Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

Transportation Revolution

Innovations in Transportation

1. Turnpike Trusts At the end of the 17th century, British roads were in a terrible state. The rapid increase in industrial production between 1700 and 1750 resulted in the need for an improved transport system. Whenever possible, factory owners used Britain's network of rivers to transport their goods. However, their customers did not always live by rivers and they therefore had to make use of Britain's roads. This was a major problem for mine-owners as transport costs were crucial. If they could not get their coal to market at a competitive price, they were out of business.

The appalling state of Britain's roads created serious problems for factory owners. Bad weather often made roads impassable. When fresh supplies of raw materials failed to arrive, factory production came to a cut. Flooded roads also meant that factory owners had difficulty transporting the finished goods to their customers. Merchants and factory owners appealed to Parliament for help.

After much discussion it was decided that this problem would only be solved if road building could be made profitable. Groups of businessmen were therefore encouraged to form companies called Turnpike Trusts. These companies were granted permission by Parliament to build and maintain roads. So that they could make a profit from this venture, companies were allowed to charge people to use these roads. Between 1700 and 1750 Parliament established over 400 of these Turnpike companies.

The quality of the roads built by these companies varied enormously. Some companies tried to increase their profits by spending very little money on repairing their roads. Other companies made every effort to provide a good service. In 1765, Harrogate Turnpike Trust employed John Metcalf to build a three-mile stretch of road in Yorkshire. Although blind since the age of six, Metcalfe was able to make an extremely good road. Metcalfe was aware

1 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

of the importance of efficient drainage, and his decision to dig ditches along the sides of his convex roads considerably reduced the possibility of flooding.

This road was so successful he was commissioned to build a series of roads that were able to carry heavy wagons and withstand wet weather. Another important road builder was Thomas Telford. This talented engineer adapted ideas first used by the Romans. On top of foundations made from large stone blocks, Telford spread layers of large and small stones. Telford's method was based on the idea that vehicles could assist rather than destroy roads. He pointed out that by using small stones on the surface of the road, the more traffic that used the road, the more tightly compacted the stones would become. Telford's roads were very impressive, but they were also expensive and the Turnpike companies found it difficult to make profits from this method of road building.

Eventually another Scottish engineer, John Macadam, came up with a cheaper method of making good roads. In 1816, Macadam was employed by the Bristol Turnpike Trust. Macadam developed the view that roads did not need stone foundations. His method was to spread a series of thin layers of small angular stones over a subsoil base. After each layer was laid, it was left for a while so that the weight of vehicles using the road could compact the stones together. These 'macadamized' roads enabled horses to pull three times the load they could on other road surfaces. Wagons and coaches could also travel much faster on this surface.

2. Canals

2.1. Canal Mania

The British canal system of water transport played a vital role in the Industrial Revolution, the modern canal network came into being because the Industrial Revolution demanded an economic and reliable way to transport goods and commodities in large quantities. Some 29 river navigation improvements took place in the 16th and 17th centuries, starting with the Thames locks and the River Wey Navigation. The biggest growth was in the so-called narrow canals, which extended water transport to the emerging industrial areas of the Staffordshire

2 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

potteries and Birmingham as well as a network of canals joining Yorkshire and Lancashire and extending to London.

Big canals began to be built in the 18th century to link the major manufacturing centers across the country. Known for its huge commercial success, the Bridgewater Canal in North West England opened in 1761. It connected Worsley with the rapidly growing town of Manchester, but its advantages over land and river transport meant that within a year of its opening, the price of coal in Manchester fell by about half. The Bridgewater Canal was a huge financial success: it repaid the cost of its construction within just a few years.

This success helped inspire a period of intense canal building, known as Canal Mania. Within just a few years of the Bridgewater’s opening, an embryonic national canal network came into being, with the construction of canals such as the Oxford Canal and the Trent & Mersey Canal. There was a dramatic rise in the number of schemes promoted. Only one canal was authorized by Act of Parliament in 1790, but by 1793 it was twenty. The capital authorized in 1790 was £90,000 but rose to nearly £3 million by 1793. New canals were hastily built in the aim of replicating the commercial success of the Bridgewater Canal, the most notable being the and Liverpool Canal and the Thames and Severn Canal which opened in 1774 and 1789 respectively.

