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FIRST STEAM LOCOMOTIVE

1804

1821

First fare-paying, passenger railway service in the world was established on the Oystermouth Railway in Swansea, Wales. Later this became known as the Swansea and Mumbles Railway although the railway was more affectionately known as "The Mumbles Train" (Welsh: Tren Bach I'r Mwmbwls). On 25 March 1807, a railroad carriage converted to carry people was conveyed by horse along the perimeter of Swansea Bay, travelling between "the dunes" at Swansea, and destined for Mumbles, an oyster harvesting and fishing village on the west of the bay. The people who undertook this journey were unknowing pioneers - they were the first railway passengers in world history. (Rogers, 1995)

1807

FIRST PASSENGER JOURNEY 

The story of the "Mumbles Train", as it came to be known, is as heart breaking as it is fascinating. Considering its myriad achievements and world records, it's incongruous that the railway isn't more famous. It is disgraceful also that the railway was abruptly dismantled in 1960 (at that time electric tram powered) - 153 years after those historic first steps in 1807. To the commuter age and the world of transport that we take for granted today, this was an innovation equivalent to any. The world's first - and the longest surviving railway until 1960 - is a worthy candidate of the history books. It is a complex human story of courage, humor and idiosyncrasy. It is a very Welsh story for it is as large, folksy and extraordinary as the ancient folk tales of our ancient Celtic nation of Wales, except all of it happened!

(Rogers, 1995)

 On 21 February 1804, the world's first ever railway journey ran 9 miles from the ironworks at Penydarren to the Merthyr-Cardiff Canal, South Wales. It was to be several years before steam locomotion became commercially viable, meaning Richard Trevithick and not George Stephenson was the real father of the railways. (Museum Wales, 2008)

STOCKTON AND DARLINGTON RAILWAY

A full-scale working reconstruction of the Pen-y-darren locomotive was commissioned in 1981 and delivered to the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum in Cardiff; when that closed, it was moved to the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea. Several times a year it is run on a 40m length of rail outside the museum.

Stockton & Darlington Railway, in England, first railway in the world to operate freight and passenger service with steam traction. In 1821 George Stephenson, who had built several steam engines to work in the Killingworth colliery, heard of Edward Pease’s intention of building an 8-mile (12.9-kilometre) line from Stockton on the coast to Darlington to exploit a rich vein of coal. Pease intended to use horse traction; Stephenson told Pease that a steam engine could pull 50 times the load that horses could draw on iron rails. Impressed, Pease agreed to let Stephenson equip his line. (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014)

 

On Sept. 27, 1825, the first engine ran from Darlington to Stockton, preceded by a man on horse carrying a flag reading Periculum privatum utilitas publica (“The private danger is the public good”). When the horseman was out of the way, Stephenson opened the throttle and pulled his train of wagons carrying 450 persons at a speed of 15 miles (24 km) per hour. (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014)

1825

LIVERPOOL TO MANCHESTER RAILWAY

1830

The average speed of the early railways in England was twenty to thirty miles per hour or roughly three times the speed of the stagecoach. In other words, even at a very early period of rail development, any given distance could be covered in a third of the time.

Many people experienced feelings of anxiety when they contemplated the implications of railway speed. Thomas Creevy, a liberal politician, rode along behind Stephenson's locomotive on its first trip in 1829 and commented that:

 

“It is really flying, and it is impossible to divest yourself of the notion of instant death to all upon the least accident happening.” 

(Schivelbusch, p. 15) 

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was conceived in the early 1820's as a result of rising dissatisfaction with existing road and water conveyance. As the world's first twin-track inter-urban passenger railway in which all the trains were timetabled and ticketed, the line opened on 15th September 1830. The Liverpool and Manchester lays claim to being the prototype of the modern railway because it used locomotive engines throughout its length, was the first to take seriously the carriage of passengers and was motivated by public welfare as well as private profit. (Freeman and Aldcroft, 1985, p.12)

Railways greatly helped industry. But not everybody approved of them. The Duke of Wellington, famed for leading Britain to victory at the Battle of Waterloo, feared that:

 

Trains might encourage the poor and undesirables in society to come to London and that any trains coming from places such as Bath and Bristol had to pass near to Eton School and that the pupils there might be disturbed! Some farmers believed that trains could cause cows to produce stale milk but trains did allow farmers to get their products to market quicker and this was very important to farmers producing perishable goods. (History Learning Site, 2014)

1837

FIRST ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE

The first known electric locomotive was built in 1837 by chemist Robert Davidson of Aberdeen. It was powered by galvanic cells (batteries).

LONDON TO BIRMINGHAM RAILWAY

1838

After the success of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, business people based in Birmingham began to consider the advantages of having a railway. The London & Birmingham Railway Company took Stephenson's advice and in 1833 Robert Stephenson was appointed chief engineer.

