Regency Rails - Georgian, Williamine & Early Victorian Railways

[cornamuse]

57 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

They order this matter better in France:

 

 

... written for the opening of the railway to Lille in 1846.

I like it, I wants it... although might be a bit of a challenge for our rather incredible pianist to render the entire orchestral part alone! 

[rockershovel]

The Hackworth “plug” wheels are an interesting early concept; this, from the NRM Shildon “Guide to local history”

 

[john new]

On 27/09/2019 at 13:45, rockershovel said:

These early locos, though... they very much look like things made in a blacksmith’s shop at a mine ..

 

 

Because they were.  (Sorry couldn't resist) 

 

On a serious note though once there was commercial competition with external suppliers of the power units (whether for a mill or any other application) having something that looked stylish, and therefore probably "right" to a purchaser would aid sales. If you look at Hedley/Hackworth - They'd tried oxen, as a cost cutting exercise, hadn't worked therefore making a mechanical replacement for horses was a rush job to save the colliery from ruin. Rather like wartime equipment need was the priority -  they just had to eliminate animals from their transport options, they wouldn't have cared for aesthetics it just had to work and be operational quickly.

 

However, beam engines driving static gear was becoming the established technology, and with kit bought in not built "in house". It was not only the equipment suppliers who would benefit from good looking kit; for the factory/mill owner showing a prospective purchaser of , for example cloth, around a mill that looked like it cared would give a sales edge over one that looked like it was sloppy with out a care as to quality. OK some buyers would just go for cheap, just like today, but if quality in the incoming cloth or yarn mattered to your own output of carpets, linen goods or whatever else it was you made from the raw product you were there to buy, it made sense. Same for your employed mechanics, them taking care of your machines, saves you money from lost working time - they might have paid peanuts, and been heartless as bosses, but they did need the kit they owned to work as reliably as possible, downtime lost them money. Some factory bosses, especially amongst the Quakers, even saw the logic of that through to better houses and working conditions for their workers. Less sickness =  more productivity.

 

Just some thoughts.  

[rockershovel]

It was also a time when people were impressed by the technology of the age. Look at the baroque, ornate pumping houses built for the sewage and drainage schemes, or the great train sheds of the later railway age. Technology had not yet become so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, because people pay no attention to it. 

 

Also, the industrialists and engineers of the age were celebrities. EVERYBODY knew who Stephenson, Brunel, Telford and Trevithick were: men who did great things, who KNEW how things worked. Their machines and structures were their public image, to a great extent, they said LOOK WHAT I CAN DO. 

 

Edited October 7, 2019 by rockershovel

[Nearholmer]

Most tech seems to go through a sort of progression:

 

- raw, unadorned, showings it’s ‘guts’, and at this stage nobody cares much what it looks like, because it’s a miracle that it works at all!

 

- refinement of design and finish, beginning to have a few flourishes of ornamentation or style. This is when the techies have solved most of the fundamental functional problems, and can spare a bit of time and effort to make it look less raw.

 

- triumph of style, when all of the key engineering problems have been solved, ornamentation and/or styling become a very significant feature, consciously either emphasising the functional workings or seeking to disguise them. The particular ornament or style is dictated by wider fashions of the time, so rich outbreaks of classicism, acanthus leaves, bright colours etc in a Victorian times, or sleek Art Deco 30-40 years thereafter.

 

- complete transparency, when the tech has become so refined, and so ordinary, that it simply becomes a hidden utility ....... you actually have to look quite hard to find the functional elements, which are hidden under styling or  simply put out of the way. Very often, by this stage only essential human-machine interfaces are the only visible parts, and even they are only made visible to essential operators, not everyone who benefits from the tech.

 

My observation is that this progression can be seen in nearly all tech, ancient and modern, and it is quite fun trying to work out where along the line things are. Dyson products are interesting, because their styling is very deliberately pinched at ‘first stage’, to emphasise the innovation (even to imply innovation when little is present), as a selling point ...... the apparent rawness is actually very high styling!

[runs as required]

Thank you John New for those very pertinent thoughts developing from your first great one liner.

 

My wife and I grew up in Whaley Bridge (of this summer's Dodgy Dam fame) but have lived for the past 40 years in the former top right hand corner of  Co Durham still coming to terms with its legacy of mining/railways/heavy engineering.  

 

Your post deals with both parts of our experience.

Derbyshire was about mills in the hills where frequently the steam engine was stuck on the end to drive the shafting previously turned by the water wheel. The transport to the mills was by turnpike, later Brindley's canal, the plate-way feeders; eventually the connecting Cromford & High Peak Railway (built like a canal). I'd argue the finesse came from these central England areas and their radical traditions.

The north east was from a much earlier separate Northumbrian origin of subsistence between agriculture fishing mining and seafaring. Rougher and still obtusely macho in its culture. 

