a bit of railway history please

[dtcoulson]

Hi people,

I'm trying to write a short investigation into the life of an ancestor who lived in South Shields / Newcastle from 1838 to 1904. I want to know how his life would have been influenced by the radical changes in railway technology between these years.

For example, can anyone tell me when Newcastle's local rail network joined with other networks to the south and made it possible to travel all the way to London? How did it compare with coach services of the time?

In part, my question relates to his sons who migrated south to London and Wales in the 1880s.
How affordable was long distance travel to the working class back then? Am I right in guessing that long distance travel was still very costly in the 1880s, rather like long-haul air travel today? In that case, did working class people frequently scoot around to explore the country by rail or was it something you did once in a lifetime, at great cost?

Any insights welcome
Thanks
-David C

[stanmapstone]

The railway age began in 1830, and by 1842 there were nearly 2,000 miles of railway in operation.  By 1851 the Railways were carrying 80 million passengers a year. By the 1870s you could travel almost anywhere by rail. The North Eastern Railway was formed in 1854. The NER's main line formed the middle link on the Anglo-Scottish "East Coast Main Line" between London and Edinburgh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Eastern_Railway_(United_Kingdom)
See also  http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,503504.msg3603129.html#msg3603129
You could also look at "The Development of Transport in Modern England"
http://www.rootschat.com/links/01n92/ although all the pages are not available.

Stan

[dtcoulson]

Thanks, Stan

skimming the pages you listed it looks as though the most active years of development were the 1840s and that all the rail companies had merged or at least connected lines by 1860. Furthermore the vast number of travelers per year in the 1850s implies that even the lower paid members of society were travelling around by train.

So it's a safe bet that the boys who headed to London from South Shields in the 1880s did so by train? And that it was not a major investment?

Furthermore it sounds safe to suppose that the old fellow born in 1838 could afford to do a few train journeys himself around the region, say by the 1860s?  He would have been in his twenties.

I notice also the growth of telegraphy in the 1840s, so that the boys in London in the 1880s could easily have telegraphed their dad to tell him how things were progressing.

-DC

[stanmapstone]

I forgot to say that an 1844 Act, introduced by Gladstone, required the Railway Companies to run 'Parliamentary Trains' at a penny a mile for third class passengers.

Stan

[JenB]

So it's a safe bet that the boys who headed to London from South Shields in the 1880s did so by train?

Don't discount travel by ship. It would have been very easy to hop on a south-bound ship at South Shields. Coastal travel was pretty common.

My grandmothers aunt went to London regularly in the late 1890's and early 1900's and she always went by ship (in her case from Newcastle upon Tyne)

[dtcoulson]

Thank you, Jen.

I never thought of sea journeys and it does make sense.
And if your ancestor could do it regularly in the 1890s then it
should be economical. I might have to rewrite my book a little.


Stan... am thinking that a penny a mile sounds great for short journeys
within one's own region but when scaled up to the 275+ miles between
Newcastle and London it sounds pretty expensive for people paid in pennies per day.

How much did a typical Newcastle factory worker earn in 1880?

-DC

[dtcoulson]

Just found this online:

A Mason might earn 29 shillings a week and a carpenter twenty-five.
Overall, in the middle years of the 1880s,
the average annual wage for workers in England, £46/12/-
was greater than the average wage in Scotland or Ireland

-DC

[dtcoulson]

Would it be unreasonable to estimate the situation as follows?

Assume general labourer's income close to 15 shillings a week. (probably a bit generous)
(fitting a value between job incomes in the late 1800s found here and there on the net)

Assume further that someone might be able to save 5% of what they earn.

That would be 9 pennies a week (sounds shocking).

275 pennies matching 275 miles of rail journey would be the equivalent of
30 weeks' saving.

I don't expect that things would genuinely go this way.
Someone would borrow money from family or inherit some windfall and
then consider a long journey, rather than scrimp and save.
But the analysis gives an insight into the size of the challenge
to someone on a low income who wants to travel to another city to find work.
This doesn't even take into consideration food and lodgings upon arrival.

-DC

[dtcoulson]

anyone know what the ship journey would cost?