Early Railway Research Articles

Examples of transport policy formulations: Japanese institutions and organisations from ancient times to the present

This descriptive and interpretative paper illustrates Japanese institutions and organisations that are related to transport at different points of time, and what specific internal and external innovations in transport technology or policy processes were introduced. The New Institutional Economics defines institutions as the “rules of the game” that consist of both the formal legal rules and the informal social norms that govern individual behaviour and give structure and meaning to social interactions of institutions and organisations. The research methodology includes site visits and interviews, and the interpretation of historical literature in English and in Japanese. People are the driving force behind policy and research events and this is illustrated with seven Japanese case studies: administrative practices in the ancient port of Naniwa; canals constructed by merchants in 17th Century Osaka; early railways and the 1964 bullet train (shinkansen) and the Chuo Maglev railway under construction early 20th Century aviation, autonomous driving vehicles under development, and research into private financing initiatives (PFI). An understanding of the history of change, and the dominant actors involved, is essential when analysing current institutional and organisational arrangements and how they may change under internal or external pressures, as illustrated by the future Japan Society 5.0 and the transformation to “agile governance” and what this means for transport policy development.

Concessionary Contracts, Dividend Policy and Equity Depletion: The Accounting for Public Aids in Early Railway Companies

We study dividend payments and earnings management in railway companies in the first decades of the 20th century. We argue that the historical organization of the Spanish railway industry as a complex net of 99-year concessionary contracts created predictable incentives for earnings management and rent extraction. The countdown to concessions reversals pressured the State, as residual owner, to subsidize the industry during the 1920s. The State granted two types of public aids to railway companies: to finance increases in wages, and to modernize railway material and infrastructure. We provide novel evidence on the regulation of these aids, their accounting, and their association with dividend payments. Overall, our evidence suggests that despite efforts from the State to establish maximum levels or earnings to report and of ‘permitted’ dividends, the looming reversal of concessionary contracts gave rise to a principal-principal agency conflict that resulted in maximum dividends and equity depletion.

The Permanent Way of the 1805 Congleton Railway: New Evidence from Fieldwork

ABSTRACTThe Congleton Railway was opened in 1805, traversing the Staffordshire/Cheshire border. Fieldwork carried out on the route in 2018 resulted in the discovery of numerous components of its early cast-iron trackwork, allowing the construction of this short colliery railway to be understood in significantly more depth than has previously been possible. Examples of two types of cast-iron rail, two types of supporting saddle, stone sleepers, track spikes and wagon wheels are described. The Congleton trackwork was based upon that used on the 1801 Penrhyn Quarry Railway, and gives an insight into some of the weaknesses of that design. Documentary research has also been undertaken, which helps to place these artefacts in context. With some notable exceptions, the permanent way utilised on early railways has seen little detailed analysis, yet the importance of recording this artefactual evidence has recently been emphasised in a report for Historic England.

Use of Large Format Photographs on the Research of Early Railways in Japan

Use of Large Format Photographs on the Research of Early Railways in Japan

Dionysius Lardner, the Denigrated Sage of Early Railways

Dionysius Lardner has a very poor reputation in the railway history literature. In most other fields he also tends to be remembered either for a few of his occasionally spectacular mistakes or at most as a minor science and technology popularizer. He has not received proper credit for his striking 1846 survey of the railway industry, Railways at home and abroad. Published at the peak of the Railway Mania, it provided an excellent overview of that rapidly developing industry. Further, although in an inconspicuous way, it punctured several important misconceptions that motivated investors. Had proper heed been paid to Lardner's warnings, much of the investment disaster of the Mania could have been averted. This episode of financial exuberance can be shown to have been doomed to fail, and among contemporary observers Lardner provided the most convincing and comprehensive arguments to demonstrate this. However, little attention was paid to his warnings. This episode provides another illustration of the difficulty in persuading the public as well as policy makers that a dangerous bubble is in progress and bound to fail.

