Trains of thought
(‘Time flies by when you’re the driver of a train’)
It has been my intentions in writing this article to try and illuminate some of the major, quirky, or interesting aspects of social life which owe their existence to railways. I chose the title ‘Trains of thought’ because, hopefully, it will cause you the reader to take your own thought journey along the lesser known routes, making your own connections to our shared railway past.
Trains of thought should be considered as a ‘slow train’ trundle along some of the less well known branch line connections to our railway heritage. Railway history is one of those fraught and highly contentious issues which raise partisanship to new levels and almost everyone has their own cause ‘celebre’. In this article I am not going to examine the histories of individual companies, or particular lines or enginemen, instead I am going to look at an area of our railway history which seldom gets an airing - the relationship between the railways and society at large. The advent of the railways had a major impact on the social and cultural life of the Nation; it changed everything from diets to reading habits. The railways added new words and phrases to the English language - some of which are still in regular usage despite the almost complete disappearance of the steam driven railway which spawned them.
In a world of worrying futures, the nostalgia afforded by the not too distant past has, for many, become a form of cultural comfort blanket composed of Vintage Fayres, Industrial Museums, Ancestral Pyles, Sealed Knots, and my own choice, the ‘heritage’ railway. Once the domain of the ‘socially inept’ trainspotter, the heritage railway has, over the last five decades, become an integral part of the British tourist industry. The heritage railway is a kind of time machine, they even advertise themselves as ‘a journey back in time’, hauling passengers through country stations trapped in the 1950s – all of which is a world away from call centres, departure lounges, and the vicissitudes of the daily commute. The rush, push, cash, becomes, chuff, puff, puff, there’s a waiting room, just for ladies, enamelled signs which have out-lived the products they advertise and that whiff of the devil, the sulphurous smoke as the train rolls in.
The music of swing bands drifts on the breeze; entrance is often free to those members of the public who turn up in period clothing and the whole thing takes on the ambience of open air amateur dramatics. Most dramatic of all, is the steam locomotive and the holy of holies, its footplate. There’s little doubt that the engine driver is possessed of some power or mystique, and many boys, and men, would love to be ‘an engine driver’. However, I suspect this is more their romantic and idealised view of the engine driver rather than the actualite of his daily work routines in the steam era.
Despite appearances, the driver has very little freedom; he is bound by the company rule book, by the signalling system, by the timetable, and, to some extent, by his fireman’s ability to raise steam. He was supplied with a uniform he was obliged to wear, some companies even went so far as to suggest his promotion might depend on attendance in church. Similarly he had no choice in the starting and ending times of his shift, the number of hours he worked, or which locomotives or duties he worked on. Infringements of company rules could be punished by fines, suspensions from duty, down grading, dismissal, and even imprisonment, depending on the circumstances.
The growing railway industry, of the Victorian age, created new institutions, some, like the Manchester Society for the Prevention of Boiler Explosions were born out necessity and came to be vitally important in creating a safe railway and factory environment. Other equally important institutions arose from the financial needs of the railway companies, share dealing and trading and the creation of regional stock exchanges in Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool all were the result of the growing railway network and their need to raise capital. Even the national daily newspaper has a debt to the railways, which created the possibility to print a newspaper in London and circulate it right round the country on the same day.
Today most of the changes to social life which the railways did make possible are either taken for granted or have become the bane of some people’s lives. The railways created the possibility for the daily commute from the suburbs to the city - as the lines spread the suburbs grew with them. In some cases, the railways bought the land and created the suburbs. It is difficult today to imagine just what an impact the railways made throughout the entire fabric of social life - much as they did on the landscape itself.
If we return to the beginning and that line from the theme tune to the children’s TV series, ‘Chigley’, ‘time flies by when you’re the driver of a train’. What is really rather surprising about childhood tales is just how many have railway connections and the very diverse nature of those connections. Equally surprising is that there should even be a connection between children’s bedtime stories and the railways - railways are, after all, dangerous places for small children - even for grown-ups railways must be treated with respect - as the MP William Huskisson, amongst others, discovered to his cost.
Sticking with children’s stories we have the Reverend Awdry’s ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ stories. Thomas’ adventures take place on what, to enthusiasts, is a very recognisable ‘real world’ railway system. The adventures Thomas has are, for the most part, derived from real railway operations and incidents. The same thing, however, cannot be said of the Reverend Dodgson’s heroine Alice in her journey by train in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ where, ‘the smoke alone is worth a thousand pounds a puff’ - though it must be said, however, that the railway gravy train, which was present at the very beginnings of the railway age, is still very much alive and well today.
The railway exploits of the ‘Belles of St Trinians’ would have had the Fat Controller reduced to an apoplectic fit and we haven’t even mentioned the railway worlds of ‘Sammy the Shunter’ or ‘Ivor the Engine’. None of this detracts, of course, from the levels of enjoyment to be gained from bed-time stories or Ealing comedies, for that matter - but it does illustrate the diversity of the imagined railway landscape - covering, as it does, all routes from the real in Awdry’s work to the surreal in Dodgson’s and back again in time for tea.
There is a long and enduring history between beer and railways. The navvies were, reputedly, kept at work on a diet of a pound of beef and a gallon of beer -per day! The Bass brewery, at Burton – on – Trent, had an extensive railway of its own with its own engines operating on it. On today’s heritage lines ‘Real Ale Trains’ are very popular and more than a few have regular ‘real ale events’ - the Mid-Hants Railway even market ‘RAT’ T-shirts!
