LADIES ONLY - Carriage Compartment Label

From the late 1860s there was a general hysteria about the notion of women travelling alone in railway carriages and the possible risk of them being attacked. Because of this, in October 1874 the Metropolitan Railway introduced dedicated 'Ladies Only' compartments on all their trains. They were infrequently used, and after a few months the company had dispensed with them. From then on, all that most companies offered was the reservation of compartments for women on request, and the label above, placed in the window of a compartment, would designate it as such. If you would like to read more about 'Ladies Only' compartments, I wrote a whole blog post on the whole subject in April last year.

Collision on the Midland Railway [of a Beer Train] - 1883

One day I reckon I should do a history of the railways and beer. This is from The Pall Mall Gazette of January 26, 1883.

"A collision occurred yesterday on the Midland Railway between Leicester and London. A heavy beer train was being shunted to allow a Leicester express to pass, and while across the main line an empty waggon train dashed into it, smashing the waggons and completely blocking both lines. The engine kept the rails, and no serious personal injuries were sustained, but there was great damage to rolling stock, and the lines were not clear for traffic for several hours."

That may be all well and good, but how much beer was lost?

PhD Historiography Snippet - Forward Planning by Railway Companies

The Midland Railway's St. Pancras Station

Numerous historians have touched on the lack of accurate forward planning in railway companies’ investment policies in the nineteenth century. Irving argued that in the 1870s the NER’s investment was higher than the line’s traffic demanded and in the 1880s only kept pace with it. Consequently, with traffic increasing rapidly in the late 1880s, investment policies failed by 1888 as network capacity was inadequate.[1] Hodgkins argued that Sir Edward Watkin’s attempted expansion of the small Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in the1880s added lines that were ‘too much for it to digest’. Ultimately these extensions were expensive failures as they were 'not properly weighed up as investment opportunities.'[2] 

Channon’s study of the Midland Railway’s extension to London in 1869 provided the most detail on what decision-makers knew when formulating a major policies. He argued that those who made the decision, the General Manager and a small group of directors, could not be considered traditional ‘profit maximisers’ as their ‘knowledge of costs revenues, and alternatives was either too rudimentary or too incomplete to form the basis of accurate profit forecasts.’ Indeed, construction costs, especially in London, were particularly hard to predict.[3] Therefore, if Channon's assessment of the knowledge Midland Railway decision-makers' had is applied to the cases above, it suggests that those directing policy within nineteenth century railway companies possessed rudimentary information regarding the cost of, and potential revenues from, their ventures.

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[1] Irving, R.J., The North Eastern Railway Company, (Leicester, 1976)  , p.166

[2] Hodgkins, David, The Second Railway King: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Watkin, (Melton Priory, 2002)  , p.486

[3] Channon, Geoffrey, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940: Studies in Economic and Business History, (Aldershot, 2001), p.107

Pictures of St. Pancras - 20th and 21st April

As many of you are probably aware by now, on Friday and Saturday I was in Derby. As part of my trip I had to travel to and from the beautiful St. Pancras Station. These were some of the photos I took:

Handel Festival at Crystal Palace - Handbill

Before the advent of the railway poster, one of the ways nineteenth century railway companies advertised was through the printing and distribution of the humble handbill. The one above was produced in 1877 by the Midland Railway promote cheap excursion fares to London and 'Handel Festival' at Crystal Palace. I would really recommend enlarging the image to have a closer look, there's a lot of interesting detail.

Railway Directors in Parliament - 1847

George Hudson

Using an 1847 'Reference Book to the Incorporated Railway Companies of England and Wales', I have just completed the monumental task of inputting into a database the names of the 1300 railway directors listed. Why I did this is something to be explained at another time (although I did it largely out of curiosity). However, it has allowed me to see how many railway directors were in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Alderman, in his book The Railway Interest, which details the relationship between parliament and the railways, puts the number of directors in the House of Commons in 1847 at eighty-six.[1]

Yet, it seems that Alderman must simply have counted the number of times 'M.P.' was observed in the Bradshaw's guide he used to acquire this figure, rather than considering that some directors sat on the board of more than one company. For example, the notorious George Hudson was Chairman of the Eastern Counties, Midland, York and North Midland and York, Newcastle and Berwick Railways, as well as being a director of the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midland Railway. Nevertheless, he can only be counted once as the M.P. for Sunderland.

Consequently, my figure for the number of railway directors in Parliament is clearly more accurate. In 1847 the actual number of M.P.s who were directors was sixty, or 9.15 per cent of the 656 M.P.s that had been elected in 1845. Fourteen of these were also sitting in the House of Lords and overall the railways were represented in that chamber by forty-two individuals. Therefore, in 1847 102 individuals constituted the 'Railway Interest.'

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[1] Alderman, Geoffrey, The Railway Interest, (Leicester, 1976), p.25
All other information: Glynn, Henry, Reference Book to the incorporated railway companies of England and Wales, (London, 1847)