Fire and Steam
Page 47
18. ‘Summer and Winter Resorts’ poster, 1897. National Railway Museum.
19. Locomotives on the Highland Railway, 1890s. Milepost 92½.
20. Midland Railway porters unloading milk, 1890. National Railway Museum.
21. Train driver, 1907. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis.
22. Women railway workers, 1917. National Railway Museum.
23. Ambulance train, c. 1915. Imperial War Museum.
24. Accident at Penistone, south Yorkshire, 1916. Arthur Trevena Collection.
25. Strike-breaking staff and volunteers, 1926. National Railway Museum.
26. Southern Railway poster, 1926. Milepost 92½.
27. Interior of a London, Midland & Scottish refreshment car, 1920s. Milepost 92½.
28. ‘Take Me By The Flying Scotsman’ poster, 1932. Milepost 92½.
29. ‘So Swiftly Home’ poster, 1932. National Railway Museum.
30. A4 Pacific locomotives, c. 1938. Milepost 92½.
31. Post Office carriage, 1935. National Railway Museum.
32. Repair gang, 1940. Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty Images.
33. Evacuees, c. 1940. Fox Photos/Getty Images.
34. ‘Food, Shells and Fuel Must Come First’ poster, 1940. National Railway Museum.
35. Breakdown crew, 1943. Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
36. Miners waiting for a train, 1950s. Milepost 92½.
37. Holidaymakers queuing at Waterloo, 1946. Fox Photos/Getty Images.
38. British Railways’ coat of arms, 1950s. Milepost 92½.
39. Diesel train, 1960s. Milepost 92½.
40. Train liveries, mid-1990s. Milepost 92½.
41. ‘Intercity Sleepers’ poster, 1985. National Railway Museum.
42. Norwich station, 2006. ATOC/Paul Bigland.
43. Eurostar train at St Pancras, 2007. London & Continental Railways/TROIKA.
The railway network in 1851: 6,100 route miles across Great Britain.
The railway network in its heyday in 1907: 19,500 route miles across Great Britain. Detail of north-east England.
The death of the branch line: The railway network in north-east Scotland in 1947 (above) and 2007 (below).
A lithograph commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the opening in 1825 of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, with images of George Stephenson and his Locomotion engine, as well as later developments such as the first railway suspension bridge.
The opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830 attracted enormous local and worldwide interest.
Early opposition to the railway was widespread, as shown in this satirical cartoon by Henry Hughes from 1831, which illustrates concerns about the dangers of this new form of transport.
This caricature of John Bull drunkenly accepting numerous proposals for railway bills was published in 1836 during one of several periods of excessive speculation in railways.
The class divide: illustration from the Mirror in 1837 portraying the three types of carriages on the new London & Birmingham Railway.
Ladies ticket from 1840: women were often offered the opportunity to sit in their own compartments in the early days of rail travel. Ladies’ compartments continued to exist until the 1960s.
A view of open carriages crossing the Bridgwater Canal on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in the 1830s. The gauge looks rather wide but is in fact the standard 4ft 8ins used across nearly all the railway network at this time, apart from on the lines of the Great Western.
Bristol Temple Meads station in 1846 before platforms became the norm.
An illustration from the Illustrated London News highlighting the difficulties caused at Gloucester station, which for many years in the mid-nineteenth century was the meeting point of railways operating different gauges. Passengers travelling between Bristol and Birmingham had to change trains, creating delay and scenes of chaos.
A satirical cartoon from 1850 suggesting possible alternative forms of employment for horses made redundant by the advent of the railway.
The railway greats: Brunel (far right) and Robert Stephenson (seated left) with colleagues at the launch of Brunel’s SS Great Eastern in 1857.
In an effort to make the railways more acceptable to the public, the early engineers would often add embellishments to structures such as bridges and tunnels. This surprisingly rural scene from around 1840 is the entrance of the Primrose Hill Tunnel near Camden Town in north London on the London & Birmingham Railway built by Robert Stephenson.
The construction of St Pancras station as published in the Illustrated London News on 15 February 1868. The recently-built tunnel roof on which the men are standing in the foreground is the top of the world’s first underground railway, the Metropolitan.
The Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 killed seventy-five people and remains to this day the worst railway accident caused by structural failure.
Construction of the iconic Forth Bridge, built between 1883 and 1890, which considerably shortened rail journeys between Edinburgh and Fife, Perth, Aberdeen and the north of Scotland.