Re-analyse the Early Stage American Railway Investment System from the Land Use and Privatization Double-guided Perspective: the Drawbacks and warnings

Abstract The Chinese railway infrastructure investment has come to a new developing phase with the feature of privatization and land double-oriented. Most domestic literatures recommend the experiences of the “private investment & land grant” model of American railway investment system. However, the growth trajectory of private capital and land system in china are considerably different from that of the United States. The paper reveals the role of the various stakeholders in the railway development, re-analyzing the drawbacks of American railroads development model and proposing the warnings to policy options of the current and future Chinese Railway development.

Early Railway Suburbs and Their Links to Contemporary Transit-Oriented Developments

Since the late 1980’s, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has emerged as a sustainable interpretation of neotraditional community design that promised to address a myriad of spatial planning issues. Being first introduced in North America, the concept highlighted the importance of integrating land use and transport systems with the aim of decreasing automobile dependency. Although, urban planners and transportation scholars have raised TOD’s profile in practice, the origins of this concept go back much further. There are some remarkable examples of large-scale real estate developments across North America, established on properties owned by transit companies, with the aim of generating revenue for the transit company and the government. One of the most successful Canadian examples of this type of development is the Town of Mount Royal located in Montreal. This suburban development, which emerged at the dawn of the twentieth century, predates, by almost a century, the contemporary concept of TOD. This paper looks at this development comprehensively and discusses the lessons learned from it. Additionally, using several recent Canadian TODs the study compares old and new developments and challenges faced within their design and operation process. By evaluating the first generation of transit-oriented development, the paper is meant to serve as a guideline for further work that seek to define the origins of TOD and propose standards of practice for the next generation of projects.

Susan Major, Early Victorian Railway Excursions: The Million Go Forth

Susan Major, <i>Early Victorian Railway Excursions: The Million Go Forth</i>

L’histoire oubliée des modèles de gravité et l’inefficience des premiers réseaux de chemin de fers

The routes of early railways around the world were generally inefficient because of the incorrect assumption that long distance travel between major cities would dominate. Modern planners rely on methods such as the “gravity models of spatial interaction,” which show quantitatively the importance of accommodating travel demands between smaller cities. Such models were not used in the 19th century. This paper shows that gravity models were discovered in 1846, a dozen years earlier than had been known previously. That discovery was published during the great Railway Mania in Britain. Had the validity and value of gravity models been recognized properly, the investment losses of that gigantic bubble could have been lessened, and more efficient rail systems in Britain and many other countries would have been built. This incident shows society’s early encounter with the “Big Data” of the day and the slow diffusion of economically significant information. The results of this study suggest that it will be increasingly feasible to use modern network science to analyze information dissemination in the 19th century. That might assist in understanding the diffusion of technologies and the origins of bubbles.

The Forgotten Discovery of Gravity Models and the Inefficiency of Early Railway Networks

The routes of early railways around the world were generally inefficient because the prevailing doctrine of the time called for concentrating on provision of fast service between major cities and neglect of local traffic. Modern planners rely on methods such as the models of spatial interaction, which show the costs of such faulty assumptions. Such models were not used in the 19th century.The first formulation of gravity models is usually attributed to Henry Carey in 1858. This paper shows that a Belgian civil engineer, Henri-Guillaume Desart, discovered them earlier, in 1846, based on the study of a unique and extensive data set on passenger travel in his country. His work was published during the great Railway Mania in Britain. Had the validity and value of this contribution been recognized properly, the investment losses of that gigantic bubble could have been lessened, and more efficient rail systems in Britain and many other countries would almost surely have been built. This incident shows society's early encounter with the Big Data of the day and the slow diffusion of economically significant information. The methods used in the study point to ways to apply methods of modern network science to analyze information dissemination in the 19th century.

