Engines and Men/Chapter 2

by John R. Raynes

Chapter II

 

Rapid Developments—The Railway Companies—Speed and Efficiency—The Railway Mania—War of Companies—An Engine Arrested—Bad Conditions of Service~ North Eastern Drivers—The First Societies.

 

That short speech of Stephenson's conveys an idea of the enormous amount of prejudice and apposition he and others had to overcome. It also indicates the phenomenal advance of railways in that remarkable period 1825-45. Railway Company projects were launched in rapid succession, and there was keen speculation in the new method of transport. "Trade follows the engine" was a true saying, and towns, colliery owners, rich manufacturers, and all the money interests of the great centres, wanted a hand in railways. So did thousands of country squires, and they got it by keen resistance to tracks being laid through their land. They rocked the new companies for enormous prices for the requisite strip of land, and took toll for damages for disturbance, for noise, for nerve and shock if these monsters came thundering by, and for every sort of pretext. All this called for excessively high capital, and the Companies have ever since carried the burden of the exploiting that took place then. There is hardly a more interesting subject in railway development than this of the grabbing of heavy compensation, but I am unable to pursue it. I am, indeed, engaged on the one task more interesting, that of the welfare of the human clement on the great railway service.

Stephenson, father of drivers, became an extensive locomotive manufacturer, a railway contractor, a colliery and ironworks owner, particularly at Clay Cross. "I am now called George Stephenson. Esq., of Tapton House, near Chesterfield," he once said. "I have dined with princes, peers, and commoners, with persons of all classes from the humblest to the highest; I have dined off a red herring in the hedge bottom, and I have gone through immense drudgery, and the conclusion I have come to is that when we are all stripped there is not much difference."

He was unremitting to the end in his practical interest in the physical and mental welfare of his men, a worthy founder of a great calling.

All this time, however, the broad and narrow gauge controversy continued, and engines of great capacity were built as "ultimatums" to prove that they could do things which could not he done on the other gauge. For example, in 1853 the Bristol & Exeter Railway had some broad gauge tank-engines with wheels of nine feet diameter, which ran at eighty miles an hour. But the battle went in favour of the 4 feet 8½ inch gauge, and the Caledonian and the Great Northern each designed their fastest engines to suit that gauge. Train speed was a great cult seventy years ago, and by 1854 speeds were attained which were unbeaten in the great speed races to the North which were such a feature of competition in the '80's.

On the design of Mr. M. Kirtley, the Midland Railway led the way in 1852 with what was then a very large class of express engine, with driving wheels of 6 feet 6 inches, and cylinders 16 by 22 inches. Six were constructed by Messrs. R. Stephenson & Ca., having no flanges on the driving wheels. In 1864 twenty engines of still greater power and size were built, having a working steam pressure of 140 lbs. Greater power and greater economy in fuel and running costs were aimed at all through the chapter of progress, until the twentieth century express engine represents the acme of steam engines. Changes during the last ten years have been minute compared to the strides of 1840 to 1850, and anything at all comparable could only come by a change to some other motive power. There is considerable difference of design in the engines on the various fines, and there are many types of engines on the same system all constructed to serve particular needs and purposes.

As to the speed of trains, I have mentioned 80 miles an hour being exceeded, and on several occasions 78 miles or more has been recorded. On certain favourable lengths of line, speeds of 70, 73 and 75 miles an hour are often made, but such speeds involve needless risk, and are to be deprecated. Europe's fastest trains have a sort of understood maximum of sixty miles an hour. Drivers need nerves of warriors to bear the strain of ever increasing power and weight whilst maintaining speed. There was keen zest about railway races in 1885 to 1888, when they came to an end. The G.N. East Coast express left King's Cross at 10 a.m, on August 31st of 1888, and arrived at Edinburgh at 5.27 p.m, having taken the 400 miles in 7 hours and 27 minutes. On the following day racing to the North was discontinued. But forty years earlier, on May 11th of 1848, the Bristol express, G.W.R., ran from Paddington to Didcot, 53½ miles, in a running time of 47 minutes from start to stop, an average of 68 miles an hour, with J. Almond as driver.

The block system of signalling, invented by Mr. (afterwards Sir) William F. Cooke, and established in 1865, made a greatly needed improvement in railway working, contributing enormously to the safety of travelling and the confidence of drivers. I have already indicated how rapidly speed developed from Stephenson's modest guarantee of ten miles an hour up to seventy miles an hour within twenty years, and all this was taking perceptible effect in public life. It made possible the great success of the Exhibition in 1851, when more provincials visited London than in any year up to that time. It made possible also the cheap excursion to distant places, one of the priceless boons that railways presented to the nation's workers. It gave suddenly a new perquisite to health, education and entertainment. With excursions one naturally links the name of Cook. Thomas Cook was born at Melbourne, Derbyshire, on November 22nd, 1808, and at the age of ten years was earning a penny a day at gardening. His first organised cheap trip was to convey a Sunday School party from Leicester to

 

The First Conference of Locomotive Workers, November, 1866.

