Great British Railway Journeys Read online

  For Scarlett and Tallulah,

  the light at the end of my every tunnel

  Photolibrary

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  FOREWORD: BY MICHAEL PORTILLO

  INTRODUCTION: BY CHARLIE BUNCE

  JOURNEY 1: COTTONOPOLIS AND THE RAILWAYS - From Liverpool to Scarborough

  JOURNEY 2: THE HOLIDAY LINE - From Swindon to Penzance

  JOURNEY 3: BRINGING BEER DOWN SOUTH - From Buxton to London

  JOURNEY 4: OPENING UP VICTORIAN BRITAIN - From Preston to Edinburgh

  JOURNEY 5: THE MAIL TRAIN - From Ledbury to Holyhead

  JOURNEY 6: THE TAMING OF THE HIGHLANDS - From Ayr to Skye

  JOURNEY 7: RAILWAYS MADE FOR TRADE - From Newcastle to Melton Mowbray

  JOURNEY 8: COAST TO COAST - From Brighton to Cromer

  JOURNEY 9: BORDER LINES - From London to Hastings

  INDEX

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Photolibrary

  FOREWORD

  By Michael Portillo

  Like most people, I thought travel an adventure when I was a child, and most of those adventures were by train. There were still some steam trains around for me. There was a tank engine-hauled service from Belmont to Harrow and Wealdstone, close to where I grew up. My eldest brother, Charles, would take me on the ‘Belmont Rattler’, and I remember the panting engine, the smoke and my excitement.

  For summer holidays we would go to the Isle of Wight by electric train from Waterloo, but from Ryde we would pick up the steam service along the island’s east coast. The tunnel beneath the Boniface Downs would fill with the pungent stench of steam locomotive just before we pulled into Ventnor.

  Then there was the annual excursion to my mother’s hometown of Kirkcaldy. My parents were not well off, so we took the overnight train without sleeper reservations, travelling second class, sitting upright, sustained by Lucozade and peanut butter sandwiches. On at least one occasion it took 13 hours, and the service was known, to our sardonic amusement even then, as the Starlight Special.

  After childhood, trains became mere tools for me. As a politician I visited most places to campaign, cut a ribbon or make a speech. The train got me there, or got me there late. The glamour was gone, and I was all too ready to criticise the lateness, the absence of the refreshment trolley or the failure of the air conditioning.

  Now I find myself drawn to the railways once again. Making the two series of Great British Railway Journeys has meant spending almost 100 days travelling the length and breadth of the country and has brought back for me the idea of railway journey as adventure. Catching the train has been a key part of the experience, not merely a chore.

  I was always travelling to see. I journeyed with curiosity and optimism, and I was rarely disappointed.

  My guide was a Victorian called George Bradshaw. In 1839 he started producing railway timetables and then a handbook to journeying through Britain by train. Even though I have travelled most of the routes before, this book shone an endlessly fascinating light on everywhere I visited. I have studied the Victorian period at school and university, but no document that I have read before is quite as revealing of the Victorian outlook as this travel guide.

  Former minister Michael Portillo revisits his love of railways.

  © Steve Peskett

  Bradshaw’s generation was highly excited by its central role in a world that was moving forward at an exhilarating pace. His wonder and pride spill from every page. Enthusiastic, patriotic, opinionated, he writes in an era unrestrained by egalitarianism, let alone political correctness. His age values reason, experimentation and excellence. It is serious and largely unsentimental. For Bradshaw there was no shame in imperialism, no consideration of taste to restrain his bombast. Manchester manufacturers, he records with pride, could import the cotton crop from India, spin it and export textiles that would then undercut local production in India. London, he says, is the greatest city that exists, or has ever existed. He is right that London stood at the heart of an empire that exceeded that of the Pharaohs or Caesars, and considering Britain’s mastery of technology there was no serious competition to be found anywhere in the world’s history.

  Bradshaw’s first enthusiasm was for canals, a prodigious achievement in themselves with a great impact on business. But the railways were faster and more versatile. Above all they were for the masses. Without large numbers of passengers they were uneconomic. They altered the geography of Britain by making places accessible, and they transformed the social landscape because people of modest means could travel.

  The speed of the change is difficult even for us to grasp, because although the mobile phone and computer have led to a revolution over the last 20 years, modern-day Britain doesn’t undergo physical change as fast as Victorian Britain did. The world’s first intercity line opened between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. Twenty years later over 6,000 miles of track had been laid, reaching all but the remotest parts of the country. Railways sprang up everywhere. Some important lines were built in their entirety in just two years. Although steam engines were used in construction, most of the work was done by hand. Thousands of navvies occupied camps along the route, and dug the cuttings and raised up the stones for the viaducts. We would have to visit modern Shanghai, perhaps, to gain any understanding of the speed of change and the scale of the undertaking.

