Tremendous Machines Part 4

 We left off the previous post in this series talking about the early railway boom and the passenger experience in those early days. To do justice to the history of British railways it would take me more than the rest of 2026 in blog posts and I have some other fun things to tell you about, so I'll just give you some highlights. If this is a topic that interests you, there are plenty of histories on YouTube and elsewhere.

As is the way with most booms, the railway bubble eventually burst, resulting in losses for many investors. A key figure in this was "Railway King" George Hudson, who was running what was essentially a pyramid scheme of railway investments.

There were major developments in technology, both in Britain and elsewhere. These improved safety as well as the passenger experience. Sleeper cars started in the 1830s with very primitive beds, evolving and eventually resulting in the Pullman carriages of the 1860s. Train carriages also introduced corridors. If you recall from my previous post, early carriages were essentially like stagecoaches on wheels, so once you got in, you were stuck in that carriage until you got out. The addition of a narrow hallway made a huge difference, making it easier to move around along the train and allowing for the introduction of dining cars and toilets.

Train carriage with corridor on the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway

Trains also expanded travel to classes that had not had easy access to it before. Labourers could move to new locations, seeking jobs. Perhaps even more substantial was the boom in leisure travel. One result of this was Queen Victoria's move from the Royal Pavillion in increasingly crowded Brighton to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Although...looking at the two, it's possible architectural preference was a factor!

Royal Pavilion, Brighton

 

Osborne House, Isle of Wight

The origin of the railways was as a series of private companies given permission to build by Parliament. But in the 20th century, war, economic factors, and the rise of the automobile caused the railways to move between public and private management multiple times. Indeed, after many years of privatisation, the modern British rail network is currently moving back to public ownership under the banner of "Great British Railways" or GBR.

Public-isation of the 1960s did not go as well. The railway network consisted of mainline routes – those between major cities – and "branch" lines, which connected smaller towns and villages to the main line. The Beeching cuts (named for Dr. Richard Beeching) eliminated many of these branch lines, cutting off these smaller communities. One example is Lyme Regis, which used to be accessible by rail.

Station on the surviving Gunnislake branch line

 

Riding a train on the surviving Gunnislake branch line

I've had the opportunity to ride on some of the surviving branch lines, and they can feel like a step back in time. Gunnislake from the photos above is a great example, from Victorian-era stations to the point where the driver has to get out and take a physical token that allows him to go forward on the single-track railway.

The most famous extant branch line, though, has to be the one from Fort William to Mallaig, Scotland. It is unique in that it has both regular modern train services and also a regular steam train running on the route. The steam train is called the Jacobite, but you might know it better as the Hogwarts Express. 

The Jacobite crossing the Glenfinnan Viaduct

The Jacobite is far from the only place where you can still ride a steam locomotive in Britain, however. A remarkable thing happened with these old closed branch lines – enthusiasts began to restore them for leisure use. This combined with another major technological change: that from steam to diesel and electric. The first electric locomotive was a very early battery-operated prototype of 1837, and the technology continued to develop until the first electric-powered railway of 1881. Diesel was later, with the first locomotive in 1912, but was easier to implement without running an electricity source along the tracks. Steam locomotives were phased out on the British railway network, with the last official one running in 1968. Again, though, enthusiasts stepped in and saved many of them – some in a state where they could best be described as rust buckets rather than anything resembling a locomotive. The old branch lines became heritage railways, places where these steam locomotives and old train stock could be run on a regular basis.

Jane Austen's House Museum

I knew nothing about this in my first few trips to England. When I was researching a trip that included stops in Portsmouth and Alton (for Jane Austen's house museum in Chawton), I discovered that I could take a taxi from Portsmouth to Alresford and from there ride the Watercress Line, rather than connecting all the way back through London on the regular rail network. In the planning stages this just seemed to be a ridiculously British thing to do, to use a steam train as a legitimate leg of transportation.

I did not expect to be completely delighted by the Watercress Line, enjoying it every bit as much as I did Austen's house, which I had been longing to see for quite some time. How often is it that you discover something you love, while pursuing something else you love?

Watercress Line

Watercress Line

Ropley Station on the Watercress Line

There are probably hundreds of these heritage railways across Britain, and if I have a chance to fit one into my itinerary, I always do. It really feels like you're travelling back in time, and it impresses me that so many people are willing to put in the work to keep them all running.