The Engine Drivers’ and Firemen's United Society.

Loughborough in July, 1841. The return fare was a shilling, and 570 people bought tickets for this reserved train.

A band of music preceded the great party to the station, and at Loughborough the inhabitants turned out to witness the arrival of the "excursion." The idea paid the Company, paid Cook, and paid everybody concerned. Cook was pressed to organise more such, and did so cheerfully. He ran one from Rugby to Derby (100 miles return) for a shilling; sixpence for children, and a series of such popular trips were very successful. At first Cook was very diffident about big and costly enterprises, but gradually he extended his scope. In 1845 he ventured a trip from Derby to Liverpool, with crossings to the Isle of Man. Dublin, and the Welsh coast, 300 miles for 14s. It was so successful that he repeated it two weeks later. Next he ran 800 miles enterprises into Scotland for a guinea, and by 1850 he had contracts with all the great railway companies. He chartered steamships and Continental hotels, and his name became a guarantee for the safety and comfort of passengers. In 1866 he ran his first excursion to America, and shrank at nothing in the way of enterprise.

The completion of railways made most elaborate and efficient postal facilities possible, with mail vans for sorting en route, and with prompt delivery to every part of the kingdom. It transformed life at the fishing ports, whose salesmen were enabled to charter special express trains of fish vans to convey the catch fresh to London and other large centres. It transferred coal and iron-ore with rapidity from the mines to the industrial centres, and gave such a lift to commerce as cannot be calculated.

The coming of railways made a veritable transition in England, but in their coming they involved a mighty scramble for gain, a perfect fever of speculation in railway shares, and such a sprint of astute competition and jockeying for places as can only be imagined after reading much of the evidence. From 1830 to 1840 a countless number of small lines were projected and built, mostly proving very remunerative. A list of the titles would be a very formidable catalogue. Some very short lines had very long names, and local citizens were proud to hold railway "interests." From 1840 to 1850 was a time of absorption by bigger concerns, of re-fashioning and connecting up, and this process again involved keen competition, ways weird and devious, and many appeals to Parliamentary Committees. A railway mania had seized those with money to spare, and quite a fevered gambling took place. In one year, 1846, 272 Acts were passed for new lines. At that time there were several Midland Companies—the Midland Counties, the North Midland, the West Midland—all later absorbed in the Midland. There were two North Westerns—the London & North Western and the "Little" North Western. The competition for towns and routes was of a bitter and remorseless character, and contract work was rushed. On one stretch of the Derby to Nottingham line 3,500 men and 328 horses were working full speed, and by June, 1838, 4,000 men were working on the laying of that line, which was opened on May 30th, 1839, amid the pealing of bells. The extension up the Erewash Valley from Trent to Chesterfield caused great heartburning between companies, and the countryside near Clay Cross was lit up at night by the camp fires of thousands of navvies and platelayers.

It was in 1835 that George Stephenson and his secretary set out in a stage coach from Derby to drive to Leeds, to find the best route for a railway line. He spent a long time over that rugged journey of 72 miles, walking into the fields, examining geological formations, and finding alternative routes. He bad the valleys of the Derwent, Amber, Rother, Don, Dearne, Calder, and Aire to negotiate, and he had the option of taking a high and costly route by Sheffield, Barnsley and Wakefield. This involved enormous costs in earthworks, owing to bad gradients, and Stephenson preferred to keep east of them, to connect them by branches. His advice was taken, after much discussion, and this North Midland, as it was called, was always a favourite line of his.

The same search and survey for routes, the same laying of tracks and sites for goods and passenger stations, was proceeding in every part of Great Britain. At every point of the compass were railway enterprises, and the London & North Western and Great Northern had already linked up London with the industrial North, while the Great Western ran in from the West. For some years the Midland Company, after it extended from Bedford to Leeds, used King's Cross Station for their passenger work, bur by 1853 that marvellous structure. St. Pancras, was in course of preparation. The M.S. & L. and the G.N.R. seriously affected Midland passenger traffic from 1845 to 1850. Landed interests imposed every sort of difficulty. Surveying engineers were charged with trespassing, even with poaching, and agents and keepers were put on to watch the game. The Duke of Devonshire demanded that any line through his estate should go through a covered way! The Duke of Rutland demanded that not a tree should be lapped or removed, thus causing a nice calculation. To suit the two dukes two stations had to be built—Bakewell and Hassop—and all kinds of concessions had to be made to other landowners.

