Railway history

Railway History comprises the railways of the world from the early 19th century in Britain to the present day.

19th century

Britain

George Hudson (1800-71) was the most important railway promoter of his time. He had a particular aptitude for visualizing and arranging spectacular company and line amalgamations and his activities helped to bring about the beginnings of a more modern railway network. In 1849 he exercised effective control over nearly 30% of the rail track then operating in the United Kingdom, most of it owned by four railway groups, the Eastern Counties Railway, the Midland, the York, Newcastle and Berwick, and the York and North Midland, before a series of scandalous revelations forced him out of office. The economic, railway, and accounting literatures have treated Hudson as an important figure in railway history, although concentrating largely on the financial reporting malpractices of the Eastern Counties Railway, while Hudson was its chairman, which were incorporated into the influential Monteagle Committee Report of 1849.

Leunig (2006) assesses train speeds in England and Wales during 1843-1912. Trains were fast compared with coaches or walking, and the social saving of time saved grew over time to become over 10% of national income in 1912. Including fare savings, social savings were 14% of national income in 1912, with consumer surplus of 6%. Time savings dominated fare savings once railways became a new good: travel for the masses. Using the social savings-total factor productivity identity, the article shows that railways accounted for around a sixth of economy-wide productivity growth in this era.

Labour

Howlett (2004) explores an important labor market development toward the end of the 19th century, the rise of the internal labor market. Railway companies were pioneers in this area, and in 1904 comprised all 10 of the largest enterprises in britain. Howlett presents an analysis of the career histories of 848 traffic staff workers of the Great Eastern Railway Company. This large longitudinal sample provides the first detailed account of the internal labor dynamics of a pre-1914 railway company, providing a unique insight into an early internal labor market. Union membership was quoite low before World War I. There was a clearly structured market for unskilled entrants, that promotion and demotion were an important managerial tool, and that there was a significant wage premium for promotion.

Nationalization and Privatization

Bagwell (2004) shows the Railway Bill of February 1993 privatizated the railways. Railtrack was responsible for the infrastructure; passenger services were provided by (initially) 25 operating companies, while goods services were concentrated in three companies, eventually EWS (English Welsh and Scottish Railway Ltd). The records and experiences of travelers reveal that punctuality and reliability, i.e., the likelihood of timetabled services running at all, deteriorated. Passengers' complaints increased in number. Under British Rail, before 1993, much engineering work was done "in house." Contracting it out was detrimental to good overall management and contributed to low morale among passengers and staff alike. Secretary of State for Transport Stephen Byers's decision in October 2001 to put Railtrack under administration is explained.

British colonies

Canada

In Canada, the national government strongly supported railway construction for political goals. First it wanted to knit the far-flung provinces together, and second, it wanted to maximize trade inside Canada and minimize trade with the United States, to avoid becoming an economic satellite. The Intercolonial line, finished in 1876, linked the Maritimes to Quebec and Ontario, and contributed to an ice-free winter route to Britain. No less than three transcontinental lines were built to the west cost, but that was far more than the traffic would bear, making the system simply too expensive. One after another, the federal government was forced to take over the lines and cover their deficits. Since most of the equipment was imported from Britain or the U.S., and most of the products carried were from farms, mines or forests, there was little stimulation to manufacturing. On the other hand, the railways were essential to the growth of the wheat regions in the Prairies, and to the expansion of coal mining, lumbering, and paper making. Improvements to the St. Lawrence waterway system continued apace, and many short lines were built to river ports.

India

The British built a superb system in India. However, Christensen (1996) looks at of colonial purpose, local needs, capital, service, and private-versus-public interests. He concludes that making the railways a creature of the state hindered success because railway expenses had to go through the same time-consuming and political budgeting process as did all other state expenses. Railway costs could therefore not be tailored to the timely needs of the railways or their passengers.