Each needed the other in the ensuing 200 years. Now we struggle to come to terms with the post industrial legacy. Our children have to cope with the consequences of the fossil fuel age.

dh

[Edwardian]

There had been changes at Shildon since my last visit.  Now in evidence is this much-debated Hetton Colliery loco, said to have still been working in the 1910s. 

 

[Compound2632]

Who's had the connecting rods? Clearly there in 1925: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-official-film-of-the-railway-centenary-1925-online

 

[runs as required]

Sorry I've been completely distracted watching the movie.

It took me a bit to realise the DofY was the future KG6 (did he stutter in 1925?) accompanied by Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Mum who would have been thoroughly at home in the Tees valley.

I've snaffled a screen shot which I've tried to 'improve' digitally; is anyone recognisable from the LNER hierarchy?  The Royals had moved off screen right but

I reckon the tall man assisting Gresley guide the Royals around the cases was Thompson and I think I spotted Peppercorn as well.
A.C. Stamer according to Col HCB Rogers, was in charge at Darlington works at the time.

I also didn't realise that a fair few odd balls, as we now regard them, appeared in the procession such as the pre re-build NER 4-4-4Ts, an LMS (L&Y?) 4-6-4T and a Claughton; a Raven Pacific, my fave racy looking NER Z , a model T? railbus plus an articulated railcar  and a complete GWR chocolate and cream express which must have still riled the LNER so soon after they'd been being dropped into the Castle versus A1 Pacific contest by the Press.

dh

Edited October 7, 2019 by runs as required

[john new]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Who's had the connecting rods? Clearly there in 1925: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-official-film-of-the-railway-centenary-1925-online

 

Possibly off due to the investigative works into the loco I know from other sources have been (possibly still are) on going. My understanding is the target date for publication of the findings is expected to be a paper to the 2021 Early Railways Conference in Swansea..

[runs as required]

Introducing ornamentation and refinement into the discussion, and mention of the Baroque, hugely widens this thread’s viewfinder.

Arguably the greatest Baroque achievement in Britain is Vanbrugh’s Seaton Delaval Hall built in the 1720s by the (ill fated) Delaval theatrical family with the proceeds from their highly profitable harbour on the eastern boundary of their estate at Seaton Sluice. 

Sea coals from waggonways went outwards and glass bottle making for Brown Ale inwards (from the ballast required by returning sailing colliers).

 

in discussing steam railways at the turn of the 1800s, Trevithick’s Cornish contribution is paramount (as is South Wales and Shropshire).

We ought also to distinguish (rude?) mechanical engineering from Civil engineering. Mech Eng did indeed begin in blacksmiths shops and foundries in Britain from Newcomen in the 1600s via James Watt to Trevithick’s high pressure steam at Camborne. 

However before casting the Ironbridge and constructing the Coalbrookdale locomotive, the Quaker Darbys at Coalbrookdale had gained a century or so's experience under their belts of highly refined casting of elegant Classical ornamental fire baskets following the Fire of London in 1666.

Trevithick’s steam engines had refined mouldings cast around their cylinder castings and a shaped elegance to their forged components and fittings 

 

On Tyneside, Hedley at Wylam had Isaac Jackson labouring for him as furness man in the smithy. Jackson’s hobby was high quality brass clock making – for which he’d fashioned his own precision tools.  

Hedley, needing to test out his ideas, used Jackson to make models in brass to test functionality, before full size mechanisms were chalked out on the shop floor.   (the very way John Cooper sketched and built his first racing cars to beat Ferrari and dominate F1 !)

At Lady Fenwick’s request Hedley took the model steam engine up to Close House her elegant Palladian mansion above the waggonway for Isaac Jackson to demonstrate on her table top. (I’ve posted on this before – as well as recalling how, thanks to Robert Stephenon, Jackson’s three lever escape mechanism was adopted in Big Ben’s clock.)

 

By 1830 the steam locomotive had acquired a refined aesthetic that was by mid century to govern proportion, ornamental domes, fluted safety valve casings and fittings.

The Gateshead Trevithick (too heavy?) engine of 1802 has a balance to its general arrangement and refinement to its castings

                       to approximately the same scale, "Jenny Lind" of 1847 by Wilsons of Leeds has an opera diva's self-awareness with scrupulous attention to her accessories

 

Down in central England the Civils had from the first incorporated classical proportioning into mills and canal infrastructure. Arkwright and other millowners embellished doorways with ashlar masonry and built in clocks, Venetian windows, cupolas.  Jessop, Outram and  Oldknow followed suit with bridges and canal warehouses.

The Cromford Arkwright mills, the original 1771 Georgian structure to the left, to the right his Masson mill embellished with Venetian windows and cupola

dh

Edited October 8, 2019 by runs as required

[Northroader]

Talking of baroque achievements, in Stations you have the “Chatham” side of Victoria, although this did happen some time after the period discussed on this thread.

