Victorian Stations: Railway Stations in England and Wales, 1836-1923

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The busiest British station. The first London and South Western Railway’s London terminus was at Nine Elms and opened on 21st May 1838. It was a modest neo-classical structure designed by Sir William Tite (1798-1873). It was his first station. He had no inhibitions about style and Gilbert Scott admired some of his bold vernacular stations in the North. Steam riverboats took passengers from Nine Elms to London Bridge and other points on the North bank of the Thames. This arrangement caused fairly considerable inconvenience to passengers. Waterloo Station was opened in 1848 — with two train sheds of 100 feet (30.48 meter) spans. The LSWR’s traffic passenger traffic increased exponentially as Waterloo served Portsmouth — and latterly Devonport (1876) — the great naval bases as well as Aldershot, the principal army base. There was also the huge increase in commuter traffic from Kingston, Surbiton and Richmond. By 1892, Waterloo was handling 50000 passengers a day. The LSWR had, incidentally, extended its services to Exeter in 1860 and, by 1899, Padstow in Cornwall. The London and Greenwich Railway (L&GR) was the first steam railway to open in London between 1836-1838 for passenger services. The line opened in 1836, connecting Central London to Greenwich, a distance of around 4 miles. It was designed by George Landmann, and built by a team of engineers and labourers led by William Cubitt. From 1899 the LC&DR entered a working union with its rival, the South Eastern Railway, to form the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR). As a result, services from its station at Victoria began to be rationalised and integrated with those from the other SECR termini. [40]

Born in Newcastle, local historian and author, Charlie Steel has spent much of his life living in Monkseaton. With a lifelong interest in the North Tyneside area, he has several published books to his credit. They include Monkseaton Village (Part 1 & 2), Whitley Bay Remembered (Part 1 & 2), North Shields Public Houses, Inns & Taverns’ (Part 1 & 2), and Tynemouth Remembered - all published by Summerhill Books. The boom of the railways took force in England from the late 1830s and into the 1840s, so much so that in 1840 the HM railway inspectorate was set up, and the 1840 Act for Regulating Railways: Proposals were immediately drawn up to extend the line towards the coast, which necessitated the construction of an underground tunnel running beneath North Shields town centre, thereby linking the line to Tynemouth. The designer of Brunel’s locomotives was Daniel Gooch (1816-89), who is, for many, the greatest locomotive designer of the century. Then there were Brunel’s ships — the SS Great Western (1837), the SS Great Britain (1843) — the first screw propelled ship to cross the Atlantic — and the Great Eastern, it had a length of just over 207 metres and a breadth of just over 25 metres. The Great Eastern could reach a speed of almost 20 miles an hour. Here is Brunel writing to Matthew Digby Wyatt on Paddington — months before the completion of Paxton’s Crystal Palace , which housed the Great Exhibition of 1851.

By 1859 Euston could connect trains to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Perth. This was a limited mail service with a few coaches for passengers. 1873 the first sleeper coach was rolled out and ran from Euston to Glasgow, again on a limited mail train for 3 nights a week. This soon increased to every night by 1874. Sleeper Train 1874 Given that all these services existed in the late Victorian era, why did many of them not survive into the modern era? The reason was increasing competition from other modes of transport. Trams had existed since 1880, but from 1901 they were electrified, which made them easier to use than the train on many urban routes. Tram usage doubled in the decade to 1911. Designed by William Barlow (1812-1902) and Rowland Mason Ordish (1824-86) — Midland Hotel by George Gilbert Scott (1811-78)

a b c d e f g h i j "Estimates of station usage". Rail statistics. Office of Rail Regulation. Please note: Some methodology may vary year on year. The Harold Pinter short play Victoria Station has the station as the intended destination that the driver never reaches. [152] See also [ edit ] New Street has always been the busiest of provincial British stations. Cowper’s station was entirely re-built by British Railways in the mid 1960s when the West Coast Main Line was electrified. It is a bland, efficient station of no substantial architectural interest. At 211 feet (64.31m.) Cowper’s original wrought iron and glass roof had the largest single span anywhere — until it was surpassed by Barlow’s and Ordish’s St Pancras train shed at 243 feet (74.07m.) completed in 1867. New Street was constructed by Messrs. Fox, Henderson & Co. for whom Cowper had worked — he had been responsible for the company’s contract drawings for Joseph Paxton’s 1851 Crystal Palace. George Gilbert Scott praised New Street in Secular and Domestic Architecture (1857): “An iron roof in its most normal condition is too spider-like a structure to be handsome, but with a very little attention this defect is obviated. The most wonderful specimen, probably, is that at the great Birmingham Station . . . ” Cowper was among the leading figures from what L T C Rolt described as a “brief heroic age of engineering”. He was the son of a professor of engineering at King’s College, London. At fourteen he began a seven-year apprenticeship with John Braithwaite (1797-1870) — a successful civil engineer. While still an apprentice he devised a system of railway signalling by means of small detonators — which made a load bang when a train passed over them. These were widely used in fog to alert engine drivers of hazards — when conventional signals could not be seen. Cowper set up on his own account as a consulting engineer in 1851. He contributed much to the development of steam technology. In 1870 he invented a device by which hand-written messages could be transmitted by telegraph without the need for the use of Morse code. Cowper was consulting engineer to the Post Office. St Pancras, London (1865-68) Submissions by the Victoria Interchange Group to the Victoria Station Upgrade Public Enquiry". Persona. Archived from the original on 7 January 2011.