North York Moors Railway

North York Moors Railway

North York Moors Railway

Isle of Wight Steam Railway 

Isle of Wight Steam Railway 

Epping-Ongar Railway 

Epping-Ongar Railway 

One of the things I love about steam railways is the smell of the coal smoke. This is not the most pleasant smell ever, but something about it has always been a weird sort of dopamine hit for me. It took me a long time to figure it out, but then I finally did:

Cedar Point and Lake Erie Railroad

My family used to go to Cedar Point every summer, and it remains one of my favourite places from childhood. What I finally remembered was that the park's railroad has operating steam locomotives, and that smell of coal smoke was a subconscious reminder of happy childhood memories. Great Britain is now my favourite place to travel, so it's almost as though the baton has been passed.  

British ridiculousness being what it is, heritage railways are not the only options to ride on a steam-hauled train. Certain old locomotives (and one new one, Tornado) are rated for "mainline steam." Which is exactly what it sounds like – they can run at up to 75 miles per hour on the regular main train lines. So yeah, imagine you're standing on a platform waiting for your normal train to take you somewhere, and then this happens:

It is completely and utterly ludicrous, and I love it.

Once I knew about this, I determined I had to do it someday, and I actually booked a trip that would travel up the scenic Settle and Carlisle line. It was cancelled, however, and so I was keeping an eye out for another opportunity.

For those of you who know British railway history, it may have surprised you that I haven't mentioned Flying Scotsman yet. For everyone else, this is unarguably the most famous British locomotive. It was built in 1923, the heyday of British railway travel, and was the first locomotive in the world to officially reach 100 miles per hour (unofficially, this is arguable). The locomotive shares the name with the nonstop route from London to Edinburgh, which required a special coal tender with a corridor inside so that drivers could be changed out, and water troughs on the tracks so it could pick up water as it went.

It's arguably the most famous locomotive in the world, having travelled to both Australia (where it set another record for the longest steam-hauled run) and the United States. It's been beloved for a very long time, although at times the funding for its survival was in question. In 2004, the National Railway Museum purchased it and began a restoration program to ensure its survival, returning to the rails off and on until 2022, when it went in for another overhaul in anticipation of its 2023 100-year anniversary. Part of that was seeing it rated again for mainline steam.

Through absolute, sheer, wonderful luck, I happened to have a trip planned to England during these events, and the Cardiff Express excursion train fell within my dates. These excursions sold out quickly, but because I was already signed up for the email newsletter, I saw it and booked immediately.

It will remain one of the most wonderful and emotional experiences of my life.

I expected the time travel feeling of boarding the train at Paddington Station in London and the excitement of being able to see the Flying Scotsman up close. I expected sitting in an old, restored train carriage and careening along at 75 miles an hour on the mainline. What I was not prepared for is the absolute love British people showed this train along the route. There were the railway enthusiasts with their tripods and cameras, but many people were just standing in fields or on overpasses, waving to the train as it went past. Even the railway workers were stopping to snap a photo on their phones.

Crowds at Cardiff 

 

Snapping a photo as the train passed

Flying Scotsman at London Paddington Station 

 Close-up of the nameplate 

I remember thinking as we were in the final hours of the journey, rolling through fields touched by the glow of golden hour, that it was a day I would remember for the rest of my life. For those of you who have read the beta of A Dangerous Connection, I channeled my memories of that day into George Darcy's emotions during the Rainhill Trials.

Flying Scotsman might be nearly a century newer than Rocket, but the emotion these tremendous machines rouse hasn't changed. Actress Fanny Kemble, building on George Stephenson's own horse analogy for Rocket, described it thus:

“She goes upon two wheels, which are her feet, and are moved by bright steel legs called pistons; these are propelled by steam, and in proportion as more steam is applied to the common extremities (the hip-joints, I suppose) of these pistons, the faster they move the wheels...the reins, bit and bridle of this wonderful beast is a small steel handle, which applies or withdraws the steam from its legs or pistons, so that a child might manage it.”

George Darcy uses the phrase "tremendous machine" to describe Rocket, and this was an intentional phrase on my part. Certainly there have been other locomotives that are more powerful, but Flying Scotsman at speed seems very much reminiscent of a thoroughbred racehorse to me. So I took a phrase used for the most famous thoroughbred race horse of all time, and applied it back to an actual machine:

"Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine!"

And with that, I will leave you with some footage of Flying Scotsman on that Cardiff trip. It is indeed a tremendous machine.

Tremendous Machines Part 3

In the second post in this series, I covered the Rainhill Trials, an event that forms a part of A Dangerous Connection. We had left things off with the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and in this post I'm going to cover the railway mania that followed.