Every hand was for itself against the great public, which has had to pay ever since. Companies fought each other, and made compacts with each other against a third. The Lancashire & Yorkshire, the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincoln, and the London & North Western, made an agreement in 1850 to keep the Midland out of Manchester. Vested interests fought each other for monopoly of towns and routes all over the country, in order to collect toll on traffic into those centres. By the year 1849 there were railways touching 3,000 parishes, in which the rates levied were £800,000—less than some of our single cities to-day—and of this sum railways paid £250,000.

The Midland Company, in the year 1852, came within 2½ per cent, of terms with the London & North Western for joint running into Euston, but they decided to buy out St. Pancras, for which 3,000 houses were removed. The Leeds & Bradford line furnishes a good example of a local line absorbed. The Midland had paid an annual rental of £90,000, which on May 12th, 1852, was commuted by £1,800,000 in 18,000 shares of £100 each, at 4% per cent, for five years, and afterwards "four per cent, in perpetuity." Such dividends are still being paid in great sums all over England,

A bright instance of competition and what it led to is famished by an incident at Nottingham Midland Station in August of 1852. The Great Northern had a running arrangement with another company, which in turn had running rights over the Midland into Nottingham. On the day referred to a G.N. engine ran the train of passengers into Nottingham. The trespasser was a conspicuous object in the station, and it was promptly captured. The process used was like that for capturing wild elephants, by putting others of its kind around it. Midland engines were called out and placed before and behind, and the prisoner was piloted to the yard!

Let us look at an example or two of the obstinacy and exploitation that was displayed. There was, for example, a clause in the Act for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway which said: "No steam engine shall be set up in the township of Burtonwood or Winwick, and no locomotive shall be allowed to pass along the line within those townships which shall be considered by Thomas, Lord Lilford, or by the Rector of Winwick, to be a nuisance or annoyance to them from the smoke and noise thereof." One landowner got £3,000 for a plot of land through which a line was to pass, and £10,000 for "consequential damages" on the coming of this great herald of commerce and prosperity. The Great Eastern had to pay £120,000 for a site which had been valued as worth £5,000. Railway lines were costly affairs. The track of the Brighton Company worked out at £8,000 per mile, the London to Birmingham at £6,300, and the Great Western at £6,696. The law was just as bad as the land. The legal casts involved in an abandoned and rejected scheme came to £82,000, and it was said that one barrister netted £38,000 in a single session of Parliament.

Stage coach owners found it unprofitable to carry the mails, and so disorganised delivery and opposed the new rival to their business. Canal companies had been paying tremendously high dividends, and shares in them stood at 20 to 40 times their normal value. The canal companies were therefore remorseless opponents of the swifter iron roads. Capitalist interests fought each other, and an investing public was scrambling to get money on all sorts of wild railway enterprises. A smash came in October of 1845, when there were 47 completed lines, 118 being constructed, and 1,263 being projected. Under a later Act to facilitate the abandonment of railway bubble schemes, 1,560 miles of designed routes were abandoned. By the year 1864 thirteen large companies monopolised about three-quarters of the railway traffic of the kingdom. The Great Eastern had taken over or leased 26; the Great Western, 115; the London & North Western, 59; the Midland Railway, 35; and the North Eastern, 41. Big business was getting hold of the railways, big money was being made by all the interests concerned, except one, the most vital interest of all, human labour. It was regarded as a mere chattel, ta be purchased as cheaply as possible and worked as heavily as possible, as we shall see later. Most companies had same regard for their horses, but they had none for their men.

In 1852 very important correspondence had taken place between the Midland and London & North Western, and the Great Northern and Midland, with a view to amalgamating all three railways into one national system. The North Western was the world's biggest corporation, a gigantic undertaking, as big as the other two combined then, and it is interesting to recall that chairmen and secretaries in those letters in 1852 recognised their competition was wasteful. They were running two tracks and two depots in one town, and in general duplicating all the expense of structure and maintenance. It would be in the national interest, they said, to design one cohesive system and pool their interests. But Parliament proved hostile to the project of amalgamation.

The period 1860 to 1870 saw a steadying of the feverish cult railways. There were scores of companies possessing running powers, and any part of Great Britain could be crossed in a day. They "carried Scotsmen to London by the light of a winter's day," as Macaulay said, and coaching houses and famous hostelries became forgotten. The sound of the horn became a novelty on the roads, but everywhere was the whistle of steam power. Thousands of engines were in daily service, and a very large staff of badly-paid and overworked railwaymen were at work. Mere and more men became familiar with the vibrating "dither" of footplates rattling along at high speed, with everything hard and hot about them. They got used to handling boilers of 400 or 500 gallons of boiling water close to them, and to feeding a flaring cauldron of five to ten cwts, of coal roaring like a furnace. They knew what it was to see smoke-box doors and wheel guards get red hot,

In those early days drivers and firemen were not so protected as they are now from the full force of the wind and the keen night air of winter. They would get half blinded with dust, and knew what it was to have warm feet and ears piercingly cold:—

To bear
The pelting brunt of the tempestuous night,
With half shut eyes, and puckered cheeks and teeth
Presented bare against the storm.