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It was not until 1843, however, that the very first building was constructed, and this was to the designs of two prominent Newcastle Architects, John and Benjamin Green. Southeastern services at Victoria use platforms 1–8. The station is served by a mixture of metro and long distance (mainline) services. Metro services are operated using Class 465 and 466 EMUs whilst mainline services are operated using Class 375 and 377 EMUs.

All these trains made the LCDR Farringdon line and the City Widened Lines as busy as any Underground line today. In 1865, for example, there were 352 trains a day passing through Farringdon, 116 of them Metropolitan Line services, 110 to Hammersmith, 62 Great Western trains to Kensington, 10 Great Western trains to Windsor and 30 Great Northern trains. By the 1880s there were 200 trains a day over the Widened Lines into Moorgate and 100 southbound from Farringdon through the Snow Hill tunnel. Following growth in passenger numbers in the 2000s, Victoria Underground station became one of the busiest on the Underground, with around 80 million passengers a year. [109] [132] At rush hour, more than 30,000 passengers entered the station between 8 and 9am, and entrances to the station were frequently closed due to dangerous levels of overcrowding at platform level. [109] Tite was indeed the designer of Carlisle Station (completed in 1847) as he was of Carnforth, which was completed same year. (Carnforth is featured in David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter, with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard.) Tite was an extremely versatile architect and was at one time President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In his latter years he was a Liberal Member of Parliament. King’s Cross Station, London (1852), desigend by Lewis Cubitt (1799-1883) Euston was the first of the great stations. With it began the era of competitive station building in capital cities. The London & Birmingham Railway started services between the two cities in 1837. The railway reduced the arduous twelve hour coach journey from London to Birmingham to less than half — the current journey time is an hour and thirty minutes. Such a transformation in society was celebrated with a new kind of architecture. The train sheds, however, were modest, economical, structures. They were designed by Robert Stephenson, the son of George Stephenson, and the Chief Engineer of the railway, and Charles Fox, the son of a prominent sugeon. Fox went on to have a distinguished career as a civil and mechanical engineer. Passengers arriving at Euston could step out from trains straight into carriages waiting immediately outside the train sheds. Departing passengers would pass through the grand Propylaeum, the entry to a temple complex — the affectionately remembered Euston Arch. Its stern Greek Doric columns were almost 13 metres tall. It was destroyed, in act of philistinism, or wilful vandalism, by British Railways in 1962. From 1 August 1872, the " Middle Circle" service also began operation through Victoria, from Moorgate along the MR on the north side of the Inner Circle to Paddington, then over the Hammersmith & City Railway (H&CR) to Latimer Road and then to Mansion House. [117] On 30 June 1900, the Middle Circle service was withdrawn between Earl's Court and Mansion House. [118] On 31 December 1908 the Outer Circle service was also withdrawn. [119]The Ballarat - Ararat section of the line was closed from 1994 until 10 July 2004, when it was reopened for a twice-daily service as part of the Linking Victoria Project. Services now run 5 times per day. Victoria Station, eastern side (the former London, Chatham and Dover Railway Station frontage), c. 1908-1910

Though these Victorian urban railways in London are now long forgotten, in a very real sense they still live on. The start of Thameslink services in 1988 was nothing more than a new use for the City Widened Lines and a reopening of the disused Snow Hill Tunnel, while the Elizabeth Lineis a project Victorian railway builders would have well understood and applauded. a b "Rail and Underground Panel - Victoria Station Upgrade" (PDF). Transport for London. 16 October 2015 . Retrieved 23 July 2021.Brunel had a copy of the book — the early plates are the first to be printed in colour in Britain. The Railway Station, by William Powell Frith (1819-1909) depicts a crowded arrival platform at Paddington in 1862 — the painting is justly famous for depicting the many layers of Victorian society. Frith’s depiction of the station and one of Gooch’s splendid 4-2-2 locomotives is commendably accurate. (In 1953 Sergei Kadleigh (d.1972) put forward detailed proposals for a high rise scheme — a “town of eight thousand people” to be built over the goods yard adjoining Paddington Station. “High Paddington” was a megalomaniac scheme, inspired no doubt by Le Corbusier’s Ville radieuse. It would have dominated West London.) New Street Station, Birmingham (1854) designed by Edward Alfred Cowper (1819-93) Victoria was built to serve both the Brighton and Chatham Main Lines, and has always had a "split" feel of being two separate stations. The Brighton station opened in 1860 with the Chatham station following two years later. It replaced a temporary terminus at Pimlico, and construction involved building the Grosvenor Bridge over the River Thames. It became immediately popular as a London terminus, causing delays and requiring upgrades and rebuilding. It was well known for luxury Pullman train services and continental boat-train trips, and became a focal point for soldiers during World War I. GCSE Schools History Project thematic studies offered by Edexcel, & OCR based on Crime & Punishment. How old is the Circle line?". The Daily Telegraph. London. 6 October 2016. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022 . Retrieved 19 August 2017.