By the 1820s a national network – first in the world – was in existence. The new canals proved highly successful. The boats on the canals were horse-drawn with a towpath alongside the canal for the horse to walk along. This horse-drawn system was highly economical and became standard across the British canal network. The canal boats could carry thirty tons at a time with only one horse pulling – more than ten times the amount of cargo per horse that was possible with a cart. It was this huge increase in supply that contributed to the reduction of the price of coal.

2.2. Competition

This success proved the viability of canal transport and soon industrialists in many other parts of the country wanted canals. After the Bridgewater Canal, the early canals were built by groups of private individuals with an interest in improving communications. In Staffordshire,

3 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood saw an opportunity to bring bulky cargoes of clay to his factory doors and to transport his fragile finished goods to market in Manchester, Birmingham, or further afield by water, minimizing breakages. The new canal system was both cause and effect of the rapid industrialization of the Midlands and the north. The period between the 1770s and the 1830s is often referred to as the Golden Age of British canals.

For each canal, an Act of Parliament was necessary to authorize construction, and as people saw the high incomes achieved from canal tolls, canal proposals came to be put forward by investors interested in profiting from dividends, at least as much as by people whose businesses would profit from cheaper transport of raw materials and finished goods. In a further development, there was often out-and-out speculation, in which people would try to buy shares in a newly floated company simply to sell them on for an immediate profit, regardless of whether the canal was ever profitable or even built. During this period of Canal Mania, huge sums were invested in canal building and although many schemes came to nothing, the canal system rapidly expanded to nearly 4,000 miles (over 6,400 kilometers) in length.

Many rival canal companies were formed and competition was out of control. Perhaps the best example was Worcester Bar in Birmingham, a point where the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and the Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line were only 7 feet (2.1 m) apart. For many years, a dispute about tolls meant that goods travelling through Birmingham had to be portaged from boats in one canal to boats in the other.

2.3. Flyboats

On the majority of British canals the canal-owning companies did not own or run a fleet of boats, since this was usually prohibited by the Acts of Parliament setting them up to prevent monopolies. Instead, they charged private operators tolls to use the canal. These tolls were also usually regulated by the Acts. From these tolls they would try, with varying degrees of success, to maintain the canal, pay back initial loans, and pay dividends to their shareholders.

4 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

In winter special icebreaker boats with reinforced hulls would be used to break the ice. Packet boats carried packages up to 112 pounds (51 kg) in weight as well as passengers at relatively high speed day and night. To compete with railways, the flyboat was introduced, cargo-carrying boats working day and night. The boats were owned and operated by individual carriers, or by carrying companies who would pay the captain a wage depending on the distance traveled and the amount of cargo. The canal system grew rapidly at first, and became an almost completely connected network covering the South, Midlands, and parts of the North of England and Wales.

3. Locomotives

3.1. Introduction of Steam Locomotives

The first steam railway locomotive was introduced by in 1804. He was the first engineer to build a successful high-pressure stationary in 1799. He followed this with a road-going steam carriage in 1801. Although that experiment ended in failure, in 1804 he built a successful unnamed rail-going for the narrow- gauge Merthyr Tramroad in South Wales. Amid great interest from the public, in 1804 it successfully carried 10 tons of iron, 5 wagons and 70 men a distance of 9.75 miles (15.69 km) from Penydarren to Abercynon in 4 hours and 5 minutes, an average speed of nearly 5 mph (8.0 km/h).

This locomotive proved that steam traction was a practical proposition, although the use of the locomotive was quickly abandoned as it was too heavy for the primitive plateway track. A second locomotive, built for the colliery, also broke the track. Trevithick built another locomotive in 1808, Catch Me Who Can, which ran on a temporary demonstration railway in Bloomsbury, London. Members of the public were able to ride behind at speeds up to 12 mph (19 km/h). However, it again broke the rails and Trevithick was forced to abandon the demonstration after just two months.