This lithograph by Alfred Concanen from 1874 illustrates how the railway companies soon found an extra source of revenue by selling space on their walls for advertising anything from sherry to medical remedies.
Early railway companies also earned income by offering luxury rail tours to wealthy passengers. Here, a seventeen-strong party accompanied by two maidservants, a cook and a steward are setting out from St Pancras in 1876 on a twenty-six day excursion around Britain. The trip took in Scotland, the newly built and very scenic Settle to Carlisle line and the West Country.
The railways were responsible for the advent of mass tourism as they enabled people to reach their destinations cheaply and quickly. They exploited this burgeoning market with posters advertising the delights of the resorts they served. This ‘Summer & Winter Resorts’ poster was produced by the London, Chatham & Dover Railway in 1897.
Locomotives of the Highland Railway, which catered largely for tourists in the summer but also played a vital role in the First World War. This picture is from the 1890s.
Midland Railway porters unloading milk at Somers Town dock, just west of St Pancras, in 1890. The churns were transported in ventilated wagons, ensuring fresh milk for Londoners whose diet was greatly improved by the spread of the railways.
Railway servants were expected to work long hours for modest pay, but job security and the uniform ensured a steady supply of labour. Drivers, like this one on the Great Central Railway in 1907, were regarded as a social elite and were extremely proud of their responsible position, as shown by this man’s clean oil can and gold watch chain.
Women railway workers replaced many men on the railways in both world wars. Here they are working on gas lamps at the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway’s Horwich works in Greater Manchester in May 1917.
Ambulance trains with extensive medical facilities, including a pharmacy, were widely used in the First World War, carrying a total of 2,680,000 soldiers.
This spectacular accident at Penistone, south Yorkshire in 1916 did not result in any casualties because the subsidence which caused it started relatively slowly.
Strike-breaking staff and volunteers posing on a London, Midland & Scottish locomotive at St Enoch Station, Glasgow during the General Strike of 1926.
The railway companies were keen to advertise their facilities for travellers wishing to venture further a field. This poster produced for the Southern Railway in 1926 promoted rail services that linked with Atlantic Ocean crossings by the White Star, the world’s largest liner at the time.
This painting by Leonard Campbell Taylor of the interior of a London, Midland & Scottish dining car in the 1920s shows the lavish dining facilities available – at no great cost.
Railway poster art flourished between the wars. This 1932 London & North Eastern Railway advertisement made an oblique reference to a similar Southern Railway poster, emphasising the LNER’s more exciting services.
&
nbsp; The electrification scheme of the Southern Railway attracted vast numbers of extra passengers onto the railways.
The streamlined A4 Pacific locomotives were the elite fleet of the LNER, one of which, No 4468 Mallard, broke the world speed record for a steam engine in 1938.
Mail was carried by the railway from its earliest days and from the 1860s special mobile sorting offices like this one were introduced. This scene of postal workers dates from 1935.
The railways were a labour-intensive industry, as evidenced by the large number of men in this repair gang replacing a rail in 1940.
The mass evacuation of children from British cities presented an enormous logistical problem in the early days of the Second World War. The railways rose to the occasion, however, and the scheme was carried out with remarkable success.
During the Second World War the government produced posters emphasising the primacy of the war effort for the railways. It even tried, unsuccessfully, to dissuade people from using the system.
Widespread fears that the Germans would use gas in the Second World War led to the wearing of gas masks by breakdown crews. The task for this gang on the Southern Railway in September 1943 was to re-rail a carriage while remaining in their protective clothing.
Kent miners in the 1950s waiting for a train to take them to work.
Holidaymakers queuing outside Waterloo station in July 1946 to take trains to the seaside.
British Railways’ coat of arms from the 1950s. Various versions were used in subsequent years.
The railways were slow to adapt to diesel technology, which would have saved considerable sums and made the economics of many branch lines more viable.
Privatisation in the mid-1990s led to a proliferation of liveries and logos and the most radical shake up of the industry in its history. This included the separation of the operating companies from Railtrack (later Network Rail) which was responsible for the infrastructure.
The development of the InterCity brand and its popular services was one of the great successes of British Railways, reviving the market for long distance train travel in the face of competition from the motorways.
A sensitive approach to maintaining the heritage while modernising the railway pays dividends, as illustrated by this refurbishment of Norwich station.
A test run of a Eurostar train into St Pancras, the train shed of which was totally refurbished for the 2007 completion of Britain’s first High Speed Line linking the station with the Channel Tunnel.