This may have been a traumatic experience at the time, but the likelihood was that those who drifted to the towns benefitted materially from the generally higher wages that were paid for industrial work even if they also had to experience the horrors of urban overcrowding and environmental pollution.

CHAPTER TWO

Inland Transport Before the Railway Age

When stagecoach services started between Liverpool and Manchester in the latter part of the eighteenth century, coaches took up to twelve hours for the journey but, in response to increased demand, by 1825 there were coaches using turnpikes (improved roads charging a toll for usage) and completing the journey in just three hours. This was a reckless pace and with the roads being crowded with other users, accidents were very frequent. Demand continued to grow so that increased numbers of coaches were laid on but with horses as the motive power, any further increase in speed was impossible. A more powerful form of traction was needed.

Long-distance stagecoach travel was expensive, uncomfortable and often dangerous. Fares were high and the traveller was expected to disburse tips to all and sundry, adding considerably to the cost. Coaches were unheated but marginally more comfortable (and certainly more expensive) for those travelling inside. Passengers perched precariously on top risked sunstroke, a soaking or a freezing depending on the caprices of the weather. There was always the possibility of armed robbery and also of accidents. It was not unknown for outside passengers to fall from their perch, sometimes with fatal consequences.

Between two such important commercial centres as Liverpool and Manchester, with traffic building up by the mid-1820s, it was clear that a better means of transport was needed to take full advantage of developing business opportunities. The surfaces of the turnpikes were being damaged by so much use and the cost of repairs was reflected in higher charges for the coaches passing along them and higher fares for their passengers. Businessmen were constantly complaining about the rates charged by the three waterways which connected the two towns. Small wonder that thoughts were turning towards the almost unthinkable – a railway line linking the two centres.

Turnpike trusts and coaching were significant industries. In the mid-1830s there were over 1,100 turnpike trusts in England and Wales between them controlling around 22,000 miles of road. In 1835, 700 mail coaches and 3,300 stage coaches were in regular use in Great Britain. The standard of the roads maintained by turnpike trusts was variable. The trustees of some turnpikes simply used the income for their own purposes rather than for maintaining the road in a decent condition. Turnpikes, however, were almost always better than roads not controlled by trusts, of which there remained significant stretches in varying degrees of disrepair. These had to be endured on most lengthy coach journeys. Turnpike trusts were unpopular as local people objected to having to pay to use roads they had previously traversed for free. Another source of acrimony was that it took time for a turnpike trust to generate enough income to embark on the improvements which were supposed to be its raison d’etre. Users understandably objected to having to pay to travel a road that was not yet improved. Animosity to the turnpikes led in some places to the Rebecca Riots, when gates, fences and tollhouses were attacked. The authorities took such riots very seriously and those convicted could face a death sentence. Turnpike trustees deplored the fact that the opening of a competing railway meant that they would still have to pay for the upkeep of the road with much less income when traffic had been extracted by the railway.

Turnpike trusts, stage coach owners, hoteliers, ostlers and all others who derived their living from road transport had good reason for viewing the coming of the railways with concern. However, railways did not simply destroy the livelihoods of all those earning their living from road usage. Economic activity was increasing through the nineteenth century and more people and more goods were on the move requiring the services of hauliers and waggoners, farriers and others needed to service the draught animals and the vehicles involved. Laments were penned for the fate of the horse. No one needed to concern themselves because the horse was not destined for extinction. Plenty of work was available for horses hauling wagons feeding goods to and from the railways.

Railways certainly administered the kiss of death to the long-distance coaching industry. Coaches could not compete on speed, comfort or fares with the railways. The very last regular stage coach was withdrawn in 1874 when the Highland Railway opened up a line in the north of Scotland. Even on the four-mile route between London and Greenwich served by London’s first railway, the train cut fifty minutes off the time taken by coaches on the turnpike. It was a measure of the impact of the railways that the Liverpool & Manchester Railway received a contract from the Post Office to carry the mails as early as November 1830. In 1838, the Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act empowered the Postmaster- General to require all existing and future railways to carry the mail. This was official recognition of the merits of the railways as a means of transport.

