Simon Bradley (1)

This magisterial book traces the history of the railways in Britain, and the influence they have had on nearly all areas of national life since the opening of the first public, timetabled and steam-hauled, passenger train service in the full sense we understand it now, in 1830 running between Liverpool and Manchester. From modest beginnings during that decade, they flourished all over the country in the 1840s, peaking in 1847 when investment in railways accounted for almost 7 per cent of national income. Cornwall was the last county to join the national network in 1859. The railways transformed the economy by revolutionising transport of goods and people, and gave freedom of movement to far more people to travel farther than they or their ancestors would ever have dreamed of; it's striking that just 200 years ago - a snap of the fingers in the overall march of time - none of our great grandparents and none of their ancestors had ever travelled faster than the speed of a galloping horse. In the mid-19th century excursion trains took thousands of people of modest means living inland to the seaside for the first time, thus opening more possibilities for leisure as well as work. The railways, like photography, divide the 19th century into two very different halves - as one critic is quoted as observing, "the mere mention of train or railway in a Victorian novel serves immediately to locate the action in the present, just as a reference to stagecoaches pushed the story back into the past". One example of this is the casual mention of a character travelling by train in Dickens's last unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood, published in 1865, whereas we generally associate the author with the stagecoach era. The railways even changed the way we measure time, by encouraging the phasing out of local time across the country, in favour of a uniform British time to make railway timetables work properly (even so the use of Greenwich Mean Time wasn't legally binding until as late as 1880).

As well as these grand themes, the book also explores the history of aspects we take for granted, such as the heating and lighting of trains, and the varying layouts and levels of comfort (or not) that could be expected in the three classes of railway coach. Perhaps this may seem excessive detail to some, but the narrative flows in an engaging way that makes you think about things you take for granted, and how they have changed, or not, even during the 45 years or so of my own conscious memory of travelling on trains. The author also goes on to talk about developments in the technology of railway construction, signalling and so on, and how stations have changed over the years. In his final few chapters, he covers phenomena such as preserved and mini railways, and even discusses trainspotting as a social phenomenon. A fascinating and wonderful work.… (meer)

A puerile man would make some joke here about the hardback version of this book having a dust-anorak (and probably a high viz one at that) instead of a jacket, but such a thought would, of course, never occur to a mature reader such as myself.

Such levity is, however, out of place. Simon Bradley has clearly undertaken exhaustive research and produced a marvellous book. I can imagine some readers’ eyes rolling at the ‘exhaustive research’ and immediately imagining a dry and dusty tome, redolent of all the prejudices that modern life heaps upon any study of rail transport (to which my feeble opening joke pandered in the most craven manner).

Don’t worry. There is nothing dusty or dry about this book. Bradley has pulled off the rare trick of delivering a comprehensive history of rail travel in Britain which, in addition to enlightening the reader about numerous aspects of the social and cultural development of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, never fails to entertain as well as instruct.

This is not a train spotter’s book. In the brief foreword Bradley acknowledges certain tendencies in that direction during his own youth, but concedes that there is already a massive body of literature devoted to the romance and magic of the steam locomotive, and chooses to steer clear of it himself. He does, however, delve very deeply into virtually every other aspect of rail travel in Britain. There are intriguing explorations of the history of the separate classes of ticket, and the varying experiences of the different social classes, as well as tangential forays into the development of concessions to passenger comfort and convenience such as the introduction of heating, lighting and functional toilets, and then even the provision of hot and cold food and drink. He even offers an interesting potted history of vandalism on the railway. Growing up in the 1970s and remembering outraged news coverage of completely wrecked ‘football specials’, I had always assumed that this was a problem that first emerged during that troubled decade, but it had in fact been a troubling trend for more than a century by then. Other crimes more serious still, including robbery, rape and even murder had also bedevilled the railways from their inception.

There are very few aspects of life that weren’t touched by the burgeoning railway network. One of the greatest changes, which affected everyone arose from the need for reliable timetables, and led to the end of local time. Previously every city set its clocks by reference to local sunrise and sunset, but this parochial approach led to confusion when considering the arrival and departure times for trains travelling considerable distances. The answer was the imposition of Greenwich Mean Time across the whole country.

The growth of the newspaper industry during the nineteenth century, for example, was spawned entirely by the spread of the railways, opening up substantial new markets to the London dailies, enabling readers in the rest of the country beyond the Home Counties to read the papers on the day of their publications. In another diverting tangent, Bradley offers a potted history of W H Smith & Son, who won the contract for setting up stalls at most of the mainline stations, from which they sold a wide range of items in addition to the predictable newspapers and books. They proved so successful that they went on to run a massive lending library run through their station stalls, and it was only after they lost the contract for some stations that they relocated onto the high street. The success of the railway-based business of W H Smith & Son actually led to the proliferation of cheaply produced books during the mid-nineteenth century, spreading the habit of reading more widely than had ever been the case before.

Bradley is not above wry observation about some of the mishaps that bedevilled the early days of rail travel. One potential riddle for early travellers was the issue of how one’s servants should be accommodated, and at what rate they should be charged. This was eventually resolved by the introduction of carriages with mixed compartments: first class for the aristocracy with adjacent second or third class for their retinue of attendants. Early carriages tended to be made of wood and modelled on stage coaches – indeed, many actually were coaches mounted on a trolley. As such they were immensely vulnerable to fire and Bradley relates one incident from the 1840s in which a lady and her maid found their carriage catching fire, ignited by a flaming smut cast back from the locomotive. As their coach burned down, they managed to escape onto the trolley on which it rested, from which they were able to sound an alarm. Sadly the maid fell off the trolley before she could be rescued. This was not the end of her woes as, once new of her fate was conveyed to the engine driver he reversed the locomotive along the track, only to run over her stunned and unconscious body.

One of the major figures overshadowing the development of the train in nineteenth century England, particularly in the West Country where his Great Western Railway predominated, was Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Right celebrated as a titan of both civil and mechanical engineering, Bradley also demonstrates that he was surprisingly accident prone, barely surprising a number of brushes with death including various rail accidents, falling off the footplate of several locomotives and choking on a sovereign that he mistakenly swallowed during the performance of a conjuring trick.

Bravo, Mr Bradley. This is one of the most enjoyable non-fiction books I have read for a long time.… (meer)