By the 1940s, India had the fourth longest railway network in the world. Yet the country's industrialization was delayed until after independence in 1947 by British colonial policy. Until the 1930s, both the Indian government and the private railway companies hired only European supervisors, civil engineers, and even operating personnel, such as locomotive drivers (engineers). The government's "Stores Policy" required that bids on railway materiel be presented to the India Office in London, making it almost impossible for enterprises based in India to compete for orders. Likewise, the railway companies purchased most of their materiel in Britain, rather than in India. Although the railway maintenance workshops in India could have manufactured and repaired locomotives, the railways imported a majority of them from Britain, and the others from Germany, Belgium, and the United States. The Tata company built a steel mill in India before World War I but could not obtain orders for rails until the 1920s and 1930s.

United States

In the United States, railway mania began in the 1830s and persisted through the 1870s. Although the South started early to build railways, it concentrated on short lines linking cotton regions to oceanic or river ports its lack of a real network was a major handicap during the American Civil War. The North and Midwest constructed networks that linked every city by 1860. In the heavily settled Corn Belt (from Ohio to Iowa), over 80% of farms were within 5 miles of a railway. A large number of short lines were built, but thanks to a fast developing financial system based on Wall Street and oriented to railway securities, the majority were consolidated into 20 trunk lines by 1890. State and local governments often subsidized lines, but rarely owned them. The federal government operated a land grant system between 1855 and 1871, through which new railway companies in the uninhabited West were given millions of acres they could sell or pledge to bondholders. A total of 129 million acres were granted to the railroads before the program ended, supplemented by a further 51 million acres granted by the states, and by various government subsidies. This program enabled the opening of numerous western lines, especially the Union Pacific-Central Pacific with fast service from San Francisco to Omaha and east to Chicago. West of Chicago, many cities grew up as rail centers, with repair shops and a base of technically literate workers.

Although the transcontinentals dominated the media, with the completion of the first in 1869 dramatically symbolizing the nation’s unification after the divisiveness of the Civil War, most construction actually took place in the industrial Northeast and agricultural Midwest, and was designed to minimize shipping times and costs.

The U.S. imported British technology in the 1830s, but was soon self sufficient, as thousands of machine shops turned out products and thousands of inventors and tinkerers improved the equipment. The military academy at West Point saw most of its graduates become civil engineers in the private sector. This was a better paying, higher status job than army officer, in stark contrast to the preeminence of officers in Europe. The result was that the Americans became enamored of engineering solutions for all economic, political and social problems, combined with an unusually strong financial system that grew out of the railways. As the railways grew larger they devised increasingly complex forms of management, invented middle management, setting up career paths, and establishing uniform bureaucratic rules for hiring, seniority, firing, promotions, wage rates and benefits. By 1880, the nation had 17,800 locomotives carrying 23,600 tons of freight, but only 22,200 passengers. The effects of the American railways on rapid industrial growth were many, including the opening of hundreds of millions of acres of very good farm land ready for mechanization, lower costs for food and all goods, a huge national sales market, the creation of a culture of engineering excellence, and the creation of the modern system of management.

Europe

Throughout western Europe, railway construction was the main engine of economic growth in the 1840s and into the 1850s, stimulating growth in coal mining, iron mongering, machinery making and civil engineering. By speeding up turnover, the railways made wholesaling and manufacturing more profitable, while bringing remote farmlands closer to markets and thus much more profitable. The creation of complex business organizations led to the multiplication of new managerial and engineering skills that spread from railways to other technologically-oriented industries. As T.H. Ashton concluded: “The locomotive railway was the culminating triumph of the technical revolution: its effects on the economic life of Britain and, indeed, of the world, have been profound.”

Belgium

Belgium provided an ideal model for showing the value of the railways for speeding the industrial revolution. After breaking with the Netherlands in 1830, the new country decided to stimulate industry. It planned and funded a simple cross-shaped system that connected the major cities, ports and mining areas, and linked to neighboring countries. Belgium thus became the railway center of the region. The system was very soundly built along British lines, so that profits were low but the infrastructure necessary for rapid industrial growth was put in place.