Early Railway Chemistry and Its Legacy by Colin A. Russell and John A. Hudson (review)

Reviewed by: Early Railway Chemistry and Its Legacy by Colin A. Russell and John A. Hudson David Knight (bio) Early Railway Chemistry and Its Legacy. By Colin A. Russell and John A. Hudson. Cambridge, UK: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2012. Pp. xiv+208. $48 Chemists and chemistry do not strike most of us as immediately relevant to the development of railways, but these authors make a good case for revising that judgment. Colin Russell, who sadly has just died, and John Hudson are highly respected historians of chemical theory and practice, au fait with technical practices and the rise of the industrial chemist, with the history of technical education, and with the records of chemical societies both learned and professional. They bring this expertise to their investigation [End Page 978] of railways in Britain, vindicating their belief in the ubiquity of chemistry—a science often overlooked as unglamorous. Chemists could help with crucial questions about metals, for the tracks and the locomotives; appropriate lubricants; water and the avoidance of deposits in boilers; timber preservatives, as wooden sleepers became the norm; and with fuel, minimizing smoke, ash, and clinker. As the first railways grew into a system from the 1830s, chemists, including Michael Faraday and John Davy, were called upon as consultant analysts when needed for advice and troubleshooting. In 1864, the first laboratory to undertake analyses as a matter of control was set up, and the “railway chemist,” a salaried employee, was born. From their chemists at Crewe, York, Derby, and then at Swindon (the largest), the big railway companies expected advice on a steadily widening series of issues. Major innovations at that point were the coming of cheap steel produced by Henry Bessemer’s process for use in place of wrought iron for the rails, and of photography for recording broken rails and such things, but also new kinds of rolling stock, steel bridges, large new stations, and seaside destinations. The chemists analyzed fuel (for lamps, as well as engines), lubricants, water, preservatives, and paints, primarily for quality control, and were also concerned with checking air quality in tunnels, about which there was public anxiety. Chemists also advised about the transport of dangerous loads, such as explosives and petroleum. As railway towns mushroomed around companies’ headquarters and workshops and stations acquired refreshment rooms, railway chemists were involved in analyzing drinking water and became adept in bacteriological, as well as chemical examinations. Soon, like the engineers at the great workshops, the chemists became involved in research, as well as carrying out and improving routine analyses. Various recipes for lubricants had been worked out, using vegetable and animal oils and fats, but these proved unstable at high temperatures, and as superheating in locomotives came in, petroleum lubricants became more important. Work was also required on metals, where an outbreak of failures in copper fireboxes proved to be due to the extreme purity demanded of commercial copper in the 1880s by the novel electrical industry, making it too soft. This problem led to research in metallurgy and to the addition of arsenic to copper for locomotives. The different companies gradually established standards for materials and even for laboratories generally, introducing “normal” solutions of acids and alkalis. Railways got together to introduce an increasingly complicated taxonomy for freight, puzzling to outsiders; their chemists helped with that taxonomy and investigated claims (sometimes fraudulent) for cargo damaged in transit. By the last years of the nineteenth century, chemists were playing their part in railway research on broader issues; and although their different companies were competing on some routes, they were getting together regularly for discussions. This continued when Britain’s railways were “grouped” into [End Page 979] four in 1923, and then nationalized in 1948. The railway chemist was a recognized expert, a member of a small professional group. Although nowadays no chemists are directly employed on the railways, the authors end on an upbeat note about their continuing legacy. The book is accessible, based on primary sources published and archival, and fully annotated. It is aimed at chemists and assumes some familiarity with the science, but no special knowledge of its history. Nevertheless, it shines a light into a previously dark corner and will...

Illustrating the Accident: Railways and the Catastrophic Picturesque in The Illustrated London News