The Liverpool and Manchester, and the Stockton and Darlington before it, showed that railways could be viable for passengers as well as freight. It was followed by a succession of major railways, including:

• Grand Junction Railway: 1837
• London and Birmingham Railway: 1838
• London and South Western Railway (LSWR): 1840 
• Great Western Railway (GWR): 1841

By the mid 1840s, a significant portion of Britain's current mainline rail network was built. This boggles my mind every time I think about it. The golden age of (horsed) coach travel was from 1824 to 1838, and within about a decade, that form of travel was completely disrupted. I think there's a tendency to always believe that the age we're currently living in is the one of greatest change, and certainly our AI world of today is a good candidate for this. But I think Britain's complete transportation revolution in this time holds a strong claim as well.

For our Pride and Prejudice characters, the way they would travel from London to Derbyshire in 1835 is completely different than the way they would do it in 1845. So what was that 1845 passenger experience like?

For a very long time, the railway carriages themselves (at least for first class) were very similar to the ones inside a horse carriage. Indeed, they look very much like stagecoaches that have been put on a railway frame:

 

National Railway Museum, York

 

National Railway Museum, York

Locomotion Museum, Shildon

Locomotion Museum, Shildon

York Railway Museum

Hopetown Darlington

Here's a video showing more details of that railway carriage from Hopetown Darlington:

 As you can see in these photos and video, first class was a fairly consistent offering, while second class varied a bit more. You might have poorer fittings there, or seats with little or no padding.

Third class could be even more dicey. It might be a carriage with a roof but nothing in the way of creature comforts, but it could also be a completely open carriage. Not a great experience when you're rolling along faster than you've ever gone on a stagecoach and bits of burning cinder are flying at you. (And oh by the way, there's straw on the floor!)

"From a colour print by M.B. Cotsworth, Holgate, York", Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hopetown Darlington

Hopetown Darlington

Contrast that with Queen Adelaide's carriage, built for the dowager queen (Queen Victoria's aunt) who was the first member of the royal family to travel by rail. This was as fancy as it got:

 

Queen Adelaide's Carriage, National Railway Museum

One thing that all of these railway carriages have in common is that you enter them through a door on the side, very similar to the way you would a horse-drawn carriage. I am so used to corridor trains where you can move from one car to another that it was surprising to learn this took a very long time to actually come into place in Britain. 

Isle of Wight Railway

The corridor coach was patented in 1865, but not rolled out to any extent until closer to the beginning of the 20th century. While on modern trains the aisleway is up the middle, between sets of seats, in earlier times (and still on many sleeper trains today) it was on one side of the train, with compartments located off of the aisle.

Severn Valley Railway

 Passengers and goods weren't the only thing travelling on the new railways. Any time a new railway opened, the Royal Mail was quick to transfer to this faster means of getting the post around Britain.

Replica Royal Mail Carriage, National Railway Museum

 

Another view of the replica Royal Mail Carriage

Meanwhile, stations in the beginning were non-existent; you would just wait on the platform for the train. That changed pretty quickly, however, and there are still many extant Victorian era stations in England. 

 

North Road Railway Station, Darlington, built 1842

Interior of North Road Railway Station

In London, each railway company had a different station terminus (this is why there are so many different railway stations in London today), and they began to build impressive structures. 

 

Birmingham Curzon Street Station

The most noteworthy of these is Euston Station. The removal of its grand neoclassical arch in the 1960s was an architectural travesty, but I like to think about what it must have been like to pull up to this structure in a hackney carriage sometime after it was built in 1837, feeling all the excitement and perhaps also trepidation of this new form of travel ahead of you.

Edward Radclyffe (1809–1863), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 Euston also had the first railway hotel, a feature that would begin cropping up near major railway stations to give people a place to stay before or after their journey. You would want to ensure you were on time to catch your train, and trains actually changed time itself.

Before the railways, time was based on the position of the sun wherever you were. Nothing travelled fast enough to require any sort of standardized time until the railways. With standardized time also came timetables: the London and Birmingham Railway coined the term "timetable" in 1838, and the first book of timetables was published in 1840.

Bradshaw's Railway Companion, 1840

What about the locomotives? Rocket paved the way for the multi-tube steam engine, and they also evolved rapidly. This locomotive from 1845 shows huge changes from the little locomotives of the Rainhill Trials.