  The handbook’s itineraries follow the tracks. Towns are listed not alphabetically but in their order along the main lines and branch lines. I have been asked a lot whether I didn’t find that many of Bradshaw’s routes have gone. Some have, of course. But I think I was more struck but the degree of continuity between then and now. Britain today, despite its post-war motorways, depends upon an infrastructure laid down by the Victorians. They built to last, and often grandly. As the refurbishment of St Pancras has shown, the best thing to be done with a Victorian building is simply to undo the damage of decades caused by smoke and rain and, particularly, cheapskate makeovers. Stand on Waterloo Bridge with Bradshaw’s book and you may find that the finest buildings today are still the ones that he picked out: Saint Paul’s cathedral, Somerset House and Parliament.

  That gives a clue as to why travelling with Bradshaw is still useful today. Not to despise the work of later generations, but to appreciate the magnificent and formative legacy of that era. It led me to explore places that are no longer in fashion, like Scarborough and Weston-super-Mare, and to hunt for trades that were big in his day, like Walsall saddlers, Bristol glass blowers and Denton hatters.

  I never intended my journeys to be purely nostalgic, and they have not been. British cities are rejuvenating themselves and British resorts cling on or fight back. There is vibrancy and enthusiasm wherever I have been. The Britain of today would be ethnically, culturally and socially unrecognisable to George Bradshaw. I hope that in my journeys I portray Britain as it is.

  Michael Portillo

  2010

  INTRODUCTION

  By Charlie Bunce

  Photolibrary

  There are some ideas for television programmes that, when you hear about them, you just know in your bones are destined for success. That was certainly the case when I was asked to produce a new series being developed for the BBC which was then called Adventures with Bradshaw.

  The idea emerged from a brainstorming session with Liam Keelan, BBC Controller of Daytime and Camilla Lewis, Head of Factual Features at talkbackTHAMES. Liam was keen to find a programme that would work at 6.30 p.m. on BBC2. He wanted a travelogue by train, which had an historical angle. Liam knew the railways
were rolling out across Britain during one of the most exciting and rapidly advancing periods of history when ordinary lives were being irrevocably changed.

  Camilla had long been obsessed with finding a new way of investigating our social history. Her brother-in-law, an antiquarian bookseller slotted the last piece of the puzzle in place when he told her that George Bradshaw, the man who famously started producing monthly railway timetables in the mid-nineteenth century had also published a guide-book on travelling across the country by train.

  After a £500 investment, a battered and broken copy of Bradshaw’s guide arrived at the office. A drab brown cover was misleading as its contents were anything but dull and dreary. Its well-thumbed pages offered a remarkable insight into the life and times of Victorian Britain.

  The more I read Bradshaw’s guide, the more I could hear his voice. As I understood him better I began to see the age in which he lived and worked, and to see what excited him and why. His minute observations and comments gave me a sense of Victorian Britain different from anything I’d read before.

  His rich words conveyed to us another age. A section about Sandwich in Kent is an ideal example. ‘The traveller, on entering this place, beholds himself in a sort of Kentish Herculaneum, a town of the martial dead. He gazes around him and looks upon the streets and edifices of a bygone age. He stares up at the beetling stories of the old pent-up buildings as he walks and peers curiously through latticed windows into the vast low-roofed, heavy-beamed, oak-panelled rooms of days he has read of in old plays.’

  How could you not want to visit Sandwich and find what he had seen. Beyond lyrical descriptions, Bradshaw deposited on his pages a wealth of information about where his readers should stay, how to get money, what day the market took place, local sights of interest and on occasion where to sit to get the best view from the train. He revelled in detail, giving the span and height of bridges to the foot, or the length of station platforms. He loudly and proudly celebrated every British success.

  George Bradshaw combined his enthusiasm for cartography with a passion for trains.

  © National Portrait Gallery, London

  Bradshaw described how the railways were a great leveller, literally and metaphorically. While the land was planed so the trains could run on as few inclines as possible, the barriers that divided a class-ridden society were at the same time pared down.

  For the enterprising, railways represented a golden opportunity. Although they were initially seen as a way of transporting freight, it wasn’t long before moving people by rail was just as important, sometimes even more so. Commerce spread across neighbourhoods and regions. Trades that were once restricted to narrow localities could now take advantage of markets worldwide. The notion of commuting was born. Holidays, once the province of the rich, came within grasp of ordinary people.

  It is difficult to imagine now just how fundamentally life changed and the speed at which those transformations came about. Where railway stations were made, hamlets mushroomed into towns while those settlements that were leapfrogged by railway lines were left in the doldrums.

  Bradshaw was an expert artist, and his line drawings of some of the country’s finest buildings were included in his popular guidebooks.

  It wasn’t all good news, though. Amid the euphoria that accompanied the age of steam there were many who fell victim to railway mania, including those who died laying tracks in hostile terrain and the unwary who invested heavily in lines or companies that failed to flourish.