Illustrating the Accident: Railways and the Catastrophic Picturesque in The Illustrated London News Paul Fyfe (bio) In his frontispiece to The History and Description of the Great Western Railway (1846), John Cooke Bourne depicts a steam railway engine emerging from the well-sculpted mouth of a tunnel (figure 1). Intentionally left unfinished and ornamented with planted ivy, this tunnel had been styled as a gothic gateway by the hero-engineer of the Great Western, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.1 The ivy made the structure look aged and integrated with its green surroundings. Bourne tried for similar effects in his lithographs, blending the marvel of industrial engineering with the charm of natural disarray. His frontispiece—with its contrasts of light and dark, its chiseled stonework and weathered mountain blocks, and its central cloud of the engine’s steam—is a classic example of the “industrial picturesque.” Beginning in the late eighteenth century, artists adapted the picturesque to represent industrial sites, including collieries, factories, and railways. As an aesthetic category, the picturesque emphasized landscape irregularities, which, in the hands of artists like Bourne, could be made to accommodate industrial forms newly present on the landscape as well as in Britain’s social consciousness. Art historians and cultural critics have shown how the industrial picturesque reimagines the political, material, and ideological disruptions of industry in terms of pictorial harmony. As a contemporary review noted, Bourne’s prints aim to “gratify both the lover of the picturesque and the man of science: the former, by variety of lines and combinations; and the latter, by different modes of application of machinery, mechanism, and manual labor.”2 These images harmoniously integrated the railway into its natural surroundings to convey the tranquility of the picturesque. Bourne’s work was commissioned by the Great Western as part of a campaign to assuage public anxiety about the early railway and to directly [End Page 61] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. J. C. Bourne, frontispiece to The History and Description of the Great Western Railway (London: David Bogue, 1846). counter representations of the railway’s dangers in the press. According to F. D. Klingender, the press featured a “flow of caricatures . . . designed deliberately to shake confidence by introducing the public to a feast of explosions and sudden death.”3 Picturesque railway prints, often commissioned during the construction of new lines and available for sale soon afterwards, focused on the railway’s most placid moments and idealized visual features. It is ironic, then, that the picturesque would also eventually be used in press coverage of the railway’s most sensational disasters, portraying the very dangers that railway companies hoped to downplay. A wood engraving for the Illustrated London News report “Damage to the South Devon Railway, Near Dawlish” (1855) draws its pictorial elements directly from the tradition of the industrial picturesque (figure 2). It is one [End Page 62] of many such images published in the Victorian illustrated newspapers that developed alongside the railway and capitalized on its spectacular disasters. The stylistic coincidences are uncanny, revealing how the Illustrated London News redeployed the pictorial conventions of eighteenth-century aesthetics to illustrate accident reportage. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. “Damage to the South Devon Railway, Near Dawlish,” Illustrated London News, March 3, 1855, 196. This essay argues that the aesthetic category of the industrial picturesque was paradoxically reinvigorated in depictions of industrial catastrophe, especially those circulated by illustrated newspapers. The picturesque aesthetic provides one of the more curious linkages between the railway and popular illustrated journalism.4 It proves particularly useful for studying the material production and the developing ideological concerns of the Illustrated London News. Between 1850 and 1890, the Illustrated London News published numerous illustrations of railway accidents in this style that disclosed the newspaper’s complex attitudes towards industrial modernity and its unique uses of the wood-engraved medium. These illustrations do not simply rehearse the industrial picturesque; they create a different category, a hybrid of picturesque repose and industrial rupture that I call the “catastrophic picturesque.” The catastrophic picturesque shows the Illustrated London News engaged in covering up the disturbances of [End Page 63] industrial modernity with an aesthetic that paradoxically...