5 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

The first commercially successful steam locomotive was the twin cylinder , designed by in 1812 by using John Blenkinsop’s patented design for rack propulsion for the . Blenkinsop believed that a locomotive light enough to move under its own power would be too light to generate sufficient adhesion, so he designed a rack-and-pinion railway for the line. This was despite the fact that Trevithick demonstrated successful adhesion locomotives a decade before. The single rack ran outside the narrow- gauge edge-rail tracks and was engaged by a cog-wheel on the left side of the locomotive. The cog-wheel was driven by two cylinders embedded into the top of the center-flue boiler. Four such locomotives were built for the railway and they worked until the early 1830s. Salamanca was the first commercially successful steam locomotive, built in 1812.

6 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

4. Railways

4.1. First Successful Steam Railways

William Hedley and (another colliery employee) designed a locomotive in 1813 that became known as Puffing Billy. A year later , another of Wylam’s employees, improved the design with Blücher, the first locomotive to use flanged wheels keeping the locomotive on the track and had cylinder rods directly connected to the wheels in the manner of Catch Me Who Can

In 1821, an Act of Parliament was approved for a tramway between Stockton and Darlington. The railway was also empowered to carry passengers in addition to coal and general merchandise. The line was 25 miles (40 km) in length and had 100 passing loops along its single track and four branch lines to collieries. It opened in 1825. The first train was hauled by Stephenson’s Locomotion No 1 at speeds of 12 to 15 miles per hour (19 to 24 km/h).

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) was not the first railway, but it was the first one to rely exclusively on steam power; the first to be entirely double track throughout its length; the first to have a signaling system; the first to be fully timetabled; the first to be powered entirely by its own motive power; and the first to carry mail. As such, it revolutionized transportation and paved the way for the phenomenal development of railways that would soon take over the world.

7 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

As Manchester had grown on cotton spinning, Leeds had a growing trade in weaving. The Pennines restricted canal development, so the railway provided a realistic alternative, especially with the growth in coal usage from the mines in the North East and Yorkshire. A number of lines were approved in the area, such as the Leeds and Selby Railway in 1830, which linked the former to the port of Hull via the River Ouse.

While the L&MR had not ousted the Lancashire canal system from the transport of goods, there was an unexpected enthusiasm for passenger travel. The financial success of the railway was beyond all expectations. Soon companies in London and Birmingham planned to build lines linking these cities together and with Liverpool and Manchester via the L&MR. These two lines were the London and Birmingham (L&BR), designed by , and the Grand Junction, engineered by Joseph Locke. The Grand Junction was designed to link the existing L&MR and the new L&BR. It opened in July 1837, with the L&BR following a few months later.

4.2. Railway Mania

It was legally required that each line be authorized by a separate Act of Parliament, which typically cost over £200,000 to obtain, but opposition could effectively prevent its construction. The canal companies, unable or unwilling to upgrade their facilities to compete with railways, used political power to try to stop them.

The railways responded by purchasing about a fourth of the canal system, in part to get the right of way and in part to buy off critics. Once an Act was obtained, there was little government regulation, as laissez faire and private ownership had become accepted practices. The railways largely had exclusive territory, but given the compact size of Britain, this meant that two or more competing lines could connect major cities. Between the-mid 1830s and the mid-1940s, the period of the railway boom, Parliament authorized 8,000 miles of lines at a projected cost of £200 million.

George Hudson became the most important railway promoter of his time. Called the “railway king” of Britain, Hudson amalgamated numerous short lines and established the Railway Clearing House in 1842, an organization that provided uniform paperwork and

8 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

standardized methods for apportioning fares while transferring passengers and cargo between lines and loaning out cargo cars. Hudson’s ability to design complex company and line amalgamations helped bring about the beginnings of a more modern railway network.