  As far as the programme was concerned, the idea was beguilingly simple. We would travel Britain by train with Bradshaw as our guide. Through it, we’d explore the impact of the railways on our cities, countryside and coast. Thanks to Bradshaw, we could celebrate triumphs of yesteryear and match fortunes past and present. We would see how the country had been transformed in a matter of a few short years and understand why, at the time, the British Empire was so successful at home and overseas. But, as importantly, we would search out what of Bradshaw’s Britain still remains today.

  The next question was who should present it. In television, getting this agreed is often a monumental feat. On this occasion it wasn’t. Michael was suggested, and within 30 seconds of meeting him I knew he was the perfect candidate. The son of a Spanish refugee and a Scottish mother, Michael not only had a lifelong fascination for history but was also a former Minister of Transport. Years spent in both government and opposition did nothing to diminish his abiding passion for railway journeys. Forty-five episodes later I have never once regretted the decision to have him present the show. The energy and intelligence he brings to every situation make the series stand out.

  London landmarks were also illustrated by Bradshaw for visitors to the capital.

  Michael Portillo spoke with fellow railway enthusiasts up and down the country – here with Ian Gledhill, chairman of Volk’S Electric Railway Association.

  © Steve Peskett

  Strangely, the most taxing bit of the whole process was coming up with the right title. List after list was emailed to everyone concerned with the project, only to be knocked back, judged not quite right. We must have gone through hundreds of suggestions before ending up with Great British Railway Journeys. In the end, it seemed to say very succinctly what the series is all about.

  The last question was where those journeys should take us. We could not mimic Bradshaw minutely on our travels. His extraordinary thoroughness meant that was a task too far, and many of the stations he visited are now obsolete, thanks to the policies of the Sixties which saw thousands of miles of branch lines closed in a futile bid to save cash.

  Nonetheless, I wanted the trips we recorded to reveal a country that many of us hardly know, or at least seem to have forgotten. With our copy of Bradshaw’s guide in hand we’ve now made nine big journeys exploring the country and discovering new sides to places I thought I knew well. Through making the programmes and writing the book, I have had the chance to tease out dusty nuggets of information to satisfy the most curious of minds. I wanted the chance to trumpet what had been great about Britain, and celebrate the enormous amount that still is. I hope the series and this book do just that.

  Charlie Bunce

  September 2010

  As he travelled through Britain Michael Portillo kept his well-worn copy of Bradshaw’s railway guide close at hand.

  © Steve Peskett

  JOURNEY 1

  COTTONOPOLIS AND THE RAILWAYS

  From Liverpool to Scarborough

  The obvious place to start our journeys seemed to be the birthplace of the modern passenger railway. Lots of places lay claim to that title, but for us, once we’d looked into it, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway was the clear winner. It is true that fare-paying passengers had been carried by rail before its inception, but the Liverpool & Manchester was different. Unlike the other railways that predated this one, carriages were not horse-drawn, nor were they pulled along wires fixed to a stationary locomotive. It wasn’t a tiny pleasure railway with limited use. This was a proper twin-track line, the first in the world where steam locomotives hauled paying passengers, and it changed the face of travelling in Britain.

  There are certainly longer, older and more beautiful routes, but the line between Liverpool and Manchester seemed to us to be the perfect launch pad into the past.

  The original purpose of the line wasn’t to service passengers at all, but to move freight between two booming cities. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, most goods were transported on a thriving and extensive canal system, but it was both expensive and slow, and this trip took 36 hours. So in 1822 Joseph Sandars, a local corn merchant and something of a forward thinker, decided to invest £300 of his own money in surveying a route for a railway between Liverpool and Manchester.

  The project suffered numerous setbacks as aristocratic local landowners campaigned to prevent the proposed line from passing through their lands, while the canal owners, fearful of competition, tried to stop it altogeth
er. It looked for a while as though it would never get off the ground until another blow turned out to be the line’s saving grace. When the project’s original surveyor landed himself in jail, George Stephenson (1781–1858) was appointed in his place.

  Stephenson was one of those great Victorians for whom nothing seemed impossible. Born to parents who could neither read nor write, he went on to become an inventor, a civil engineer and a mechanical engineer. He designed steam engines, bridges, tunnels and rail tracks. Whilst there’s disagreement over whether his skills lay in invention or in harnessing other people’s creations, he is rightly known as the father of the railway. Without a doubt, the modern railway developed more quickly than it would have done without Stephenson’s involvement.

  On the line for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, one of the first things Stephenson was tasked with was re-examining the route. What he came up with was a new plan which as much as possible skirted contested land. In this instance it wasn’t an easy option. It would require building no fewer than 64 bridges and viaducts along its 35-mile course and needed Parliamentary permission before it could begin.

  Engineer George Stephenson is considered the father of the railways.

  Maria Platt-Evans/Science Photo Library

  It took four years of haggling before the Parliamentary Bill was passed in May 1826, enabling the compulsory purchase of land for the railway. Getting to this point had cost many compromises, however, one of which was that the line couldn’t go into Liverpool itself and instead had to halt outside the city centre. After the opening of the line in 1830 it was a further decade before it could be extended into the city and Lime Street station, one of Britain’s first railway stations, was opened.