Germany

In Germany, political disunity (Germany did not become unified until 1870) and deep conservatism made it difficult to build lines in the 1830s. However, by the 1840s, trunk lines did link the major cities, although each German state was responsible for the lines within its own borders. Economist Frederick List summed up the advantages to be derived from the development of the railway system in 1841:

First, as a means of national defense, it facilitates the concentration, distribution and direction of the army. 2. It is a means to the improvement of the culture of the nation…. It brings talent, knowledge and skill of every kind readily to market. 3. It secures the community against dearth and famine, and against excessive fluctuation in the prices of the necessaries of life. 4. It promotes the spirit of the nation, as it has a tendency to destroy the Philistine spirit arising from isolation and provincial prejudice and vanity. It binds nations by ligaments, and promotes an interchange of food and of commodities, thus making it feel to be a unit. The iron rails become a nerve system, which, on the one hand, strengthens public opinion, and, on the other hand, strengthens the power of the state for police and governmental purposes.

Lacking a technological base at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from Britain, but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the railways. In many cities, the new railway shops were the centers of technological awareness and training, so that by 1850, Germany was self sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth of the new steel industry. Observers found that even as late as 1890, their engineering was inferior to Britain’s. However, German unification in 1870 stimulated consolidation, nationalization into state-owned companies, and further rapid growth. Unlike the situation in France, the goal was support of industrialization, and so heavy lines crisscrossed the Ruhr and other industrial districts, and provided good connections to the major ports of Hamburg and Bremen. By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives pulling 43,000 passengers or 30,000 tons of freight.

Asia

China started building late. In 1900 there were only 860 kilometres of track and about 3,000 railway workers. After 1920 the major cities, ports and mining districts were connected. Railways became a major employer of industrial labor and by 1937 they had about 300,000 employees in China Proper and the Japanese-controlled Northeast, along 21,270 kilometres of track.

Labor

Licht (1983) shows that raileays changed employment in many ways. Lines with hundreds or thousands of employees developed systematic rules and procedures not only for running the equipment buty in hiring, promoting, paying and supervising employees. The railway system was adopted by all major business Railways offered a new type of work experience in enterprises vastly larger in size, complexity and management. At first workers were recruited from occupations where skills were roughly analogous and transferable, that is, workshop mechanics from the iron, machine and building trades; conductors from stagecoach drivers, steamship stewards and mail boat captains; station masters from commerce and commission agencies; clerks from government offices.

Twentieth Century

See also Industrial Revolution

Bibliography

• Nock, O . S. ed. Encyclopedia of Railways (London, 1977), worldwide coverage, heavily illustrated

Britain

• Arnold, A. J. and McCartney, S. George Hudson: The Rise and Fall of the Railway King (2004). 317 pp. A study in Victorian entrepreneurship
• Bailey, Michael R., ed. Robert Stephenson: The Eminent Engineer. (2003). 401 pp.
• Carter, Ian. Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity. (2001). 338 pp.
• Clapham, J. H. An Economic History of Modern Britain: The Early Railway Age, 1820-1850 (1926) online edition
• Ellis, Hamilton. British Railway History: An Outline from the Accession of William IV to the Nationalization of Railways, 1877-1947 1959 online edition
• Gourvish, Terri, ed. Railways volume 1; volume 2, edited by Geoffrey Channon. (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing Company and the Scholar Press, 1996. Pp. xviii, 174; xxi, 187. Articles from Journal of Transport History
• Kostal, R. W. Law and English Railway Capitalism, 1825-1875, (1994)
• Simmons, Jack and Gordon Biddle, (eds). The Oxford Companion to British Railway History: From 1603 to the 1990s (2nd ed 1999)
• Skelton, Oscar D. The Railway Builders (1916)

British Empire

• R. O. Christensen on "The State and Indian Railway Performance, 1870-1920" in Terri Gourvish, ed. Railways vol 1 (1996)
• den Otter, A.A. The Philosophy of Railways: The Transcontinental Railway Idea in British North America. University of Toronto Press, 1997.
• Huddleston, George. History of the East Indian Railway (1906) 281 pages; online at Google

