Authors: Christian Wolmar
Fire and Steam (51 page)
It is very difficult to predict future rail demand but further growth is inevitable. Fares are being allowed to rise, which may choke off some demand but the number of rail travellers is highly dependent on the state of the economy. A host of policies are being discussed which could dramatically increase passenger numbers â a shift away from funding roads, road pricing, restricting airport development and higher taxation of both flying and motoring on environmental grounds among them.
It is therefore possible to have confidence that rail travel will survive into the twenty-second century. All kinds of technological developments are in the pipeline. Maglev trains, a kind of monorail propelled by powerful magnetic forces that lift the train a few centimetres above the tracks, have been in development for many years and have been successfully tested at speeds of over 400 mph. There have been suggestions for a network of Maglev trains linking the major British cities, but the advantage over conventional trains in terms of speed is more than negated by the disadvantages, such as the unproven nature of the technology, the impossibility of connecting them with the existing rail network, and doubts about safety, heightened by an accident on a test track in Germany in September 2006 which killed twenty-three people. In any case, conventional high-speed trains are getting quicker, with speeds of 320 kph (200 mph) on the new TGV Est in France, and even 350 kph (220 mph) being mooted, which, given the difficulty of building Maglev stations in city centres, will weigh in favour of the conventional technology.
Trains controlled by radio waves, obviating the need for drivers to see outside signals, are already in use on high-speed lines and metro systems, and the European Commission aims to make these the norm, though the sheer expense and the difficulties of synchronizing systems around the Continent may prove to be an insuperable barrier. Trains propelled by engines powered by fuel cells which burn hydrogen are also being discussed, but are not a realistic proposition for a couple of decades. While trains are indeed more environmentally friendly than any other form of transport, their record in that respect has deteriorated in recent years as rolling stock has become heavier and consequently less fuel-efficient due to safety and disability legislation, as well as the routine fitting of air conditioning. In order to retain its environmental advantage, rail transport must improve its fuel efficiency. In particular, the electrification programme needs to be revived, as electricity can be generated from non-carbon sources such as nuclear, wind and hydro, which reduces the carbon footprint. Technological developments on the track, too, may be significant in improving performance. It is quite remarkable that the same basic method of constructing railways â using rails laid on sleepers resting on ballast â that was used on the Liverpool
to Manchester railway, opened in 1830, was also used on High Speed One, completed in 2007.
For passengers, train journeys could be made much easier by provision of better information and easier methods of paying fares. Tickets sold through the internet or the mobile phone will make queues at booking offices a thing of the past and already it is possible to track the progress of individual trains on the internet or via a mobile phone.
Even though the people who saw the first train on its journey from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830 would be able to recognize today's railways as direct descendants of Stephenson's construction, the industry has come a long way in its near two centuries of existence. Most importantly, it has survived and flourished despite the competition from roads and air transport. Rail will continue to provide the best and safest
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form of transport throughout the twenty-first century. Trains are here to stay, a remarkable testimony to the prescience of Stephenson and all the subsequent pioneers.
NOTES
Introduction: Why Railways? | |
| 1 | A. F. Garnett, Steel Wheels, Cannwood Press, 2005, p. 6. |
| 2 | The Newcomen engine was not like later steam engines as it was driven by air pressure operating against a vacuum created by spraying water into low pressure steam. The first mention of a steam engine was made by an Alexandrian, Hero, writing in the first century after Christ. |
| 3 | Garnett, Steel Wheels, p. 15. |
| 4 | Frank Ferneyhough, Liverpool & Manchester Railway, 1830â1980, Robert Hale, 1980, p. 12. |
| 5 | It can still be seen in the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. |
| 6 | As with several elements of this brief early history, there are differing accounts and some suggest that this engine never ran on rails. |
| 7 | It is surprising how many people are unaware that train drivers do not actually steer their vehicles but are at the mercy of signalmen setting the correct route at every junction and points. |
