Part 1 of 2
ON May 24th, 1823, Liverpool corn merchant Henry Booth founded the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company, to build nothing less than the world’s first intercity railway. The canals had created lucrative markets by linking the port at Liverpool to bustling manufacturing towns inland, but were overwhelmed by rising demand.
The Company really wanted George Stephenson and his son Robert to survey the line, but Robert, who did all George’s maths, was in South America. When John Rennie missed a historic opportunity by overcharging, George returned, bringing Joseph Locke, a colliery manager’s boy, as his assistant. Together, they addressed every problem with innovation and flair.
The Sankey Canal and the tall sails of the Mersey flats were spanned by a record-breaking nine-arched viaduct.* The line floated across boggy Chat Moss on nearly five miles of heather bundles topped with tar and rubble. After George’s preferred route was thwarted by landowners, he sliced a two-mile diversion through the sandstone of cliff-sided Olive Mount Cutting.*
Mersey flats were flat-bottomed canal boats powered by tall sails and capable of carrying up to 80 tons of goods. They plied the canals between Liverpool and Manchester prior to the advent of the railways, and lasted until as late the 1890s.
There is a striking picture at Olive Mount Cutting (Wikimedia Commons). The depth reaches 80ft.
Précis
As industry grew in Regency Britain, merchants in Liverpool sought to establish a pioneering rail link between the port at Liverpool and the mill towns around Manchester. After some false starts, they hired George Stephenson to survey the line, and Stephenson overcame some formidable engineering challenges, from bridges to cuttings and conquering marshland, with his customary bravura. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
ANY doubts over Stephenson’s plan to use steam locomotives were crushed by the Rainhill Trials of 1829, when Robert’s Rocket trounced all rivals.* George had masterminded not just a railway, but a template for double-track, locomotive-hauled, standard gauge railways everywhere.*
The opening day, September 15th, 1830, was marred by tragedy. While the VIP train took on water near Newton-le-Willows, William Huskisson MP alighted to stretch his legs. He was chatting to the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, when shouts came, warning that Rocket was bearing down on the neighbouring track. Huskisson caught at a carriage door but it swung back, and he fell beneath Rocket’s wheels.
Nevertheless, the line exceeded all expectations, raking in profits of £71,000 in 1831,* and carrying almost half a million passengers, many of them to Newton Races.* Businessmen began to see the staggering potential of railways, spreading wealth and leisure through society as no well-meaning statesman or hot-headed reformer had ever done. A railway revolution was dawning.*
See our post The Rainhill Trials.
Stephenson had used a 4ft 8in gauge for his colliery railways in County Durham and Northumberland, dictated by the colliery wagons and the pit ponies that pulled them. The Liverpool and Manchester was the first railway to add an extra half inch to make today’s ‘standard gauge’, 4ft 8½in.
Measuring Worth would suggest that £71,000 in 1831 would be equivalent in terms of income to roughly £6m, or as much as £308m considered as economic power.
Newton-le-Willows racecourse closed in 1898, with racing moving to Haydock Park. The Old Newton Cup, a flat Handicap horse race over 1 mile 3 furlongs and 175 yards, is still held at Haydock every July.
The Railway Revolution, like the Industrial Revolution more generally, was not just a profound technological change. It also did everything political revolutions promise (and never deliver), by raising the standard of living, allowing more leisure, breaking down social barriers and class privilege, creating jobs and putting wealth and property ownership into the hands of common people. It did it all peacefully, and it was all paid for privately out of disposable income.
Précis
Engineer George Stephenson pressed ahead with using steam locomotives for the new railway, after the Rainhill Trials in 1829 justified his confidence. Opening Day on September 15th, 1830 was overshadowed by the accidental death of William Huskisson, a prominent MP, but the line went on to make a handsome profit in its first year as the world’s first intercity railway. (58 / 60 words)