 

The 112 mile long London to Birmingham line took 20,000 men nearly five years to build. The total cost of building the railway was £5,500,000. The railway was opened in stages and finally completed on 17 September 1838. The line started at Birmingham's Curzon Street Station and finished at Euston Station in London. (Simkin, 1997)

Fig. 1

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

 

The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period during which predominantly rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the late 1700s, manufacturing was often done in people’s homes, using hand tools or basic machines. Industrialisation marked a shift to powered, special-purpose machinery, factories and mass production. The iron and textile industries, along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the Industrial Revolution, which also saw improved systems of transportation, communication and banking. While industrialization brought about an increased volume and variety of manufactured goods and an improved standard of living for some, it also resulted in often grim employment and living conditions for the poor and working classes. (History.com, 2009)

 

The success of Stephenson's train caught the public's imagination and so-called "Railway Mania" took place. Railways were seen as a way of earning a fortune. Between 1825 and 1835, Parliament agreed to the building of 54 new rail lines. From 1836 to 1837, 39 new lines were agreed to. By 1900, Britain had 22,000 miles of rail track.

(History Learning Site, 2014)

Other travelers, like the German­Jewish poet Heinrich Heine were more impressed by the way in which the railway seemed to shrink space:

 

"What changes must now occur, in our way of looking at things. Even the elementary concepts of space and time have begun to vacillate. Space is killed by the railways, and we are left with time alone. Now you can travel to Orleans in four and a half hours, and it takes no longer to get to Rouen. Just imagine what will happen when the lines to Belgium and Germany are completed! I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea’s breakers are rolling against my door."

(Schivelbusch, p. 37) 

 

The first purpose built passenger railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1826.  The South Eastern Railway Act was passed just ten years later. (Parliment.uk, 2012)  

 

Even in those first ten years, railways were beginning to lead to significant changes within British society.  Road transport could not compete.  As well as being much more time consuming, it was also more expensive.  In 1832 an essay on the advantages of railways compared road travel and rail travel between Liverpool and Manchester before and after the opening of the railway: 

  • By road, the journey took four hours and cost 10 shillings inside the coach and 5 shillings outside.  By train, the same journey took one and three-quarter hours, and cost 5 shillings inside and 3 shillings 6 pence outside.  Compared to canal the time savings were even more significant.  The same journey had taken 20 hours by canal.  The cost of canal carriage was 15 shillings a ton, whereas by rail it was 10 shillings a ton.

     

  • Post Office began using railways right at the very beginning, when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830.  They began using letter-sorting carriages in 1838, and the railway quickly proved to be a much quicker and more efficient means of transport that the old mail coaches.  It was estimated in 1832 that using the Liverpool and Manchester Railway to transport mail between the two cities reduced the expense to the government by two-thirds.   Newspapers could also be sent around the country with greatly increased speed.

     

  • Railways allowed people to travel further, more quickly.  This allowed leisure travel, and contributed to the growth of seaside resorts.  It also allowed people to live further from their places of work, as the phenomenon of commuting took hold.  Railways even contributed to the growth of cities, by allowing the cheap transport of food, as well as bricks, slate and other building materials.

     

  • They also gave a great stimulus to industry by reducing the freight costs of heavy materials such as coal and minerals, as well as reducing costs of transporting finished goods around the country.  

(Parliment.uk, 2012)

1826

Cuttings, embankments, and bridges were necessary to allow the railway to move through the landscape in its straight and level course. The old natural irregularities that road builders had respected for millennia now disappeared; replaced by the sharp linearity of the railroad. As one traveler described a journey from London to Birmingham in 1839:

 

“As far as the eye can range, one immense chasm through the earth appears before the observer, and at intervals are bridges carrying roads across the railway at a frightful height. The echoes in this place are very distinct, and while traversing its extent you seem shut out from all communication with the world.” 

(Schivelbusch, p. 24) 

Victor Hugo described the view from a train window in 1837:

 

“The flowers by the side of the road are no longer flowers but flecks, or rather streaks, of red or white; there are no longer any points, everything becomes a streak; the grain fields are great shocks of yellow hair; fields of alfalfa, long green tresses; the towns, the steeples, and the trees perform a crazy, mingling dance.”

(Schivelbusch, pp. 55­56) 

 

The first run was on 21 February, and was described in some detail by Trevithick:

 

"...Yesterday we proceeded on our journey with the engine, and we carried ten tons of iron in five wagons, and seventy men riding on them the whole of the journey... the engine, while working, went nearly five miles an hour; there was no water put into the boiler from the time we started until our journey's end... the coal consumed was two hundredweight".
(Museum Wales, 2008)

Romantic?

The invention of the railway was not seen as a romantic affair. The industrial revolution was a dirty period in history and many of the leading influencers at the time expressed that it would ruin the British landscape and was a dangerous operation to run.

 

It wasn't until passenger trains became more popular and the summer holidays to the seaside were sort after that the railway was accepted as an efficient mode of transport. 

 

At this time, class division was very important and the trains emphasised this as carriages were segregated into classes that could only be afford by the elite. Travelling by train was depicted as a luxurious mode of transport saved only for those priveleged to go on trips to new places. 

Fig. 6: 1830, George Stephenson´s steam locomotive, Liverpool and Manchester Railway

Fig. 7: The Undercarriage of electric locomotive No. 1. The armatures—seen in the photograph above—were built directly on the axles. The field magnets surrounding the armatures, were supported by brackets bearing on the axles, and by links connecting the yokes to a cross beam of the locomotive frame.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

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