 

Derwent locomotive, Hopetown Darlington

It's another locomotive I want to talk about to close out this series, but we will save that for part four. I hope you've enjoyed this installment, and if the coaching age that came before it is of interest to you, I've got good news! I will be doing a presentation on "Travel and Hospitality in Jane Austen's World" at this year's JAFF Con. There was so much to cover in this that it will be my longest presentation yet, and I'm very excited to give it. If you want to see it "live," there's still opportunity to do that. But I will also be making a version available to newsletter subscribers after the conference as I have with my other talks.

Tremendous Machines Part 2

 In the first post in this series, we looked at the development of railway technology leading up to the Rainhill Trials of 1829. The trials were designed to determine whether a steam-powered engine could be the locomotive power for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first purpose-built intercity railway to carry passengers. 

The trials were held on a section of the line that had already been built, near the village of Rainhill, and featured a number of entries. Rocket was the entry from George and Robert Stephenson; George had been busy with the railway line, and so much of the work was done by his son, Robert. 

 

The original Rocket, at Locomotion in Shildon

 

Replica of Rocket, at Locomotion, in Shildon

 Sans Pareil was the entry from Timothy Hackworth, and perhaps Rocket's strongest competitor, and like Rocket, the original has survived. 

 

Sans Pareil, at Locomotion in Shildon

 

Replica of Sans Pareil at Locomotion in Shildon

The other entrants were: Novelty, built by John Ericsson and John Braithwaite; Perseverance, built by Timothy Burstall; and Cycloped, a horse-powered locomotive built by Thomas Shaw Brandreth. The latter was never really a serious contender, but rather included because some men behind the new railway wanted some sort of "classic" power to be included.

The trials occurred largely as I've written them in the book, although I've compressed certain aspects of the timeline and omitted some details for the sake of not going into too much "inside baseball." One of the key details was that the locomotives were supposed to consume their own smoke, out of concern for the landowners whose land they went past, some of whom were not too happy about the railways smoking up their land. This wasn't really possible at the time, so they all burned coke rather than coal, to reduce exhaust; early on Rocket was given the wrong fuel, resulting in some concerns that it wouldn't meet this requirement.

If you've been following the beta for A Dangerous Connection, you know already that Rocket won. There were several novel designs for locomotives in the competition, but Rocket's was the one that proved to be the foundation for locomotive design in the future, because it was the first to use multiple tubes for its boiler.

Cutout of a later locomotive at York Railway Museum, showing the boiler tubes

 Rocket's design was groundbreaking, but the real reason it won was reliability. The other locomotives had a series of problems, resulting in delays in the trials, during which George Stephenson would trot out Rocket to entertain the crowd. This includes the rides offered in carriages pulled by the locomotive that I feature in the book. 

 Replica of Rocket at the National Railway Museum in York

Now, there's one thing to note when we talk about these other locomotives and reliability, and that's that Sans Pareil failed because a part cracked, and that part had in fact been cast by the Stephensons, because Hackworth did not have the capabilities to cast his own parts. So there's certainly a bit of conflict of interest there!

From its influence on all locomotive engines that followed, however, it's probably for the best that Rocket won.

Rocket was a part of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, where it received a macabre addition to its history. On the opening day of the railway, September 15, 1830, the locomotive struck MP William Huskisson, who had stepped out of the carriage he was traveling in to speak to the Duke of Wellington. Huskisson later died from his injuries. 

This tragic beginning did not put a damper on the success of this railway, and what followed was nothing short of railway mania. That will be for part 3, however, and I'll leave you with two videos if you'd like to see more about the Ranhill Trials. The first is a shorter piece showing replicas of most of these engines in action, and the second is a longer documentary that also includes a recreation of the trials with replicas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tremendous Machines Part 1

If you have been following along with the online beta for A Dangerous Connection, you know by now that Part Two begins in 1829. If you haven't, the book begins on a time skip to 1824, and then does another one between Part One and Part Two as we both deal with that dangerous connection and set things up for the sixth book, which will deal heavily with the children's stories (expect another time jump!).

We have been seeing hints of the Industrial Revolution going on in the background, but as we move into 1829, it really starts to move more into the foreground, particularly the advent of steam. Steam had been used for a very long time in mines, and was already in use on smaller ships, as we saw when the Stantons took the Margery on the Thames. But arguably the way steam changed the world more than any other was in the transport revolution that was the railways, and the Darcys are going to bear witness to what was arguably the seminal event in railway history: the Rainhill Trials.

