Steam Railways during the Industrial Revolution in Britain,
Background for the Powerpoint “What the Artist Saw”.
Nancy Sieck
Petaluma High School
Petaluma, CA
NEH Seminar 2006
For centuries Britain has been a leader in the development of railways. Given the location of our seminar, I was interested to see that “England’s first recorded ‘railway’ was laid in 1604 linking coal pits at Wollaton (within Nottingham City borders since 1877) with the Trent River.” (p.114 Leleux) These were not iron rails, however, they were wooden plank roads upon which wagons filled with coal rolled from the mines to the river.
In 1767 Richard Reynolds constructed a track of cast-iron from Coalbrookdale to the Severn. The track was a metal ”U” shaped channel, with flanges on either side of a flat track to hold the rolling wheels of a wagon on the plate. Later the flange was moved to the wheels, or the “Trucks” of the rolling wagon. These early iron tracks were used exclusively for moving materials in coalmines and ironworks.
As early as 1784 two imaginative steam power engineers, William Symington and William Murdoch, had made working models of “loco-motive steam engines”. However, James Watt, the acknowledged voice of all things steam-powered, could see no practical use for a moving engine and it was not until 1803 that Richard Trevithick constructed a “steam carriage” that made several journeys through the public streets of London. The city streets proved unsuitable for his carriage. Trevithick then created a circular track to smooth the way and charged money to let passengers ride behind his locomotive carriage, hoping to promote enough money and interest to develop a business. However, the novelty of going around in circles soon wore off and the idea of a self-propelled carriage would have to wait another hundred years for the advent of the internal combustion engine.
Another early pioneer, The “Surrey Iron Railway”, was constructed to carry goods from Wandsworth to Croyden for the general public. This enterprise, as well as most of the other newly constructed rail tramways, acted as a feeder to the canal system rather than as independent transport. Like the canals they served, tramways used horsepower, not steam.
It was not until 1812 that William Hedley joined the two innovations, iron tracks and mobile steam engine to create what we now know as a “railroad”. Hedley’s early steam engine was underpowered and not very satisfactory. Conventional wisdom of the day said that an iron wheeled machine wouldn’t perform well on metal rails; it was hopeless to try. It took George Stephenson’s engineering expertise to increase the efficiency of the loco-motive steam engine and show it to be a practical tool, as well as to tie the rails together so they wouldn’t bulge out under the weight of the freight carried. In 1821 Stephenson was hired as chief engineer to create the new railroad from Stockton to Darlington, and in 1829 his locomotive “The Rocket” won the Rainhill speed competition on the newly constructed Liverpool and Manchester Railway. With these two milestones, Stephenson’s name and the economic feasibility of steam railway transportation became a reality. Since all three locomotives pulled passenger carriages in the Rainhill speed trials, Morgan tells us “that the Liverpool and Manchester is recognized as the worlds first indisputable railway is largely due to the fact that from its opening it had, almost accidentally, used locomotives for passenger haulage” (p.63 Morgan)
Steam railroads had been intended by their operating companies as a replacement for canal transport of heavy goods, but they became a popular means of transporting passengers as well. At first the wealthy wanted to take excursion rides on the novel carriages. Later, as the network of rail tracks crossed Britain, people of the middle classes came to enjoy the swift transport. In order to encourage investors, add passenger revenue and encourage merchants to ship their goods on the nascent rail lines, special terminals were built for passengers and freight that “perfectly exemplified the need to impress urban investors and complimented the desire to reassure rural passengers” (p.65 Morgan).
Very often, in order to promote rail travel and glorify their own entrepreneurship, rail companies commissioned artists to record events that may have occurred on the trains or in stations. Art is subjective; sometimes the artists were impressed with certain events… and sometimes they were not. Some artists created purely for themselves, not on commission, and readers also have access to contemporary satirical accounts of railroads and rail travel. There are a myriad of images from which to choose.
Bibliography:
Denault, Leigh and Jennifer Landis. Motion and Means: Mapping Opposition to Railways in Victorian Britain. <July 22, 2006.
Kellett, John R. Railways and Victorian Cities. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979; Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1979.
Landow, George P. The Victorian Web. < 28, July, 2006.
Leleux, R. A regional history of railways in Great Britain: IX: the east midlands. Second Edition. Newton Abbot: David Charles. 1984.
Meeks, Carol L. V. The Victorian Railroad Station: An Architectural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956.
Spence, Jeoffry. Victorian and Edwardian Railways from Old Photographs. London: B.T. Batsford, 1975.
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