INSTRUCTIONS TO RAILWAY TRAVELLERS - 1843

INSTRUCTIONS TO RAILWAY TRAVELLERS
   
APPLICABLE

To nearly all the Railways in Great Britain.

Proceed at once to the booking-office and procure a ticket for the class carriage you intend to travel by, and if near the time of starting, enter the departure shed.

Have your name legibly written on your luggage, and see it stowed away, and then take your seat in a carriage, carrying with you carpet bags or other light luggage, and wait till the starting bell rings.

Take care of your ticket to deliver at your journey's end, or to the attendant at starting, as the case may be.

The weight generally allowed to each passenger for luggage is about 100 lbs. and a charge is made for excess.

No smoking is allowed at the stations, nor in any of the carriages.

No dogs allowed to be taken inside the carriages, but they are conveyed in a proper vehicle at a small charge for each.

Do not leave your seat at any station, except the one at which refreshment is allowed, nor attempt to open the carriage doors yourself.

Females are in attendance at each terminus, and at the central refreshment station, to wait upon ladies and children.

Carriages and horses should be at the stations at least a quarter of an hour before the time of starting.

Post horses can always be obtained at each terminus and most of the stations.

Omnibuses, flys, coaches and cabs are always waiting the arrival of the trains at each terminus.

Children under ten years of age half-price, infants in arms, unable to walk, free of charge.

Every train is provided with guards and a conductor, who is responsible for the order and regularity of the journey.

Every guard, porter or policeman employed by the company has a distinguishing number on the collar of his coat.

The companies' servants are strictly enjoined, on pain of dismissal, to observe the utmost civility and attention towards all the passengers, nor are they to receive any fee or gratuity.

From: Henry Tuck, Every Traveller's Guide to the Railways of England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, France, and Germany, 1843

Complaining about the habits of Victorian railway passengers

It seems that the gripes Victorian railway travellers had about their fellow passengers were very similar to ours...

London Bridge, 1858

"Once I found myself racing north alone with an elderly spinster of forbidding aspect. She had long since left the “springs of fifty years” behind. She was gaunt, grey, and bony, She wore gleaming spectacles. She was like the elderly Englishwoman dear to Parisian caricature. And the first words she uttered of sepulchral tones were these: “I always travel in a ladies’ compartment when going even the shortest journey, for you never know what might happen!” This prudent spinster, it will be seen, was gifted with that priceless possession, a vivid imagination. With her, I remember, I was moved to formulate my views as to the Ideal Train. I argued that the whole classification of passengers required immediate rearrangement. There should not only be separate carriages for children, but compartments for the newly-wed, for men who smoke inferior cigars, for schoolboys, for people who want to discuss their private affairs, for folks recovering from dangerous illnesses, for ugly people, for “engaged” couples – or those who ought to be – for young ladies who giggle (there is no form of nerve-torture to compare to this on a long journey), and for people who regard railway travelling as an excuse for gnawing chicken-bones, drinking, potent-smelling liquors, and strewing themselves and everybody else with crumbs."

Miss Hepworth Dixon, Ladies Pictorial, August 1896

"We would have the public…somewhat more mindful" a view on the benifits of railways from 1856

We would have the public…somewhat more mindful of the benefits they have already derived from the railways; it would improve their patience under evils for the time unavoidable…They save the public two-thirds of their time in transit, and two-thirds in fares and tills; they have given us the penny post, which would not have existed without them; they have intersected the country with telegraph wires employing 3000 persons, stretching a distance of 86,000 miles and flashing a million messages a year, many of them to and from places hundreds of miles apart; they have reduced the cost of many articles of general consumption, and rendered others common where nature seemed to plant an interdict against them…In 1854 they transported 111,000,000 passengers…in such safety that in the first half of the year but one accident happened to every 7,195,341 passengers. In these journeys, each passenger gains an hour in time, amounting in all to 38,000 years of working life at eight hours a day. Supposing the day’s labour to be worth three shillings, these deplorable railways save the nation £2,000,000 a year in the item of time alone.

Chamber’s Journal (1856), 227

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:

Travelling By Railway Without a Ticket - 1851

It seems that ticket collectors encountered the same problems in 1851 as they do today...

'Joseph Haigh was charged with travelling from Swinton to Masbro' without a ticket. On the the 1st of March the defendant got out of the train shortly before it reached the platform at Masbro', and was making off when the porter saw him and brought him to the station. On being asked for his ticket, he pretended to have lost it, and when asked for the fare was exceedingly abusive. It appeared that this was the fourth time the defendant had attempted to impose on the railway by travelling without a ticket...Defendant said he took a ticket at Doncaster, but lost it on the way...In reply, it was stated that enquiries had been made at Doncaster, and it appears that only two tickets were issued by the train on that morning for Masbro' both of which came to hand, The Bench were of the opinion that the defendant had been guilty of wilful falsehood, and thought the case was one for the infliction of the full penalty of 40s and costs, or one month's imprisonment.'

From the The Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, Saturday, April 05, 1851, p.6

"John! ARE YOU SURE YOU LOCKED UP THE HOUSE?" - 1913

"Mrs Smith (to Smith who, starting for his annual "rest cure," is making a frantic rush for the train). "John! ARE YOU SURE YOU LOCKED UP THE HOUSE?"

Yeah, I never find Punch that funny, but as a worrier, I empathise.

[1] From Punch, or the London Charivari, August 13, 1913, p.155