The Rainhill Trials were a means of determining the locomotive power for the new Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was to be the first purpose-built intercity railway that would carry passengers in the world. Before we talk more about that, though, I think it's useful to dig a little into the history leading up to the Liverpool and Manchester.

When we think of railways today, we generally think of electric- or diesel-powered locomotives pulling carriages along a track, and before them, a steam locomotive. But the concept of the track is MUCH older than the various means of power that have pulled the carriages over the years. Running carriages over a track significantly reduces friction compared to running them over a road, and this was discovered millennia ago, with the first evidence of a trackway from 3838 BCE. Early trackways included things like grooves in stone, and then eventually wooden trackways and then finally rails. As it was for so many things, the locomotive power was provided by horses, sometimes in combination with gravity so that the horse would pull the load uphill, and then it would be allowed to roll downhill like a sort of early roller coaster.

Replica waggon on the site of the Tanfield railway (originally built in 1725), with wooden rails

Piece of rail from the Surrey Iron Railway, built 1802-1803 (Guildford Museum)
 

Replica iron and rails at Gloucester
 

As you can tell by the photos, the waggons that went on these early railways were designed for goods like coal, rather than passengers. That's not to say that people did not occasionally hitch a ride on them, but their purpose was to haul goods.

Much later than the railways came the idea that the pulling power could be provided by something other than horses. The "Atmospheric Engine" was developed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, with the original purpose of pumping water out of mines. The Newcomen engines weren't very efficient, but since there was plenty of coal at the site where it was mined, this wasn't so much of an issue. But then James Watt patented a more efficient steam engine in 1769, partnering with Matthew Boulton to commercialize it, and this led to steam engines being considered for more purposes than before.

Large steam engine at London Science Museum

 In that same year of 1769, Frenchman Nicolas Joseph Cugnot invented what can truly be called the first horseless carriage.

Cugnot's vehicle (source Wikimedia Commons)

The next big advent in the development of steam railways comes with Richard Trevithick, who saw the potential of combining railways and steam power. He developed the first-ever steam locomotive, and was  responsible for the world's first steam-hauled railway journey in 1804, and by 1808 he was set up with a locomotive and carriages in London, running the "Catch Me Who Can" for paying passengers. Ultimately the venture was not a success, and for a long time Trevithick was not given the credit he deserved for advancing the railway age, although this has changed in modern times.
 

Catch Me Who Can (Wikimedia Commons)

Progress continued on the use of steam to propel railway waggons rather than horses, and the world's oldest surviving locomotive is from 1813-1814, called Puffing Billy and constructed by William Hedley, Jonathan Forster, and Timothy Hackworth. I had a chance to ride behind a replica of Puffing Billy at the Beamish Museum, and while it certainly runs, it does not look like the steam locomotives that would eventually follow.

Puffing Billy replica at Beamish Museum

 

 

So by now we have the key components we need for a railway: rails and steam locomotive traction (although by no means was this universal, and cable haulage or horses were often still used). So when do passengers finally get to climb aboard?

 

Sign outside a pub in Yarm

The answer is in 1825, with the Stockton and Darlington railway. Initially designed to be a cable-hauled railway, engineer George Stephenson advocated for the user of steam locomotives, and won his case, designing Locomotion No. 1 for use on the railway.

The original Locomotion No. 1, preserved at Locomotion Museum in Shildon

 Although the railway was not originally designed for passengers, they rapidly embraced it, from the opening day of September 27, 1825, when hundreds clambered aboard to sit in empty waggons and even top the coal for a ride on this new steam-hauled railway. Official passenger traffic began on October 10, 1825, in the aptly named Experiment coach, which was essentially a road coach built with flanged wheels to fit on the rails.

 Model of the Experiment coach at Hopetown Darlington

 Rails weren't built atop single sleepers (first wood and now concrete, today) as they are today. Instead they were put on individual stones in much the same manner as previous railways.

Section of rail at Hopetown Darlington

 Amazingly, most of the route of the Stockton and Darlington is still in use today by Britain's national rail network. I had a chance to ride a good portion of it during my last trip there and it looks much the same as any other rail line. However in the area you can see many of the original locomotives, historic railway buildings, and the station built in 1842 to service the Stockton and Darlington line.

Historic station at Hopetown Darlington

Historic station at Hopetown Darlington
 

Historic station at Hopetown Darlington

 1842 is getting rather ahead of ourselves, however. We need to go back to 1829 and talk about the events of the Rainhill Trials, but for that, you'll need to wait for Part 2!