[Compound2632]

That's Edwardian Imperial Baroque of an Aston Webb-ish sort (I know it's not by him but I'm confused by the attribution to A.W. Blomfield). The monumental architecture of the early railway age was largely Egyptian or classical in inspiration: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

 

The Jenny Lind of 1847 to my mind pretty much marks the end-point of the period covered by this thread* (apart from some antique practices in out=of-the-way locations); the locomotive has achieved its mature form. 

 

*Taking "Early Victorian" to denote 1837-1848; "Mid Victorian" or "High Victorian"; 1848-1870, and "Late Victorian", 1870-1901 - although whoever formulated that list clearly had lurking in the back of their mind "July Monarchy", "Second Empire", and "Third Republic".

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by Compound2632

[Northroader]

One style of the early railway era that had only one example I can think of was Moorish:

[Compound2632]

Contemporary illustrations seem to differ in how "Moorish" the arch was - by how much it exceeded 180 degrees, and the proportions of its span relative to the towers, which housed the stationary engines for cable haulage through the Wapping tunnels. As far as I can find out the arch was demolished when the cutting was widened at some time in the 1860s - did it elude photography?

[runs as required]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

That's Edwardian Imperial Baroque of an Aston Webb-ish sort (I know it's not by him but I'm confused by the attribution to A.W. Blomfield). The monumental architecture of the early railway age was largely Egyptian or classical in inspiration: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

The Jenny Lind of 1847 to my mind pretty much marks the end-point of the period covered by this thread* (apart from some antique practices in out=of-the-way locations); the locomotive has achieved its mature form. 

*Taking "Early Victorian" to denote 1837-1848; "Mid Victorian" or "High Victorian"; 1848-1870, and "Late Victorian", 1870-1901 - although whoever formulated that list clearly had lurking in the back of their mind "July Monarchy", "Second Empire", and "Third Republic".

There is no hint in this project list here of Blomfield being the architect of the Chatham side. I suggest it may have got attributed simply because RB seems to have been fixated by a Freudian complex about vast compositions with holes in the middle.

 

Anyway escaping from my least fave era of architectural design back to the final epoch of this thread, maybe a Midland man can explain why the the Gothic so appealed to Derby. Was it a Board room influence from Oxford that looked down on railways as in need of conversion from Pagan Mechanicals?

[Brunel on the GWR was a bit of a cross-dresser: strictly Classical locomotives but with Italianate and Mediaeval tendencies in his Civil engineering.]

dh

 

[Northroader]

Gothic on the Midland appeared much later at St.Pancras. Wingfield on the North Midland was an excellent classical example, but I’m scratching my head thinking of what a Midland Counties or B&DJ station looked like. Then there’s Derby, what artitectural style was that? Big wiv arches, I been through it often enough, and it’s just struck me that’s another to add to Annie’s list of stations with a long single through platform (when it opened, anyway)

[Compound2632]

The Midland Counties was a pioneer of the "cottage orné" style - the Lincoln line ones are I think the best survivors. This went on to be the dominant mode for Midland wayside stations. The B&DJR stations seem to have been in the tradition of toll gate keepers' cottages.

 

Classical/Italianate at the early principal stations - Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Lincoln.

[Nearholmer]

Money and naked greed.

 

Essential components of early Victorian railways.

 

Today, I was looking at the prospectus for the Midland Grand Junction Railway, a mid-1840s plan for a coal route from Nottinghamshire, which was a precursor of the MS&LR/GCR London Extension fifty years later. It contains a rough (very rough indeed) estimate of construction cost, annual operating costs, and annual earnings, all summing to an annual rate of return of,,,,,,, wait for it ....... forty, yes four zero, percent on capital.

 

Some people were either deluding themselves, deluding others, or, as I suspect in this case, deluding themselves and others simultaneously.

[Hroth]

Getting into the Railway Mania period, to collapse in six years time or so....

 

Even so, returns were high at that time, which encouraged the speculation!

 

 

(Is there a "grandmother sucking eggs" emoji anywhere???)

 

 

[Nearholmer]

There seem to have been some double-digit rates of return for short periods, not sustained for long once they had to invest again to cater for rising demand, but forty percent must have been an exaggeration, or at best a wild hope.

 

The great trick/folly that they were operating at this period was that investors could secure shares by making a small deposit, only having to cough-up in full later, and this one was seriously geared: a £1 deposit secured a £50 share. The idea was that the shares would rise in value before the call was made for the full amount, but in many cases they didn't.

 

It's interesting to compare schemes. Another one at the same time required a £2 deposit on a £30 share, for instance, and a really sober and sensible prospectus for, of great appeal to cautious types, talks about a 3.5% rate of return, and sets limits on further calls on the shareholders etc. 