Europe

• Fremdling, Rainer. "Railways and German Economic Growth: A Leading Sector Analysis with a Comparison to the United States and Great Britain," The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 37, No. 3. (Sep., 1977), pp. 583-604.
• Heywood, Anthony. Modernising Lenin's Russia: Economic Reconstruction, Foreign Trade and the Railways Cambridge University Press, 1999 online edition
• O’Brien, Patrick. Railways and the Economic Development of Western Europe, 1830-1914 (1983)

United States and Canada

• Middleton, William D. ed. Encyclopedia of North American Railroads (2007) Indiana U. Press: 1200 pp; the most valuable reference book; 500+ entries by experts, with bibliographies
• Chandler, Alfred, ed. The Railroads: The Nation's First Big Business - Sources and Readings. (1965)
• Chandler, Alfred. The Visible Hand--The Managerial Revolution in American Business. (1977) highhly influential study of railway management
• Davis, John Patterson. Union Pacific Railway: A Study in Railway Politics, History, and Economics (1894) 247 pages online at Google
• Dozier, Howard Douglas. A History of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (1920) 197 pages online at Google
• Jenks, Leland H. "Railroads as an Economic Force in American Development," The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (May, 1944), 1-20. in JSTOR
• Kirkland, Edward Chase. Men, Cities and Transportation, A Study of New England History 1820-1900 2 vol (1948)
• Klein, Maury. Unfinished Business: The Railroad in American Life (1997)
• Klein, Maury. The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (1997) excerpt online at Amazon.com
• Klein, Maury. The Life & Legend of E. H. Harriman (2000) online edition
• Martin, Albro. James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (1990)
• Martin, Albro. Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (1992)
• Moody, John. The Railroad Builders: A Chronicle of the Welding of the States 1919 online at Project Gutenberg
• Nice, David C. Amtrak: The History and Politics of a National Railroad (1998) online edition
• Raper, Charles Lee. and Arthur Twining Hadley. Railway Transportation: A History of Its Economics and of Its Relation to the State, (1912) 331 pages; online at Google
• Riegel, Robert Edgar. The Story of the Western Railroads 1926 onine edition
• Stover, John. The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads (2001)
• Stover, John. American Railways (2nd ed 1997) good, brief overview; excerpt online at Amazon.com
• Stover, John. History of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (1987; 2nd ed 1999)
• Stover, John. History of the Illinois Central Railroad (1975)
• Stover, John. Iron Road to the West: American Railroads in the 1850's (1978)
• Stover, John. The Railroads of the South 1865-1900 A Study in Finance and Control (1955)

Labor issues

• Walter Licht, Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century Princeton University Press, 1983
• Morgan, Stephen L. "Personnel Discipline and Industrial Relations on the Railways of Republican China." The Australian Journal of Politics and History. 47#1 (2001) pp 24+ online edition

Technology

• Alston, Liviu. Railways and Energy. Washington, DC: World Bank. 1984.
• Biddle, Gordon. Britain's Historic Railway Buildings: An Oxford Gazetteer of Structures and Sites. (2003). 759 pp.
• Drinkwater, Robert. "Code of the Rail" Beaver 2005 85(1): 41-43. ISSN: 0005-7517 Fulltext: in Ebsco
• Grant, H. Roger. The Railroad: The Life Story of a Technology. Greenwood, 2005. 182 pp.
• Marsden, Ben and Smith, Crosbie. Engineering Empires: A Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth-Century Britain. 2005. 351 pp.
• McGowan, Christopher. Rail, Steam, And Speed: The "Rocket" and the Birth of Steam Locomotion. (2004). 400 pp.
• Riley, C. J. The Encyclopedia of Trains & Locomotives (2002).

External Links

• Simone Sterne, "Railroads" from 1881 Encyclopedia
• primary sources on 19th century and early 20th century American railways