| 8 | The clever devices in the middle of the back axles of cars which enable them to corner easily by ensuring the inside wheel travels just a bit more slowly than the outside one, which has to cover greater distance. |
| 9 | Francis T. Evans, âRoads, Railways, and Canals: Technical Choices in 19th century Britain', Technology and Culture, Vol. 22, 1981. |
| 10 | There is some evidence that there were earlier ones on private land which, therefore, did not require an Act of Parliament. |
| 11 | Few passengers on the Croydon Tramlink will be aware that part of its track is the original route of the world's oldest public railway. |
| 12 | Historians are rather hesitant on this point, suggesting there may have been other now-forgotten services. |
| 13 | The railway had various other names and was originally called the Oystermouth Railway and it originally only ran to Oystermouth. In one of the acts of vandalism on the railway heritage, of which there are several other examples in this book, the track was ripped up in 1960 with scant regard for its role in history. |
| 14 | Quoted in various places including |
| 15 | Richard Ayton and William Daniell, A voyage round Great Britain undertaken in the year 1813, Longmans, 1814. |
| 16 | His book, Observations on a General Iron Railway, first published in 1820 by Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, went through four more editions by 1825. |
| 17 | B. G. Wilson and J. R. Day, Unusual Railways, Frederick Muller, 1957, p. 163. |
| 18 | The original main line actually ran from Stockton to Phoenix Pit, Wilton Park City. |
| 19 | For those who have wondered why trains no longer go âtagadada, tagadada' as they used to, the reason is that most main line routes, and indeed many others, such as sections of the London Underground, have continuous welded rails with none of the gaps between rails which caused that evocative noise. Stephenson's early lines, though, had far too many such gaps! |
| 20 | Quoted in Garnett, Steel Wheels, p. 26. |
| 21 | The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 477. |
| 22 | It was by no means the first railway bridge. That was the Causey Arch in County Durham, built to carry the Dunston railroad. It was completed in 1726 and survives to this day. |
| 23 | Quoted in Frank Ferneyhough, The History of Railways in Britain, Osprey Publishing, 1975, p. 62. |
| 24 | 18 November 1824. |
| 25 | 1 October 1825. |
| 26 | Adrian Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, John Murray, 1997, p. 24. |
| 27 | Ibid., p. 26. |
| 28 | There is some discussion about whether these were loops, that allowed trains to continue forward once they had passed each other, or, as some accounts suggest, sidings which required shunting in and out to allow the train on the main line to progress. |
| 29 | Ferneyhough, The History of Railways in Britain, p. 61. |
| 30 | Jack Simmons and Gordon Biddle (eds), The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, Oxford, 1997, p. 478. |
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ONE: | |
| 1 | Harold Perkin, The Age of the Railway, David & Charles, 1970, p. 180. |
| 2 | Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, Pelican Books, 1968, p. 96. |
| 3 | Simon Garfield, The Last Journey of William Huskisson, Faber & Faber, 2004, p. 16. |
| 4 | Frank Ferneyhough, Liverpool & Manchester Railway, 1830â1980, Robert Hale, 1980, p. 13. |
| 5 | Garfield, The Last Journey of William Huskisson, p. 16. |
| 6 | Ibid. |
| 7 | Remarkably cheap, given that a new railway would cost anything between £30m and £350m per mile in the UK today. |
| 8 | Marjorie Whitelaw in Bryan Morgan (ed.), The Railway-Lover's Companion, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963, p. 66. |
| 9 | F. D. Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution, Paladin, 1972, p. 123. |
| 10 | Ferneyhough, Liverpool & Manchester Railway, 1830â1980, p. 22. |
| 11 | Ibid. |
| 12 | Quoted in Ferneyhough, Liverpool & Manchester Railway, p. 24. |
| 13 | The Times, 2 May 1825. |
| 14 | Adrian Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, John Murray, 1997, p. |
| 15 | Terry Coleman, The Railway Navvies, Pimlico, 2000, p. 25. |
| 16 | Ibid., p. 28. |
| 17 | As opposed to the âfour foot', which is the distance between the two rails on the same track, an inaccurate shorthand since it is 4ft 8½ins. The space between the tracks nowadays is normally 6ft 6ins. |
| 18 | In fact, the railway was still forced to open itself up to other carriers in 1831 but there were few takers given the complexity of trying to operate on a line largely used by the owners' trains. A similar difficulty still pertains today for freight operators seeking to use state-controlled railways in Europe. |
| 19 | Some references suggest this was a tramway with iron plates on which any road wagon could be pulled, rather than a proper railway that could be used only by specially designed vehicles. |
| 20 | Fortunately, the company was in financial difficulties which delayed construction and by the time the first section opened in 1835, locomotives were seen as the only viable option. |