The early railways of North East England and their heritage today

The early railways of North East England and their heritage today

In This Issue [Abstracts

Fabrizio Nevola considers the form, function, and significance of shops and the other commercial spaces contained in the ground floors of the Renaissance palaces of Siena, Florence, and Rome. Home Shopping: Urbanism, Commerce, and Palace Design in Renaissance Italy also investigates the social interaction between the private environment of the home and the public space of the street. Contrary to much that has been written about the palaces of the fifteenth century, their designers did not abandon botteghe (shops), nor more broadly construed commercial functions. The resulting buildings are hybrid structures in which the proud individual façades of private patrons' palaces were configured to serve the needs of trade. Today, urban space is largely experienced as a succession of shop fronts, and commercial activities overwhelm all other functions. Early modern Italy was not much different.Entering the architectural dialogue in 1830, the term néo-grec came to characterize the stylistic movement represented by Henri Labrouste's Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, but the meaning of the term was always elusive. Josephine Grieder analyzes the confusing record of remarks by architects and the subsequent commentary by scholars and historians, noting the difficulty of aligning the terminology with visible architectural phenomena. The Search for the Néo-Grec in Second Empire Paris turns to contemporary books and journals for testimony about the visual characteristics of the style and traces the subtle shift in its meaning as néo-grec became inextricably linked with the urban transformation effected by Napoleon III and Haussmann.Focusing on three nineteenth-century railroad lines in Norway, Mari Hvattum investigates the architectural and cultural significance of early railways. In Panoramas of Style: Railway Architecture in Nineteenth-century Norway, she argues that the seemingly frivolous historicism of mid-nineteenth-century railway architecture should be understood as an attempt to craft appropriate cultural associations for the new Norwegian nation state. Railway architects created an architecture that fused the local and the global, the modern and the traditional, into a new whole. They designed buildings with a mimetic and emblematic relationship to their surroundings, construing the railway journey as—to paraphrase the cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch—a “panorama of style.”The Spatial Practices of Privilege focuses on the children's cottage that stands on the grounds of the Breakers, in Newport, Rhode Island. Designed by Peabody and Stearns in 1886, the cottage was the first of several changes Cornelius Vanderbilt made to the property after he purchased it in 1885. While the main house (designed by Richard Morris Hunt after the first Breakers burned in 1892) has long been interpreted as the architectural reflection of the Vanderbilts' class status, the cottage has been ignored. Bringing together the methodologies of cultural landscape studies, performance theory, and the history of childhood, Abigail A. Van Slyck argues that the estate played an active role in establishing, maintaining, and enhancing the family's class status, and that children—and their spatial management—were integral to the process. In its form and content, the cottage evoked middle-class domesticity, but did so in the service of an upper-class identity that sought to distinguish itself from the middle class. Ostensibly a site of play, it was also a place of work, both for the Vanderbilts' servants as well as for the Vanderbilt offspring. Modeled on an almshouse and devoted to the homely skills of cooking and sewing, the building made claims to humbleness that were refuted by its size, expense, and its spatial arrangements that supported the Vanderbilt children and their parents in the performance of their privileged status.

Panoramas of Style

Focusing on three nineteenth-century railroad lines in Norway, Mari Hvattum investigates the architectural and cultural significance of early railways. In Panoramas of Style: Railway Architecture in Nineteenth-century Norway, she argues that the seemingly frivolous historicism of mid-nineteenth-century railway architecture should be understood as an attempt to craft appropriate cultural associations for the new Norwegian nation state. Railway architects created an architecture that fused the local and the global, the modern and the traditional, into a new whole. They designed buildings with a mimetic and emblematic relationship to their surroundings, construing the railway journey as—to paraphrase the cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch—a “panorama of style.”

Excavation on the Brunton and Shields Railway at Weetslade, North Tyneside

Excavation and recording of a section of the Brunton and Shields Railway, near Wideopen, North Tyneside, has revealed remains of two phases of trackbed, both dating to the first half of the 19th century. The original 1826 line, which was horse-drawn, lay in a cutting over 1m deep. The line was relaid in 1839 for the introduction of a locomotive. Clear evidence was found for the construction method of both the 1826 and 1839 tracks, although no sleepers or rails were found in situ.The excavation has shown that, despite continual use of the line for over 150 years, signifi cant remains survived of the earlier trackbeds, the depth of the cutting being the principal factor in their preservation. The excavation is one of comparatively few investigations of an early railway to examine a single section of line in detail. The remains uncovered date from the era of iron rails and stone sleepers, which distinguishes it from other published excavations from the north-east, where earlier wooden waggonways were revealed. The work demonstrates the wider potential for early railway remains to lie beneath later lines, even those in recent use, and emphasises the need to examine the routes of early lines archaeologically.

Land Acquisition for the Railways in Bengal, 1850–62

This article on the acquisition of land for the railways in Bengal, during the most formative phase of their construction in India, rejects the dominant notion of the trouble-free transfer of land. It examines the legal and social issues involved in acquiring land for public works. Based on the analysis of cases of both the individual and the village based reactions, the article suggests that the opposition to the land acquisition drive for early railways in Bengal had been both location and class specific. The intensity of the opposition sometimes forced the government of the East India Company to change the original route map of the railways. The people, Indian and European alike, were opposed mainly to the government’s policy of undervaluation of land and the uniform rate of compensation. In the post-1857 period, the speedy extension of the railways became a priority for the new government. Nevertheless, far from hardening its stand on land acquisition, British government adopted a conciliatory and more sensitive attitude to this contentious issue. The realignment of railroad, exclusion of sacred sites, location specific valuation of land and the policy of liberal compensation, discussed in this study, are all important evidence of this flexibility.