The industry that supported road travel obviously saw threats in the coming of the railways. This contemporary satire bemoans the fate of the horses whose livelihood was bound up with road traffic. As a train passes in the distance, these horses are reduced to beggary. (Authors’ collection)

In 1835, no fewer than 350 stage coaches and Royal Mail coaches were leaving Birmingham daily, evidence of the sheer intensity of the coaching system but things were changing very rapidly. In the summer of 1838, there were still fifty-nine mail coaches in England and Wales and sixteen in Scotland. Four months later, one of many similar advertisements appearing in The Times showed the way things were moving. It announced the sale by auction at the King’s Arms, Bagshot, Surrey, of:

‘Forty superior, good-sized, strangthy, [sic] short-legged, quick-actioned fresh horses and six sets of four-horse harness, which had been working the Exeter ‘Telegraph’, Southampton and Gosport Fast Coaches and one stage of the Devonshire Mail… The above genuine stock for unreserved sale, entirely on account of the coaches being removed from the Road to the Railway!’1

The demand for passenger and goods transport by the railways created the need for short-haul road passenger and goods haulage feeding into them. The turnpike trusts went into decline with the arrival of the railway age and most went out of business very quickly once a competing railway was opened. The last turnpike closed in 1895. The impact of the railways caused hardship for many of those involved in the turnpike trusts and all aspects of long-distance coaching, including hospitality services, and this generated protests which were largely ineffectual because ‘the force’, as they say, was with the railways. However, the leading coach proprietor who told a Parliamentary Select Committee that his business and those of others like him was being ‘annihilated’ by the railways was guilty of exaggeration. Even on turnpike trusts, passenger traffic could increase at least in the short term. The revenue of the Peterborough and Wellingborough Turnpike Trust, for example, increased sharply as coaches brought passengers to stations along the London & Birmingham Railway’s Blisworth to Peterborough line.2 On occasion, the opening of a railway prompted interested local parties to build a brand new turnpike acting as a feeder to the railway. An example was that built from Chirk on the Shrewsbury & Chester line to Llanarmon. Sometimes road and rail communication could complement each other. Starting in May 1840, a new coach service was put on from Derby to Manchester. This was advertised as enabling the coach passenger to get to Manchester in time to catch the 4 o’clock train to Liverpool.

George Shillibeer was an enterprising businessman who, in 1829, started a horse bus service from the ‘Yorkshire Stingo’ public house in Lisson Grove, Marylebone, eastwards towards the City and eventually reaching the Bank. He experienced competition and decided instead to operate a service between London, Greenwich and Woolwich. He was therefore less than pleased when the London and Greenwich Railway opened in 1836. This was at a time when there were many railway accidents and some wag penned a song which briefly became popular, called ‘Shillibeer’s Original Omnibus versus the Greenwich Railroad’. One verse went thus:

These pleasure and comfort with safety combine,

They will neither blow up nor explode like a mine;

Those who ride on the railroad might half die with fear,

You can come to no harm in the safe Shillibeer.

Early railway travel was distinctly hazardous. 1840 was a year when there was a marked spate of accidents. Some coach proprietors took advantage and advertised the superiority of the service they still offered, albeit conveniently forgetting the not unblemished safety record of the coaching industry. Thus, a coach proprietor reminded passengers contemplating a journey from Derby to Nottingham of the advantages of ‘going by coaches combining safety and expedition with comfort’ and boasting that it ‘must be evident to all that the Old Mode of Travelling is still the most preferable, and the only one to escape the Dreadful Railway Accidents, too awful to describe.’

The generally acknowledged superiority of railway over road transport was not always borne out in practice. The Eastern Counties Railway had the reputation of being something of a shocker with its slowness, timekeeping and general inefficiency. Coach proprietors and other road operators in the district where the company operated were able to make much of the item in a Norwich newspaper, which reported with some relish that fine Norfolk turkeys which, had been despatched from Norwich for sale in London did not arrive in the capital until many hours after they would need to have been cooked for Christmas dinner. A story about...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One The Impact of Industrialisation and Urbanisation on Britain
• Chapter Two Inland Transport Before the Railway Age
• Chapter Three The Railway Age – An Outline of Railway Developments 1820-1914
• Chapter Four Challenges facing the Landed Aristocracy in the Early Nineteenth Century
• Chapter Five How Railway schemes were promoted
• Chapter Six How the Landed Aristocracy reacted to the coming of the Railways
• Chapter Seven Other opposition from Landowners
• Chapter Eight The need to regulate the Railways
• Chapter Nine The Railway Interest
• Chapter Ten Other types of opposition to the Railways
• Chapter Eleven Railways up and running and still generating criticism
• Chapter Twelve Attitudes to Railways in the Arts
• Chapter Thirteen Examples of support for Railways
• Chapter Fourteen Hostility continues
• Select Bibliography
• Notes