Victorian Trains

Hell on wheels: Think your commute is a nightmare? It's luxury compared to Britain's first train journeys - when passengers froze to death and got set alight by cinders.... And as for the loos, don't even ask!
•Hazards of Victorian trains revealed in new book, 'The Railways: Nation, Network And People'
•Simon Bradley tells of how commuters clothes were set on fire in open-top carriages
•There were strict class divides and some companies would dump soot in third class carriages
•But the well-off could buy an 'Aristocrat' basket which came with choice of a pint of claret or half a pint of sherry

From risking hypothermia in open-top carriages to sparks setting clothes on fire, not to mention steam engines blowing up and overworked drivers falling asleep on the job, being a passenger on the Victorian railways was a very risky business, as writer SIMON BRADLEY reveals in a fascinating new book.

Here, he uncovers how travellers suffered - and why then, as now, there were always complaints about the food...

OPEN-TOP MISERY

Travelling by train in the 1830s and 1840s? The chances are you'd be sitting on a bench in a low-sided wooden wagon with no roof — exposed to strong winds and stinging rain. Ferocious air currents would whip around your ankles — from holes bored into the floor to let rainwater escape. And if your carriage didn't have these holes, your feet could end up in two inches of water — as recorded on the Great Western in 1844.

Hypothermia was another hazard. In 1845, a wire worker named Jonathan John fell down dead just outside Bath station, after enduring a third-class journey in an open-sided carriage.

His travelling outfit of two pairs of trousers, two waistcoats, two overcoats and a woollen neckerchief had not been enough to protect him.



REMEMBER TO DUCK!

After most carriages became enclosed, many railway companies required guards to travel on the roof. From this perilous vantage point, they could observe signals along the track and keep an eye on the luggage – strapped to carriage roofs until the late 1860s.

One early fatality was a guard called David Dent. In July 1838, he was fixing a flapping luggage tarpaulin when his head struck a bridge, knocking him off. Another train then ran him over.

Watching the luggage wasn't a guard's only dangerous duty. Many also had to check tickets by walking along the outside of the moving train and sticking their heads through the windows — there were no corridors. A few lost their footing and fell under the wheels.

CLASS DIVIDES

Victorian travellers could choose from three classes — yet in a century when class divisions were strictly observed, some well-off passengers opted to travel third class. For the sake of paying less, they were happy to sit with people they regarded as inferiors.

This infuriated the railway companies. The Manchester & Leeds paid sweeps to dump soot in some of its own third-class carriages, to teach a lesson to better-off economisers. And the Liverpool & Manchester tried to do away with third class altogether — on the grounds that too many of its second-class passengers would defect to it.

Third-class carriages didn't disappear until 1956, when they were simply re-designated as second class. In 1987, there was another name change to 'standard class.'

CATCHING FIRE

Some aristocratic travellers preferred to keep their distance from common people. Accordingly, they'd have their grand road coaches loaded onto flat wagons — known as carriage trucks — then perch inside for the entire journey. Their horses, meanwhile, went into special horseboxes.

These private coaches made up a surprisingly large proportion of passenger business; an 1845 diary records that a London-to-Birmingham train contained nine or ten horseboxes and sufficient flat wagons to carry 11 or 12 gentlemen's coaches.

The swaying motion of the coaches proved too much for the stomachs of some. Others were troubled by dust, grime and hot cinders.

On a train journey from Leeds to London in 1847, sparks from the engine exhaust set fire to an umbrella on the outside of the Countess of Zetland's private coach. The flames soon spread to a trunk on the roof.

Shortly after the train left Leicester, the Countess and her maid suddenly became aware of smoke. As the fire took hold, they climbed out on to the open truck. 'We clung on by the front springs of the carriage, screaming 'fire' incessantly, and waving our handkerchiefs,' the Countess recalled.

'A gentleman in the carriage behind mine saw us, but could render no assistance. My maid seemed in an agony of terror … I turned away for a moment to wave my handkerchief, and when I looked round again my poor maid was gone. The train went on, the fire of course increasing, and the wind blowing it towards me.'

Relief came only when the train stopped at Rugby. Sadly, an engine sent back to look for the maid accidentally ran her over.

TIME TROUBLES

For the first half of the 19th century, time was a local matter. East Anglian clocks were several minutes ahead of London's, while those of the West Country and Wales were quite a few minutes behind. In Plymouth, the time on local clocks was a whole 20 minutes behind that of London.

The only people much bothered by this were the guards of horse-drawn mail coaches, who had to keep adjusting their pocket watches.

Then came the railways, and various private companies soon realised it was best to stick to one standard time — known to everyone as 'railway time.' But a different local time persisted in towns and cities.

By the late 1840s, pressure started to build for the whole country to adopt a standard time. Some, like Exeter council, voted to abandon local time, but the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral refused to make the change.

So the Exeter cathedral clock, which by tradition set the time for the whole city, remained stubbornly out of synch with the station clock.

In 1880, the government finally made 'railway time' legally binding for all.



For the first half of the 19th century, time was a local matter... East Anglian clocks were several minutes ahead of London's, while those of the West Country and Wales were quite a few minutes behind.

IN THE DARK AGES

For decades, trains were lit by lamps burning oil that came from an upper reservoir in the carriage roof — a terrific fire risk if the wooden carriages piled up in a crash.

These lamps often needed to be removed for wick-trimming and cleaning, leaving a gaping hole in the roof of the carriage. The wise passenger would deploy his umbrella.

Even when an oil lamp was working, it provided such a dim light that no one could read by it. This led to the invention of the 'railway reading lamp' with candles. They came with hooks to attach to the upholstery.

