British Railway History 1830-1876
The Victorian Era saw the beginning of mechanical transport. The steam railway and the steam ship rose from being mechanical curiosities to the status of world-wide carriers. The railway, indeed, changed the world in a way and on a scale never before imagined, let alone experienced; even the motor car has simply furthered the changes wrought by the railway, which was the real revolutionary agent. Save for advance in the arts and the polish of high society, the England of George III had more in common with that left by Henry VIII than with late Victorian England.
Numerous histories of particular railway companies have been written down the years, some good, some poor, a few magnificent. But this, we believe, is the first time that the general history of British railway transport has been presented in broad outline and, as far as possible without compiling an encyclopaedia, in considerable detail. The first inter-city line, the Liverpool and Manchester of 1830, inspired the building of greater ones. Their success in turn led to the great boom, amounting to a mania, in the late eighteen forties, as a result of which railways spread far across the country.
This first volume covers the years from 1830 to 1876, when the third and last great main line from the capital to the Border-the Midland Railway-was completed. The railway world of the mid-century, in the midst of industrial expansion, was curiously feudal. A railway magnate could act very like a robber baron, and frequently did. They went in for power politics on the grand scale, menacing their rivals and terrorising smaller companies. But there were respectable companies also, whose transactions were more in accordance with the higher morality of liberal capitalism, who drove hard bargains but honoured their agreements. By 1876 the robber-barons were declining and the severely respectable were very much in the ascendant. By 1876 an express train was defined as one with an average speed of not less than forty miles an hour, and the best night trains had proper sleeping cars, while on the Midland Railway all trains carried third-class passengers in reasonably comfortable carriages. The national railway system now extended from Cornwall to Caithness.
In his History, which he prefers to call an outline, and which, he says, owes much to the initiation and appreciation of Canon Roger Lloyd, Ellis deals sympathetically with his real-life characters, whether they were admirable, or, in some cases, rather deplorable people. He traces the broad development of railway technics from their crude beginnings to the great improvements of the middle years, in motive power, signalling and braking devices, what time the newer railways blossomed in such self-conscious magnificence as that of St. Pancras in London and St. Enoch in Glasgow. The Railway had arrived, and had achieved a monopoly which was to last into the next century.
Hardback with dust jacket, 16x24cm, 444 pages, black & white photographs
Condition: Good with some spotting to DJ/EP/edges of book
ISBN: 9780999010846
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Updated: 15 September 2025