In 1849, he exercised effective control over nearly 30% of the rail track operating in Britain, most of it owned by four railway groups: the Eastern Counties Railway, the Midland, the York, Newcastle and Berwick, and the York and North Midland. Hudson remains an important figure in railway history also because of a series of scandalous revelations that forced him out of office. The financial reporting malpractices of the Eastern Counties Railway while Hudson was its chairman eventually led to the collapse of his system.

All the railways were promoted by commercial interests. As those opened by the year 1836 were paying good dividends, it prompted financiers to invest and by 1845 over 1,000 projected schemes had been put forward. This led to an anger, following a common pattern: as the price of railway shares increased, more and more money was poured in by speculators, until the inevitable collapse in price. The Railway Mania, as it was called, reached its peak in 1846, when no fewer than 272 Acts of Parliament setting up new railway companies were passed. Unlike most stock market bubbles, there was a net tangible result from all the investment in the form of a vast expansion of the British railway system, although perhaps at an inflated cost. When the government stepped in and announced closure for depositing schemes, the Railway Mania was brought to an end.

The legacy of Railway Mania can still be seen today, with duplication of some routes and cities possessing several stations on the same or different lines, sometimes with no direct connection between them (however, a significant amount of this duplication was removed by the Beeching Axe in the 1960s). The best example of this is London, which has no fewer than twelve main line terminal stations, serving its dense and complex suburban network. It is basically the result of the many railway companies during the Mania that were competing to run their routes in the capital.

9 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

4.3. Economic and Social Impact of Railways

• The railway directors often had important political and social connections and used them to their companies’ advantages: landed aristocrats with established connections in London were especially welcome on the corporate boards. They leveraged the business intelligence and connections gained through railways to join corporate boardrooms in other industries. • The financial success of the early railways was phenomenal as they had no real competition: The roads were still very slow and in poor condition. Prices of fuel and food fell in cities connected to railways in accordance with the fall in the cost of transport. • The railways changed British society in numerous and complex ways that the railways had a sizable impact in many spheres of economic activity: The building of railways and locomotives, for example, called for large quantities of heavy materials and thus provided significant stimulus to the coal-mining, iron-production, engineering, and construction industries. The railways also helped reduce transaction costs, which in turn lowered the costs of goods. The distribution and sale of perishable goods such as meat, milk, fish, and vegetables was transformed, giving rise not only to cheaper produce in the stores but also to far greater variety in people’s diets. • The railways were also a significant force for the changing patterns of human mobility: had originally been conceived as a way of moving coal and industrial goods but the railway operators quickly realized the potential for market for railway travel, leading to an extremely rapid expansion in passenger services. The number of railway passengers tripled in just eight years between 1842 and 1850. Traffic volumes roughly doubled in the 1850s and then doubled again in the 1860s.

4.4. Government Involvement for Safety Conditions

While it had been necessary to obtain an Act of Parliament to build a new railway, the government initially took a laissez faire approach to their construction and operation. The state began to pay attention to safety matters with the 1840 Act for Regulating Railways, which empowered the Board of Trade to appoint railway inspectors. The Railway Inspectorate

10 Civilisation Module Second Year/ LMD [email protected]

was established in 1840 to inquire into the causes of accidents and recommend ways of avoiding them.

Colonel Frederic Smith conducted the first investigation into five deaths caused by a large casting falling from a moving train in 1840 (Howden rail crash). He also conducted an inquiry into the derailment on the GWR when a mixed goods and passenger train derailed on Christmas Eve, 1841. As early as 1844 a bill had been put before Parliament suggesting the state purchase the railways, but it was not adopted. It did, however, lead to the introduction of minimum standards that would require railway companies to offer services available to the poorer passengers on each railway roue at least once a day (so-called Parliamentary carriages or trains).

In the earliest days of passenger railways in Britain, the poor were encouraged to travel to find employment in the growing industrial centers, but trains were generally unaffordable to them. The Railway Regulation Act, which took effect in 1844, compelled “the provision of at least one train a day each way at a speed of not less than 12 miles an hour including stops, which were to be made at all stations, and of carriages protected from the weather and provided with seats; for all which luxuries not more than a penny a mile might be charged.”

11