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The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was our first inter-city rail
link. Opened in 1830, it was an immediate success. Other
railways were soon planned to exploit the developing steam
locomotive’s ability to move heavy loads over distance much more
swiftly than could any other means. Horse-drawn road transport
was limited to the modest load that a team of horses was capable of
moving, which was often further reduced by the poor state of the
pre-Macadam road surfaces of that age. Inland waterways ―
principally the canals ― provided a far greater load-moving
capacity, but they were slow and hampered by drought in summer, ice
in winter, a lack of standard dimensions that often prevented
inter-working, and by the lethargic and parochial outlook of their
owners. Coastal shipping was also slow and much affected by
the weather, added to which direct access to inland destinations was
very limited. Thus, the railways that followed the Liverpool
and Manchester brought about a second transport revolution — for
despite their limitations, the canals were undoubtedly the first —
initially capturing passenger traffic from the stagecoach operators
and then freight from the canal companies (indeed, by the 1850s
railway freight revenue exceeded that from passengers).
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WHEREAS
the making of Railway, with proper Works and
Conveniences connected therewith, for the Carriage of
Passengers, Goods, and Merchandize from London to
Birmingham, will prove of great public Advantage, by
opening an additional, cheap, and expeditious
Communication between the Metropolis, the Port of
London, and the large manufacturing Town and
Neighbourhood of Birmingham aforesaid, and will at the
same Time facilitate the Means of Transit and Traffic
for Passengers, Goods, and Merchandize between those
Places and the adjacent Districts, and the several
intermediate Towns and Places . . . .
Preamble to An Act for
making a Railway from London to Birmingham, 6th May
1833.
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The London and Birmingham Railway
and the Grand Junction Railway (Britain’s first trunk railway,
linking Birmingham to Liverpool and Manchester) opened within months
of each other. Sharing a terminus at Curzon Street,
Birmingham, the two railways between them provided (in comparative
terms) the first high speed, high capacity transport link between
the Capital and the industrial regions of the midlands and the
north-west of England.
The historical account that follows addresses the former; it began
life as a local history project, that of the market town of Tring in
north-west Hertfordshire. For the interest of the local
community, a friend and I aimed to publish accounts of the history
of the two great chalk cuttings gouged through the ridge of the
Chiltern Hills, about 1½-miles to the east of our Town. The
nearer of the two was built during the 1790s to carry the Grand
Junction Canal†
over the ridge while its easterly neighbour, built some 40 years
later, performed the same function for the London and Birmingham
Railway.‡
We began work on the canal cutting, which we anticipated would be
the more difficult to research, and such proved to be the case.
For the reasons explained in the Foreword to
The Grand Junction Canal: a highway
laid with water, the historical account that emerged was
very different to what we had planned. So when it came to
tackling the railway cutting, and in order to maintain a balance
between the two publications, the challenge had grown into one of
producing a history of the Railway from end-to-end.
The following narrative is not a history in the conventional sense,
nor does it claim to be a detailed treatise on the construction and
operation of the Railway; rather, as its subtitle states, it is a
collection of extracts taken from books and periodicals of the
period that I have placed within a framework of notes (‘linking
passages’ being too wordy for the title). My aim is to provide
a sketch of the events leading up to and including the construction
of the London and Birmingham Railway, and of its years in operation
as an independent company (1837-46) ― to include the era following
its absorption into the London and North-Western Railway and beyond
would have been a mammoth task; that said, I have strayed into the
L&NWR period when this seemed appropriate. I hope that you
find my account readable and informative.
I would like to thank my friend and sometime co-author, Wendy
Austin, for her help with the research. Wendy has published,
in her own name, a number of titles on different aspects of the
history of our town and following her return from a lengthy period
of globe-trotting we were able to collaborate on another,
The Railway comes to Tring.
Ian Petticrew
Tring, January 2014.
† Now the southern section of the Grand
Union Canal.
‡ Now the southern section of the West
Coast Main Line.
――――♦――――
IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM P. McCOWELL
Station Master at Tring, 1842-1863 |