This Time Is Different: An Example of a Giant, Wildly Speculative, and Successful Investment Mania

Abstract The literature on manias and bubbles is dominated by spectacular collapses and the question of whether they could have been foreseen. What is not widely known, though, is that there was at least one giant and wildly speculative investment episode that was successful in that it produced above-market profits for original investors. The British railway mania of the 1830s involved real capital investment comparable, as a fraction of GDP, to about $2 trillion for the U.S. today. It faced withering skepticism and criticism, much of it very reasonable, as its supposedly rosy prospects were based on extrapolation from the brief experience of just a couple of successful early railways. Yet by the mid-1840s, it was seen as a success.The example of the railway mania of the 1830s serves as a useful antidote to claims that bubbles are easy to detect or that all large and quick jumps in asset valuations are irrational. This episode also suggests the need to reexamine much of the work on business cycles and the diffusion of technologies. The standard literature in this area, starting from Juglar and continuing through Schumpeter to more recent authors, almost uniformly ignores large investment mania, whose nature does not fit the stereotypical pattern.

This Time is Different: An Example of a Giant, Wildly Speculative, and Successful Investment Mania

The collapse of an investment mania usually reminds people that the phrase time is different is dangerous. Recollections of this mantra then typically either state outright or at least imply that is never different. However, there is at least one counterexample to this cautious view, a giant and wildly speculative investment episode that was successful. The British railway mania of the 1830s involved real capital investment comparable, as a fraction of GDP, to about $2 trillion for the U.S. today. It faced withering skepticism and criticism, much of it very reasonable, as its supposedly rosy prospects were based on extrapolation from the brief experience of just a couple of successful early railways. Yet by the mid-1840s, it was seen as a great investment success.The example of the railway mania of the 1830s serves as a useful antidote to claims that bubbles are easy to detect or that all large and quick jumps in asset valuations are irrational. This episode also suggests the need to reexamine much of the work on business cycles and diffusion of technologies. The standard literature in this area, starting from Juglar, and continuing through Schumpeter to more recent authors, almost uniformly ignores that large investment mania, whose nature does not fit the stereotypical pattern.

Uncovering and Understanding Australia’s First Railway

In 1831 the Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) began operations of its fi rst coal mine in Newcastle to serve the growing colony of New South Wales (NSW). It honoured an agreement (and contract of 1824) to take over the sourcing of coal from the NSW Government, which since 1801 had been carried out ineffi ciently using convict labour under supervision of the military. The mine was developed on “The Hill” overlooking Newcastle’s Harbour and was connected to a staith (coal loader) on the wharf by a railway. With an offi cial opening date of 10 December 1831, the railway can rightly claim to be Australia’s fi rst. However, for many years little was known about the design, history or archaeology of this railway to give this claim substance and credibility. This paper will fi rst explain the historical background to the AACo’s coal mine and railway based on evidence unavailable until recently. This evidence includes sketches of the mine and accounts from the AACo’s records. It suggests that AACo carefully designed and resourced its fi rst mines with technology of the time that was developed for mines in the northeast of England. In a second part, this paper will describe recent archaeological evidence and research that shows that the design of the mine and the supply of equipment for the railway was of a high standard for that time (c. 1826). The opportunity to do this follows a very fortuitous uncovering of an iron relic from the early AACo mines by local historian and co-author, David Campbell. Recent research of early rail line technology has provided an understanding of this relic and its historic provenance. International inquiries have led to the discovery that the railway line may be contemporary in design and supply with some of the very early English railways. Railway historians in the UK are also surprised that a rare, cast iron “fi sh-belly” rail section, similar to that used on their famous Stockton to Darlington Railway of 1825, could be found from a railway in Australia.