The Liverpool and Manchester Railway
ANY doubts over Stephenson’s plan to use steam locomotives were crushed by the Rainhill Trials of 1829, when Robert’s Rocket trounced all rivals.* George had masterminded not just a railway, but a template for double-track, locomotive-hauled, standard gauge railways everywhere.*
The opening day, September 15th, 1830, was marred by tragedy. While the VIP train took on water near Newton-le-Willows, William Huskisson MP alighted to stretch his legs. He was chatting to the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, when shouts came, warning that Rocket was bearing down on the neighbouring track. Huskisson caught at a carriage door but it swung back, and he fell beneath Rocket’s wheels.
Nevertheless, the line exceeded all expectations, raking in profits of £71,000 in 1831,* and carrying almost half a million passengers, many of them to Newton Races.* Businessmen began to see the staggering potential of railways, spreading wealth and leisure through society as no well-meaning statesman or hot-headed reformer had ever done. A railway revolution was dawning.*
See our post The Rainhill Trials.
Stephenson had used a 4ft 8in gauge for his colliery railways in County Durham and Northumberland, dictated by the colliery wagons and the pit ponies that pulled them. The Liverpool and Manchester was the first railway to add an extra half inch to make today’s ‘standard gauge’, 4ft 8½in.
Measuring Worth would suggest that £71,000 in 1831 would be equivalent in terms of income to roughly £6m, or as much as £308m considered as economic power.
Newton-le-Willows racecourse closed in 1898, with racing moving to Haydock Park. The Old Newton Cup, a flat Handicap horse race over 1 mile 3 furlongs and 175 yards, is still held at Haydock every July.
The Railway Revolution, like the Industrial Revolution more generally, was not just a profound technological change. It also did everything political revolutions promise (and never deliver), by raising the standard of living, allowing more leisure, breaking down social barriers and class privilege, creating jobs and putting wealth and property ownership into the hands of common people. It did it all peacefully, and it was all paid for privately out of disposable income.