The railway age

After 1830, there was a rush to build railways. London and Birmingham were linked in 1838. By 1850, all the main cities were connected. 'Navvies' did the work, laying track, building bridges, digging tunnels. In twenty years or so, the face of Britain was changed.

In the 1840s, investors rushed to buy shares in railways. (It was just like the 'canal mania' of the 1790s.) Once again, not all the plans were wise, and some fortunes were lost. And there were crooks – George Hudson, the 'railway king', swindled lords and bankers out of vast sums.

Most of the railways used the 'standard gauge' – the lines were 4 feet 8 ½ inches (1.43 metres) apart. But the Great Western Railway's engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, used the 'wide gauge' of seven feet (2.13 metres). He said it gave passengers a smoother and safer ride. A law passed in 1847 made all new lines use the standard gauge. But the Great Western did not change until 1892.

The railways took a lot of trade from the canals, and killed the stage-coaches. Busy coaching-inns became quiet country pubs. Strangely, though, the spread of railways led to more demand for horses. The horses pulled the coaches and carts that took people and goods to the stations.

Railways had a huge effect on jobs. As well as the 'navvies' who built them, there were the drivers, guards, porters, etc. who ran them. Then there were the engineers who made the locomotives and coaches. (New towns, such as Swindon and Crewe, grew up around the railway works.) Thousands of men worked making the iron for the track, bridges, and rolling-stock. And thousands of miners were employed digging the coal that the railways used.

Walter Robson: Britain 1750 – 1900; Oxford University Press, 1993/2002, page 30 f.