The Quaker
founders of our railways may have been teetotal but there’s more than a hint of
‘the railway joy ride’ in this quote from C. A. McDougall’s ‘The Stockton & Darlington Railway 1821 -
1863’, “’Experiment’ was coupled to
‘Locomotion No.1’ at Shildon and with Edward Pease, his three sons, Edward,
Joseph and Henry, Thomas
The railway’s links with enjoyment can also be coupled to the growth and spread of many forms of communication - beyond that of mere enjoyment. The railway, it would seem, not only speeded up communication it helped to change the very nature of what it was that was communicated - dots and dashes in place of words or, as it is today 0 and 1 or open and closed. The railway introduced electronic communication in 1841, as a means of solving the problems created by using only time interval methods of train control. The introduction of Cooke & Wheatstone’s electric telegraph, one of the very first practical applications of electricity, is the forerunner to the ‘wire service’ which helped in providing news and information of major events from around the globe. Today electronic communication from the vinyl record to e-mails are a commonplace though few people are aware that the ancestry of their ‘i-phone’ and MP3 player is rooted in a safety device manufactured for the steam age railway.
Another curious facet of the railway’s interaction with people is that they [the people] are the raw material, the manufacturing process is the journey they undertake and the product is their safe arrival at the chosen destination. The fact that the traveller becomes a part of the rail travel machine for the duration of the journey creates a very different relationship to that between the people and almost any other mode of production or machine - we don’t become a part of the printing press or the drilling rig to read a paper or put petrol in the tank. The wrong kind of words in the newspaper will not leave us stuck in the middle of nowhere waiting for the breakdown train - a broken drill will not imperil us like a broken rail or faulty points.
Going back to Thomas the Tank Engine we can make a connection with another important branch of our railway ancestry - the church. The Rev. Awdry is but one cleric in a long line of ecclesiastics who have, in one way or another, been involved with all things railway. The Godfather of railways, Edward Pease, was a devout Quaker, as were a number of the original backers of the Stockton & Darlington - indeed Quakers were involved in much of the early industrial revolution, the Darby’s of Coalbrookedale, who made parts for Trevithick’s engines, were Quakers and the financiers of the Manchester Ship Canal were Dissenters. Even the discovery of the age, ‘electricity’, owed a debt to the teachings of Dissenters. Faraday’s view of the Holy Trinity formed by his religious upbringing and schooling, helped him in his understanding of the nature of electricity / electro magnetism.
The Reverend Scott has a very different railway connection to that of Pease and Awdry. The Reverend Scott was a keen ‘Locomotive Practice & Performance’ enthusiast - (The Godfather of Gricing?) spending his spare time riding the rails, timing and assessing locomotive performance. His [Scott] logs, along with those of Rous-Marten, formed the definitive timings of the Railway Races to the North held in 1888 and, more famously, in 1895. For these men ‘time really was flying by’ as they hurtled through the night behind such locomotive icons as Stirling’s 8ft single or another of those well known ‘blue’ engines - Caledonian Railway No.123.
These spectacular events, (racing trains up the east and west coast routes from London to Aberdeen) seem incredible in today’s health & safety conscious atmosphere, but in the summer of 1895 they were front page headlines for three weeks, as first one route and then the other set new fastest times for the journey. People turned out along the routes to watch the racing train go by, even though for many this was either late at night or the very early hours of the morning. ‘Flying by’ was now providing enjoyment for more than just the engine driver - it was increasing the sales of daily papers - no doubt a source of enjoyment for owner and shareholders alike.
In our own era
who can forget the wonderful images, of locomotives hard at work, from the lineside
camera of the late Eric Treacy, Bishop of Wakefield. However, not all of the
railway’s connections with men of the cloth were as harmonious as it was with
Scott and Treacy. The church and its hierarchy raised many objections to the
early railways and on occasion were not above a little shady business to
extract their fair share of ‘filthy lucre’ from the ‘Railway Barons’. Such was
the churches power and influence in the early years of railway development that
trains did not run on Sunday, in
One of the more
unusual connections between church and railway is to be found in a small church
in the
Rail travel wasn’t the only form of enjoyment provided by the arrival of railways. The ‘facilities’ of the Station Hotel are the stock in trade of the cheap novella’s ‘illicit affair’ - or there’s the drunken carousing of various ‘jolly bands’ in the Railway Taverns the length and breadth of Britain and who can possibly forget that dreary station buffet at Carnforth! Here’s smut in your eye!!
Daily papers, the daily postal delivery, fresh fish and milk - catalogue shopping, the railway made them all a part of everyday life. Whether this all helps to make life more ‘enjoyable’ is a matter of opinion, but there can be little doubt about the enormous growth in communication, and for that matter the changes to peoples diets, the railway’s arrival presaged. Thomas the Tank Engine splendidly illustrates how interwoven the railways and social life has become. Thomas the Tank Engine began his imaginary incarnation as a bedtime story, which later became a series of books. As time flew by the little boy, for whom the Thomas stories were invented, grew up and began adding his own stories to those told to him by his father. Television, as it does, picked up the Thomas stories and lo’ a brand was created. Now there are Thomas stories on cassette and CD, and Thomas models, automata and videos, Thomas flags to wave and jig-saws to do. Equally, as enthusiasts, we must not forget that the faces on smokebox doors have become the backbone of Heritage Railway finance, the ‘Thomas The Tank Event’. Bedtime stories have, it would seem, become a major industry and a rather unlikely form of support for what is essentially a version of industrial archaeology. ‘Curiouser and curiouser’ as Alice would say.
A link to my footplate memoir: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1688929746
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