The impact of the railways during the Industrial Revolution

The arrival of the railways revolutionised life in Britain. The growing rail network opened up the possibility of fast travel across the whole nation and it provided an efficient way of transporting the goods and resources that powered the Industrial Revolution.

Before railways were introduced, travel and transport in the UK was difficult.

Most roads were badly maintained. They had poor surfaces and many were little more than tracks. Roads could flood and often became unusable in bad weather.

People relied on horses, or horses and carts to travel any distance. This was slow and the size of load that could be carried was limited.

New factories and industries needed to transport raw materials, coal for fuel, and finished goods. These materials usually had to be transported in amounts that horses and carts would struggled to move.

Industries located on rivers could use boats for transport. But this limited where businesses could trade. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, canals and barges provided the solution.

The canals were created to transport large quantities of heavy goods, safely and cheaply.

The most extensive canal network can be seen in the Midlands of England where there were numerous coal fields.

For example, Josiah Wedgwood used the canal network to transport his pottery goods from the factory in Stoke-on-Trent to new mass markets all over Britain.

The benefits of canals was that they could carry large amounts of goods over long distances compared to horse and cart.

While they made moving huge amounts of coal cheaper and easier, the canals were very expensive to build.

The Bridgewater Canal that runs through the north west of England was opened in 1761 to allow coal to be transported to Manchester. Ultimately, the forty-one miles of canal cost the equivalent of £28 million. Source: Stories of Inventors and Discoverers in Science and the Useful Arts: A Book for Old and Young, Timbs, J, 1860

Another drawback of canals was that they were slow – they could only move at the walking speed of the horse that pulled them.

Hilly terrain also caused problems as barges found it difficult to navigate stretches of water that featured a change in height.

Canals could also be very seasonal. In winter, a bad cold spell could mean that the canals froze over.

To cross hills, barges had to navigate a system of canal locks that raised or lowered the water levels of the canals.

For example, Neptune’s Staircase near Fort William is a series of eight locks that raises the Caledonian Canal by 19 metres. This all adds to transport time.

The earliest railways were built at collieries to help move the coal extracted from the mines to where it could be transported by canal, river or sea.

These railways did not use trains but horses to pull wagons loaded with coal and only covered short distances near the mines.

Later, these railways were extended greater distances to transport coal to where it was needed in the factories and foundries.

The oldest of these railways was the Middleton Railway in Leeds, England. Built in 1758, it is the world's oldest working railway in continuous usage.

The first commercial usage of steam engines to pull goods on railways rather than horses was at the Middleton Railway in 1812.

Steam engines and steam-powered train travel began not long after. These railways were expensive to build and operate and so, to bring in more money, they were opened to the public as a new means of travel.

The engineer and inventor, George Stephenson, known as the ‘father of railways’, had worked building steam locomotives for coal mines.

In 1825, he opened the first locomotive route from Stockton to Darlington. This led to ‘railway mania’ throughout the 1830s and 1840s and the rapid growth of the railways.

The first public railway in Scotland - and the first to use steam locomotives in Scotland - was the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway which opened in 1826.

The railway was built to link a colliery at Monklands, Strathclyde to the Forth and Clyde Canal at Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire.

The line supplied coal to the homes and industries of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Later on, the railway carried passengers and became a key part of the passenger rail link between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

In 1830, there were only 125 miles of railway lines in Britain.

Forty years later, there was 13,000 miles. (Source: Cobb, M, The Railways of Great Britain, 2003.)

This incredible expansion of the railway network was only made possibly by a large labour force that laid the rail lines, dug cuttings and tunnels, and built the embankments, stations, bridges, and viaducts that the new rail system would need.

All this was carried out by workers known as navvies.

The use of trains to move huge amounts of raw materials, fuel, and finished goods quickly around the country underpinned the Industrial Revolution.

Beyond this, there were also many positive impacts of the railways on British people.

The railways became a major employer. From train drivers, to engineers, through to ticket office staff and train conductors, the rail companies employed thousands of people.

The rail network allowed people to move to other areas to live and find work.

People’s health improved as regular trains provided better access to fresher and cheaper food.

The use of trains by Royal Mail meant people could stay in touch easily. It also allowed newspapers to sell to a national readership much more easily.

Trains boosted tourism and allowed people to travel to different parts of the country. It gave many city-dwellers access to the fresh air of the countryside.

Glaswegians would escape the city in the summer to go to seaside resorts such as Largs, Rothesay, and Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. The rail lines also made the Highlands more accessible to visit.

The railways also helped to introduce standardised time across the British Isles.

Before the railways, clocks in different areas could be set to different times - a clock at a train station in London might read 2pm while, at the same time, a clock in an Edinburgh station might read 2.10pm.

The railway companies introduced standardised time so that train timetables could be coordinated so that trains departed and arrived on time.

Even sport benefitted from the railways.

Soon most towns had football and rugby teams. The trains allowed sports fans who lived outside of these towns to travel to support their team.

Affordable train travel even led to a new phenomenon - fans travelling to other towns to support their club.

Some railway companies were keen to capitalise on these new travellers and introduced cheap train tickets for football supporters. Source: Science and Industry Museum: Football, trains and the rise of the travelling fan