Time-tables had become familiar to the public (Bradshaw's being first published in 1841), water tanks had been put down, Metropolitan railways were running, St. Pancras had been opened (October 1st, 1868), and every month of every year seemed marked by some new development. Modest attempts had been made to organise the men, but without success. The Railway Working Man's Provident Benefit Society was started in 1865 amongst the guards on the Great Western Railway, by Charles Bassett-Vincent, but two years later it was completely smashed by wholesale dismissals of its prominent members. On the North Eastern Railway—and this is a very interesting matter—an Engine Drivers' and Firemen's Society was started at the same time, but it also was broken up after an unsuccessful strike. Railways had been developing for a whole generation, and were employing whole armies of men, before Trade Unionism took root amongst them. Their widely different vocations, the many grades of railway service, and the scattered nature of this large army over every point of the country, all hampered that spirit of cohesion needed.

We have seen how on the North Eastern, in 1865, a Drivers' and Firemen's Society was started. It began in spontaneous enthusiasm, but it abruptly ended for want of discretion. Far too soon, and without adequate reserves, it launched a strike for better conditions, and was broken up in the failure that resulted. The spirit was there, however, and in the following year, 1866, an Engine Drivers' and Fireman's United Society: was established, its objects being to assure friendly society benefits for its members. Later it fully realised that self pity and mutual help were not sufficient to move railway conditions, and it became much more militant in spirit than its rules indicated. Therefore, we have it on record that in both 1865 and 1866 it was the drivers and firemen who led the way towards organisation, and alter an interlude of 14 years came together again as leaders of the way, despite opposition, suppression and victimisation, under the banner of the Associated Society,

There were a quarter of a million men engaged on the railways when, in 1871, Mr. Michael Bass, M.P, for Derby, began to interest himself on behalf of the very ill-paid and heavily-worked railwaymen. His exertions resulted in the formation of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and he gave it an impetus by the disclosures at an inquiry which he set up into conditions of service. The hours especially were excessive, many cases of a90 hours week being reported, and twenty hours and more of continuous duty were often worked, In researching for purposes of this history, l came across many cases of a most depressing character. A driver was killed on Kentish Town Station for want of energy ta get out of the way of a light engine, and it transpired at the inquest that he was worn out by 23 hours of continuous work on the footplate. There was need, heaven knows, to end the slavery inflicted in Scotland, what time companies were returning seven per cent, interest on their inflated capital. I propose to discuss these appalling conditions more fully in a later chapter, as it is important, for our young members especially, to fully realise what railway service was, like in the half century 1850 to 1900.

For purposes of the moment we have reached the formation of the A.S.R.S., March 2nd, 1872, which proceeded under the piloting care of Michael Bass, and devoted its attention chiefly to hours and accidents, both very urgent matters certainly. It had a jong list of patrons and presidents, none of whom were working men, and all its operations were confined to the old type of friendly society. In 1872 it claimed to have 17,247 members out of 250,000 employees, but this membership steadily declined, until in 1882 it had only a scattered and very ineffective membership of 6,321. One of the inherent weaknesses, limiting the scope of action, was, without any question, the all grades composition. In 1882 not two per cent, of the railwaymen were organised, although the Scottish Society of Railway Servants had been established, and the United Pointsmen and Signalmen's Society (1880) had come along, and our own Society was in its vigorous infancy. It was not until 1889 that the General Railway Workers' Union was formed. The A.S.R.S. waited on Members of Parliament, and ventured into the lobby for interviews. The breathless idea that the working people might send representatives through the lobby to take seats in the House itself had not then dawned.

The decade of the seventies had been an atrociously hard time for railwaymen. There had been many fatalities and accidents to men and boys in the service, and all were "wage slaves" in a real and grim sense. The system that brought vastly increased wealth to commerce, banks, mines, and all financial interests, was only a durance vile for the men who ran the system. Something was about to happen to break the suppression, and the great venture was launched by the drivers and firemen. Seven men of Monmouthshire, stirred by the arbitrary attitude of the Great Western, breathed the great inspiration. The same project was being confidentially whispered at Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, and Leeds, and in 1880 it broke out spontaneously under the letters A.S.L.E. & F.

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