Railways or tramways for horse-drawn trucks in the north of England date from the early 16th century and a book published in 1550 shows an illustration of a narrow-guage railway in the Alsace mines. Mine railways wwere introduced into England from Germany and by the 18th century they had become commonplace with no less than twenty in the vicinity of Newcastle alone.
Most of these railways were built with wooden tracks which wore away rather quickly and these became clad with iron to increase their working life. The first iron rails appeared in Cumberland in 1738.
The first railway to be sanctioned by Parliament was the horse-drawn Surrey Iron Railway which was opened in (1803 / 1801 ??) and ran from Wandsworth to Croydon. It was the first railway open to public use and not confined to a particular industry. The Oystermouth Railway near Swansea which opened in
1807 was the first to carry fare-paying passengers.
In 1804, Richard Trevithick built an experimental steam locomotive for a railway in South Wales and William Hedley built the "Puffing Billy" in 1813 for a colliery railway near Newcastle.
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| | The earliest rails were made of flat lengths of timber but these were subject to rapid wear so they were covered in iron. Later a vertical iron plate was added to the outside of the wooden rail to help keep the wheels of the wagons on the track.
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George Stephenson (1781-1848), the son of a Northumberland collier, constructed the first practical steam engine in 1814. He constructed the Stockton and Darlington railway - the first passenger railway - which opened in 1825. Initially, both steam locomotives and horses were used on the line but, by 1833, the locomotives had completely ousted the horses. Stephenson also consructed the Manchester and Liverpool Railway in 1829 using the 4 feet 8� inch guage of the Newcastle coal tram roads.
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| | Stephenson's engine "The Rocket", equiped with tubular boilers, ran at 30 mph on the Manchester and Liverpool Railway.
"The Rocket" was the winning design in a competition held in 1829. The Liverpool and Manchester line was built specifically for steam traction and opened the following year. |
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The 1830's saw the establishment of England's first trunk lines and Isambard Kingdom Brunel commenced the building of the Great Western Railway in 1833 using a broad guage of 7 feet.
The 1840's saw the rapid construction of railways throughout the UK and huge amounts of capital were raised - it reached £100-millions in 1845 alone.
The Midland Railway Bill was passed in 1863 and the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (later called the Great Central) Bill in 1893.
The 19th century saw a rapid proliferation of railways in the UK until its last decade when most of the country's need had been met. 5,000 miles of railways had been built by 1846, 10,000 miles by 1860, 15,000 miles by 1970 and 20,000 miles by 1890.
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| | All railway lines were established by Act of Parliament to overcome the various interests along their routes.
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Parliament has always maintained its right to control the railways and denied that the railway companies have any vested rights.
In 1840, owing to the "Railway Panic of 1836", the general regulation of the railways was vested in the Board of Trade.
The attention of legislators was rapidly turned to the conditions of labour on the railways. Public safety, the rates charged, adequate service and other issues were also cotrolled from an early date.
The "Cheap Trains" Act of 1844 compelled the railways to carry third-class passengers in covered carriages for a penny a mile and provided the government with an option to purchase railways twenty-one years later.
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The third-class traffic proved very lucrative to the railway companies and the Midland Railway abolished second-class carriages in 1875. it was followed by the other companies.
Despite the monopoly enjoyed by the railway companies, the option of purchase by the governament provided for by the 1844 Act was not excercised, possibly because thecontrolling power of the government was recognised.
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In 1873, the Railway Commission was appointed to iterpret Acts of Parliament connected with the railways.
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| | Although the railways in the UK were closely controlled by the government, the development of the railway system was left to private capital. European railway systems developed in the 1840s on the back of British experience and tose of, for example, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey were established by the respective national governments. German railways developed as the result of private enterprise but all were gradually brought under state control.
see also: History of the Railways Outside the UK
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During World War I (1914-18), the railways were under government war-time control. In 1921, most of the UK companies were amalgamated into four main groups; the London, Midland and Scottish; the London and North Eastern; the Great Western; and the Southern Railways.
In 1853, the block system was introduced.
The Midland Railway adopted the Westinghouse air-pressure brake in 1875.
Double-expansion engines were adopted for the London and North Western Railway in 1881.
The City and South London Electric Railway was opened in 1890.
In 1892, the Great Western railway broad guage was converted to by narrow guage ending the "Battle of the Guages" and allowing the interchange of traffic between the lines of all the companies.
Electric traction had many advantages over steam; its general cleanliness, the economic advantage of having motive power generated at a central location, rapid acceleration and the simplification of shunting operations.
In "tube" or "subway" systems, electric power is essential becuase of the problems involved in ventilating the tunnels if fossil fuels are used.
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| | The tunnels of the tube system in London run at a depth of between seventy and one hundred and forty feet.
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The City and South London Electric Railway was opened in 1890.
The arrival of electricity led to a great extension of electric trams in suburban areas which caused serious lossess to the suburban traffic of the railways.
The railway companies attempted to counter this threat with electric autocars operating for short distances in urban areas and instituted motor buses to connect outlying districts with their stations. Despite these measures, they could not recover the revenue lost to the electric trams.
BLACKPOOL once had the largest rail terminus in the country to cope with the huge influx of holiday-makers.
HEATWAVE, 2003 Because of the poor quality of the rails used in Britain's railway system compared to European counterparts and the methods of construction, there is danger of rails cracking in temperatures below 5°C and buckling when temperatures exceed 35°C. The first week of August saw temperatures soar to near the maximum since records have been kept and on Thursday, August 21st, with speed restrictions having been imposed on the railways for several days, a train operated by SW Trains left Southampton Parkway Station for London (a 70-mile journey which should take one hour and ten minutes). Passengers were subjected to a journey of almost nine hours on three trains via Romsey and Salisbury in near-record temperatures and at one point threatened to leave the train to force it to be moved to a station where they could exit to a platform.
see also: Weather in the UK