 

It looks to me as if there was enough information in prospectuses to allow a shrewd investor to pick wisely, but that inexperienced investors were walking into a minefield.

 

Interesting to see the way that tempting factoids were used, as in the frequent citing of the share price of the Stockton & Darlington, which had risen from £100 to £298 by the early 1840s (not sure what dividends it was paying).

Edited October 8, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

7 hours ago, runs as required said:

Anyway escaping from my least fave era of architectural design back to the final epoch of this thread, maybe a Midland man can explain why the the Gothic so appealed to Derby. Was it a Board room influence from Oxford that looked down on railways as in need of conversion from Pagan Mechanicals?

 

 

I think the premise is wrong. I don't think any of the Midland board, at least in the early-mid Victorian period, had been to Oxford - they were all nonconformists. They weren't particularly into gothic for any aesthetic reason and pure gothic revival is, I think, rather rare in Midland station architecture. As I said, the Midland's preferred style for wayside stations was derived from the "cottage orné" tradition - a sort of romanticised vernacular. This did develop into a rather consistent style, largely because from the Bedford & Hitchin onwards, new lines were promoted and engineered by the company itself, rather than by nominally independent concerns that were then taken over. Also, the Midland retained its own architects - not (at least initially) as company employees but as professionals in private practice as well as working for the company. The most influential of these was John Holloway Sanders, who was architect to the company from 1850 until 1869 - so for the period of the building of the Hitchin, Manchester, London, Bath, and Carlisle lines. By 1869 the Midland system had grown so that the architect post was divided, Sanders continuing as architect to the southern division, while for the northern division, Charles Trubshaw was architect from 1874. On Sanders' death in 1884, there was a further reorganisation in which Trubshaw became architect for the whole system, a position he held until 1905. There were fewer new lines in this later period, though much widening, but Trubshaw's chief claims to fame are the Midland Hotel, Manchester and the rebuilt stations at Bradford, Leicester, and Sheffield. 

 

Ref. A.E. Overton and R.F. Burrows, The Functions and Organisation of the Midland Railway Engineer's Department (Midland Railway Society, 2015).

Edited October 8, 2019 by Compound2632
Added reference.

[rockershovel]

8 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

There seem to have been some double-digit rates of return for short periods, not sustained for long once they had to invest again to cater for rising demand, but forty percent must have been an exaggeration, or at best a wild hope.

 

The great trick/folly that they were operating at this period was that investors could secure shares by making a small deposit, only having to cough-up in full later, and this one was seriously geared: a £1 deposit secured a £50 share. The idea was that the shares would rise in value before the call was made for the full amount, but in many cases they didn't.

 

It's interesting to compare schemes. Another one at the same time required a £2 deposit on a £30 share, for instance, and a really sober and sensible prospectus for, of great appeal to cautious types, talks about a 3.5% rate of return, and sets limits on further calls on the shareholders etc. 

 

It looks to me as if there was enough information in prospectuses to allow a shrewd investor to pick wisely, but that inexperienced investors were walking into a minefield.

 

Interesting to see the way that tempting factoids were used, as in the frequent citing of the share price of the Stockton & Darlington, which had risen from £100 to £298 by the early 1840s (not sure what dividends it was paying).

 

“Timothy Forsyte had his money in Consols, which paid 3%” - although they DID pay around that figure, then and for many years. 

 

Look to the “dotcom bubble” of more recent times for a modern version of increasingly irresponsible share promotion. Come to think of it, I seem to recall that the Channel Tunnel was an expensive disappointment for large numbers of small investors, drawn in by what appeared to be government backing..

 

[Compound2632]

Remember also that the example people had in front of them was the canals - the Birmingham Canal Navigation paid 40% for several decades up to the 1840s. [Apologies, that's from memory, I haven't located a reference.]

 

Also from memory, there was one of the Forsytes who speculated heavily. On his risky behaviour being remarked upon to his broker, the reply was, "don't worry about him, he keeps £100,000 in Consols to save him from actual want" - or something along those lines.

[Nearholmer]

Of course, it wasn’t people who already had a large stash, and were betting a small percentage of their wealth in risky enterprises who really suffered as the bubble burst, it was the ‘first timer’ staking more than they could really afford.

 

Small investors had been locked out of such gambling by legislation made for their protection after the South Sea Bubble, but were let back in again by, I think, the Joint Stock Act In 1844.

 

The mid-term affect of the railway bubble bursting was to effectively stop new schemes for over a decade, but I wonder whether it had a longer-term affect, which might go part-way to explaining the under-capitalisation of British industry that was one of the factors behind relative decline when compared with the US and Germany at a later stage.

 

A bit OT, that though. For this period, all is financials optimism!