The Victorian Society in Manchester Registered Charity No
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The Victorian Society in Manchester Registered Charity No. 1081435 Registered Charity No.1081435 Winter Newsletter 2016 Offcially the use of steam locomotive Steam and Gardens in Norfolk, but EDITORIAL on mainline service ended on 11 with delicious irony she was restored Father Christmas and his steam- August 1968 with the legendary to mainline standard in 2004 in powered reindeer ‘Fifteen guinea special’ – so-called preparation for the 40th anniversary of The majority of young children now because that was the cost of a ticket the end of steam! encounter Father Christmas not in a on the last steam-powered passenger department store but via a heritage train. Fittingly it ran on the old In the early days the word ‘heritage’ in railway Santa Special. This is scarcely Liverpool to Manchester line and then its current sense was not much used: surprising, given the disappearance on to Carlisle via Settle, arriving back these preserved lines were seen as of many traditional department stores in Liverpool just nine minutes late after the preserve of nostalgic enthusiasts. and the astonishing rise in heritage an 11-hour journey that involved four But just like a runaway train, the railways across Britain. locomotives. And that, they thought, movement was unstoppable. was that. Ha! By chance, both steam and stores started life at almost exactly the same time at the dawn of the Victorian age. And, for the railways at least, Manchester played a key role in their birth and subsequent development. The frst ‘proper’ railway in the modern sense opened between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830. It was the frst to rely exclusively on steam power, the frst with a double track, a signalling system and a timetable, and the frst to carry mail. Meanwhile also in 1830, Austin’s of Derry in Northern Ireland opened as the world’s frst department store. But while the railway line is still going strong, sadly Austin’s closed suddenly in September 2016, defeated by the high cost of modernisation. If the government had had its way, steam The sole remaining Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway's class 27 goods railways might well have gone the engine designed by John Aspinall. 484 were built at Horwich Loco same way as Austin’s; but the great Works between 1889 and 1918: photograph by Fiona Moate British public was having none of it. The heritage railway movement Quite how many preserved lines In this new modern age there never itself was getting up steam by this there are is anyone’s guess, but it has been such a hankering after time: in 1951 the narrow-gauge is substantial. There could be as the past. And nowhere is this truer Talyllyn in Mid-Wales became the many as 173 in the UK and Ireland, than in our love affair with steam. It’s frst volunteer-led heritage railway including colliery lines and railway- probably in our genes. In the 1950s in the world, and nine years later related museums, from the Bodmin vast numbers of schoolboys were the Bluebell Railway in East Sussex and Wenford Railway in Cornwall to train spotters, faithfully ticking off opened as the UK’s frst preserved the Strathspey Railway in the far north locomotive names and numbers in standard gauge line. As a result three of Scotland. They range from little their Ian Allan books. (Today at the of the four engines on the so-called tank engines running a few hundred platform ends of main railway stations, ‘last’ train were immediately grabbed yards in old colliery yards to giants of some schoolboys have continued the by enthusiasts for preservation. The the industry like the joint Ffestiniog practice despite being pensioners.) most famous of them - 70013 Oliver and Welsh Highland Railways, which Cromwell - went to Bressingham runs for 40 miles through Snowdonia 1 from Caernarfon Castle via the our region on, for example, the East being preserved is one of the most harbour at Porthmadog to the old Lancashire Railway between Bury important developments in Victorian slate quarries at Blaenau Ffestiniog, and Rawtenstall, and the Lakeside Britain. There can be little doubt which are themselves now also a & Haverthwaite Railway in Cumbria. that in that period the railways major tourist attraction. Naturally both run massively popular resulted in the most changes in the Santa Specials in December. lives of most people - perhaps in Estimates vary, but today preserved Meanwhile, Astley Green Colliery ways you might not imagine. For lines possibly operate more than a Museum, on a 15-acre site beside the example, while railway excursions thousand locomotives on over 500 Bridgewater Canal near Tyldesley, undoubtedly led to the development miles of track, with more than 400 houses 28 colliery locomotives, the of the British seaside resort, rather