| 21 | Apart from a brief three-year period in the 1870s, with just one train per day in each direction. |
| 22 | One of the inclines, the 1 in 14 Hopton, was operated after 1887 by steam locomotives, the steepest gradient on which conventional steam engines ever ran in the UK. |
| 22 | Nevertheless, Sans Pareil was fixed and proved to be a workable freight locomotive that spent many productive years on the Leigh & Bolton Railway. |
| 24 | The key feature was that the hot gases from the fire were passed through a large number of small tubes which vastly increased the evaporative surface. |
| 25 | There is no record of why Stephenson chose that name. It was then merely a description of a firework, occasionally used as a weapon of war, rather than a vehicle used for space travel. |
| 26 | There are also many replicas dotted around the world, including one at the National Rail Museum in York. |
| 27 | 6 October 1829. |
| 28 | Quoted in Ferneyhough, Liverpool & Manchester Railway, p. 59. |
| 29 | Quoted in ibid., p. 64. |
| 30 | The Times, 17 September 1830. |
| 31 | Michael Freeman, Railways and the Victorian Imagination, Yale University Press, 1999, p. 31. |
| 32 | The Corn Laws, first introduced in 1815 and finally abolished in 1846, kept wheat prices artificially high, protecting landowners from foreign competition and making food more expensive. |
| 33 | Indeed, Britain is one of the few countries with a fenced railway, in contrast to, say, the United States where huge freight trains often rumble along main streets or even people's backyards. |
| 34 | In the introduction to Ferneyhough, Liverpool & Manchester Railway, p. xii. |
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TWO: | |
| 1 | Frank Ferneyhough, Liverpool & Manchester Railway, 1830â1980, Robert Hale, 1980, p. 105. Much of this information was still required for train journeys in India until relatively recently. |
| 2 | Ibid., p. 102. |
| 3 | It was not so much those opening the doors who were killed but people already on the platform, standing too near the trains. |
| 4 | Many passengers perished in this way at an accident in Versailles in France in May 1842 (see p. 147). |
| 5 | Quoted in many places. See, for example, Simon Garfield, The Last Journey of William Huskisson, Faber, 2002, p. 20. |
| 6 | Nicholas Faith, The World the Railways Made, Bodley Head, 1990, p. 15. |
| 7 | The three mainland Japanese railways are profitable, though they had huge debt write-offs at privatization in the 1980s, and US freight companies do very well thanks to the sheer distance involved in crossing the country. Freight in India and Russia is profitable too, but otherwise, while individual services may make a profit, the need for cross-subsidy means that throughout the world the vast majority of railway networks are loss-making. |
| 8 | Quoted in Ferneyhough, Liverpool & Manchester Railway, p. 93. |
| 9 | As the Bodmin & Wadebridge had been built to standard gauge, it was not directly connected to the rest of the network until 1892 when the Great Western's broad gauge was finally abandoned (as explained in Chapter 9 ). |
| 10 | The Quarterly Review, 1833, quoted in Frank Ferneyhough, The History of Railways in Britain, Osprey Publishing, 1975, p. 73. |
| 11 | Many of the arches are now being converted into upmarket restaurants and fashionable nightclubs. |
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THREE: | |
| 1 | There were specific reasons for this: Belgium was a new country, having just broken away from Holland, and the government was keen to establish its national identity through the creation of a railway network. |
| 2 | It claims to be the oldest surviving railway station, though sections of the Manchester terminus of the Liverpool & Manchester remain, incorporated as part of the Manchester Industrial Museum. |
| 3 | Quoted in Frank Ferneyhough, History of the Railways, Osprey Publishing, 1975, p. 71. |
| 4 | Overall, there were one hundred underbridges, fifty overbridges, five viaducts, two tunnels and two aqueducts. |
| 5 | Only for a few years, as in 1844 the improvement in locomotive technology allowed engines to climb the incline to Camden Town. |
| 6 | In A Practical Treatise on Railways, A & C Black, 1839. |
| 7 | Francis Coghlan, The Iron Road Book, 1838, reprinted by E. & W. Books, 1970, p. 32. |
| 8 | Both were tragically demolished, despite a huge protest, by British Railways in 1962 in the modernist mood of the times, and replaced by the current banal glass and concrete block which, hopefully, is soon to be redeveloped in turn. |
| 9 | Adrian Vaughan, Railwaymen, Politics and Money, John Murray, 1997, p. 180. |
| 10 | Michael Robbins, The Railway Age, Penguin, 1965, p. 67. |
| 11 | Quoted in Chris de Winter Hebron, 50 famous railwaymen, Silver Link Publishing, 2005, p. 23. |
| 12 | The actual gauge was a quarter of an inch greater than 7ft, to allow the flanges to run unimpeded on the rails. |
| 13 | Rodney Weaver in The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 25. |