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Atlas of British Railway History, The by Michael Freeman & Derek Aldcroft w DJ
The Atlas of British Railway History by Michael Freeman and Derek Aldcroft Dust Jacket 1985 128 Pages
The justification for compiling an atlas of British railway history may appear obscure to some eyes. Naturally one can hide behind the familiar claim that nothing quite like it has been attempted before. The publication of new photographs further supports such an argument. However, it is not difficult to find reasons for an overtly geographical perspective. A fundamental characteristic of British railway development in the nineteenth century, for example, was the geographically fragmented nature of control. There was no real sense in which one could talk of a British railway system. Railway operation was divided between a multiplicity of independent companies, each with its distinctive territorial identity and each with its own way of doing things - from operations to architecture. Equally significant was the measure in which railways transformed the country's geography. Railways were great 'connectors', notionally drawing towns and cities together, and in total having the effect of shrinking the geographical size of the country: the substitution of machine for muscle transformed the frictional effect of distance on movement. Railways also had demonstrable impact upon the shape of cities and towns. Rail lines out of London became foci for the spreading tentacles of suburbia. In the centres of cities, railways came to be a prime determinant of the layout of streets and buildings, not to mention their own occupancy of vast areas of central land. A yet more simple geographical view lies in the record of the spread and contraction of Britain's railway system. Some parts of the country gained railway communication long before others.
Some benefited from being served by several different companies. The network maps in this book reveal an interesting symmetry in the sequence of openings and closures, the last lines opened often being the first to be closed, with the modern-day network showing an uncanny resemblance to that of 1850.
The economic significance of British railways, in particular their role as causal agents of Victorian economic growth, is the subject of some dispute amongst historians. But there can he no doubt of the railways forming a primary economic sector throughout the Victorian age, nor of their symbolic importance in society at large. It is conventional to see the railways as the force which bound region and province into nation. as the essential medium of cultural convergence. But this must not lead one to overlook the railways' function as validators of local resource wealth and, in consequence, as part creators of the regions of vigorous industrial expansion upon which the Victorian age so depended. Herein rests an important paradox, one that is very apparent in the pages that follow. It was partly for this reason that the amalgamation of companies reached a point of stalemate after 1870.
As the twentieth century draws to a close, it is increasingly likely that generations will grow up for whom railways are a specialised and geographically restricted means of inland transport. This volume reveals how once upon a time the railways were the supreme common carrier, their influence extending to almost every aspect of culture and economy.
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