stations, carry around eight million biggest collection of its kind in the UK, less well-known are excursions that passengers a year, employ around as well as Lancashire's only surviving took massive crowds to view public 2,000 full-time and nearly 20,000 headgear and engine house, both hangings - a most particular Victorian part-time staff and contribute some now listed. The museum is run and entertainment! £250 million annually to the leisure maintained by the Red Rose Steam economy. Society Limited, a registered charity. The Quakers, not surprisingly, had long been advocates of the The scale of the volunteer It is very ftting that at some point in ending of these gruesome public commitment and effort that has the last sixty years, in both semantics spectacles. It is probable that the focused on these railways in the and practice, nostalgic enthusiasm deaths and injuries which occurred second half of the 20th century is for steam railways changed to in these uncontrollable crowds were truly staggering, from back-breaking heritage awareness. For what is the major factor in the abolition of work to clearing long-disused and overgrown tracks to sophisticated and professionally-led large-scale civil engineering projects. One such is the Llyn Ystradau deviation on the Ffestiniog Railway. Between the closure of the railway in 1946 and its re-opening by volunteers ten years later, part of the line was blocked by a lake created for a pumped storage power scheme. The problem was to lift the line to a higher level to bypass the lake: the solution was a vast height-gaining spiral, the frst on any passenger line in Britain - built entirely by volunteers. Commitment to heritage railways MANCHESTER STATION HOUSE continues today and can be seen in WOBURN STATION STATION SIGNAL WITH COTTAGE 2 public hangings in 1868. But while routes on the railway network, in a map publisher. But in 1839 he executions then took place unseen special coaches on which mail was published the world’s frst railway inside prisons, the gathering of large sorted: the pouch and cage system timetables. It wasn’t easy: different crowds on the day of an execution of collecting and ejecting mail from parts of Britain kept their own time, continued until the total abolition of rapidly-travelling trains was in use as depending on when the sun rose and capital punishment in 1964. early as 1838. set. Noon was a separate ‘sun due south’ time in every town and village. Without the railway network, feeding Prior to the arrival of the dining car in However, the problem for George the expanding populations of the the late 19th century, refreshments - and the railways - was solved a industrial cities would have been on long journeys were served in the year later when Standard Time was impossible. In the second half of the dining halls of major railway stations adopted throughout Britain. Soon 19th century Manchester’s population during a train stop - not always to Bradshaw’s iconic publication evolved quadrupled to around a third of a the satisfaction of the travellers. In into the guide book and timetables on million, making enormous demands his book Victorian Railways Jack which Michael Portillo’s career with on the supply of food in the city. Simmons notes Brunel complaining the BBC is based. His programmes Railways came to the rescue. One about his coffee, Trollope calling his allow us to refect on what should of the frst products to be moved by sandwich a disgrace and Dickens be the true meaning of the word rail was fsh: large quantities, packed - during a stop at Peterborough - Heritage - 'using the resources of in ice, could be quickly transported meekly consuming ‘a petrifed bun of the present to preserve the best inland from the coastal fshing ports. enormous antiquity’. Perhaps some of the past for the beneft of future The distribution of milk from rural things haven’t changed? generations'. areas greatly altered its availability in towns once cooling methods had Our inheritance of railway architecture David Astbury & Douglas Jackson been devised. Elsewhere in Britain, is of most interest to members of the November 2016 areas noted for a single product, such Victorian Society. Railway stations as Hampshire with its watercress, are perhaps the best examples of the The illustrations on page 2 are from could achieve much more distribution Victorians having to design and build Our Iron Roads by F S Williams of that product: railways delivered it to structures for purposes which had (1852) and Osborne's Guide to the London within hours of being picked. never previously existed. Precedents Grand Junction Railway (1838) for smaller stations, apart from the Undoubtedly the concept of what need for raised platforms, may lie we now call ‘the commuter’ was a in the smaller stable blocks and MANCHESTER FACEBOOK development of the great railway out-buildings of country houses.