The first gas-lit carriage lamps were installed in 1862. Queen Victoria, however, found them too bright and demanded they be ripped out of her carriage. Later, when electric reading lights were installed, she shunned them in favour of candles.

GETTING COLD FEET

In winter, Victorian train passengers froze in wooden train carriages that let in draughts. Many happily paid sixpence to rent a 'railway rug' from WH Smith. The Railway Traveller's Handy Book advised passengers to bring a bespoke cap 'made to fit the head, and with lappets to draw over the ears', as with Sherlock Holmes's deerstalker hats.

More promisingly, in 1852, the Great Northern Railway introduced a new invention: a flat tin or iron box about 2ft long, with handles at both ends, filled with hot water and known as a footwarmer.

Unfortunately, footwarmers didn't retain heat for long. As Punch lamented: 'Alas! thou art a faithless friend / Thy warmth was but dissimulation / Thy tepid glow is at an end / And I am nowhere near my station!'

On longer journeys, passengers would sometimes be issued with a fresh footwarmer at stops along the way, or have the old one recharged. Smart work was required by the porters on icy platforms to re-equip an entire train with footwarmers before it set off again.

Cannier passengers made a point of sitting in the part of the train that drew up closest to the footwarmer cart on the platform.

HAT TRICKS

Gentlemen's hats reached their greatest height in the 1840s–60s. Too tall to keep on in a carriage, they were also too bulky to keep on your lap.

The solution adopted in many carriages was to stretch taut cords across the ceiling, either parallel to each other or criss-crossing at right angles, from which stovepipe hats could be suspended upside-down by the brim.

Thus, in each first-class compartment of 1862, there'd be up to six inverted black hats, juddering and quivering overhead with the motion of the train.



Gentlemen's hats reached their greatest height in the 1840s–60s... Too tall to keep on in a carriage, they were also too bulky to keep on your lap.

CURSED BY BAD TEA

Most long-distance trains had refreshment stops — a fixed interval when passengers could hop out at a station to eat and drink.

The refreshment rooms were often very grand. At Swindon station, for example, the first-class rooms had columns and pilasters in imitation marble, a ceiling of ornate plasterwork and walls painted in the manner of Italian Renaissance palaces.

Whether the fare on offer was up to scratch is debatable. Long before the 20th century, passengers were grumbling about railway tea and curling sandwiches.

'Railway tea is liquid nausea, whether you get it in the [second-class] room or are served with it in the first-class room out of a silver urn,' moaned The Sheffield Daily Telegraph in 1865. 'And railway coffee is (except at King's Cross, where it is really good) made with a slight suspicion of coffee, just as if a coffee berry had bathed in it early in the day.'

For the novelist Anthony Trollope, the railway sandwich was 'that whited sepulchre, fair enough outside, but so meagre, poor, and spiritless within, such a thing of shreds and parings, such a dab of food, telling us that the poor bone whence it was scraped had been made utterly bare before it was sent into the kitchen for the soup pot.'

DRUNK ON SHERRY

If you felt peckish on a long journey, you could buy a 'luncheon basket'. For the well-off, the London & North Western Railway offered the 'Aristocrat' basket (five shillings) with the choice of a pint of claret or half a pint of sherry — enough to get you tolerably drunk. The 'Democrat' version (two shillings and sixpence) contained a bottle of ale or stout.

The first hot meals in baskets started being sold in 1884 by the Midland Railway. Orders had to be telegraphed ahead of a train's arrival, and boys were employed to call out passengers' names on the platform.

The basket trade didn't start declining until 1906, with the introduction of dining cars.

For those who could afford a sit-down luncheon costing two shillings and sixpence, the London & South Western offered four courses: consomme fermiere puree parmentier, boiled turbot in sauce cardinal, roast sirloin with sprouts and potatoes, and apple tart with Devonshire cream.

IF YOU'VE GOT TO GO

The vast majority of Victorian trains had no loos. In 1852, however, an enterprising company introduced 'travelling conveniences' — contraptions made of rubber that could be strapped to your leg.

Otherwise, women would often bring along a round basket containing a chamber-pot — and then sit in a women-only compartment. As for male passengers, they were known to improvise at open carriage windows, especially at night.

FATAL FLAWS

Death on the Victorian railways came in many terrifying forms. Trains ran into one another, especially before effective signalling existed to keep a safe interval between them. Some plummeted down inclines when their brakes or couplings failed.

Others were derailed by collisions with landslips, fallen objects, stray wagons or livestock, or as a result of a hundred different defects in locomotives, carriages or track. A few flew off the rails because they were going too fast, and locomotive boilers sometimes exploded like bombs.

In the space of just one fortnight in 1861, 21 died in a pile-up in Clayton tunnel, just outside Brighton, and 17 were killed in a collision at Kentish Town in London.

Altogether, 70 passengers were killed that year — 38 in collisions, four in derailments, four because of axle failures or similar mishaps and 18 as they got on or off moving trains. On top of that 71 members of the public were fatally cut down by trains — 17 of them on level crossings.

Railway accidents were so frequent that The Times bundled five of them together on September 27, 1873, under the blase heading: 'Friday's railway accidents'.

The Railway Traveller's Handy Book advised passengers to try to sit opposite an empty, well-upholstered first-class seat — claiming it might cushion them in the event of a collision.

Hard, sharp-brimmed hats should be avoided, it cautioned, because they'd been known to inflict 'severe and fatal wounds' on their wearers.

THE LOST BRIDGE

On a stormy night in December 1879, an entire train disappeared in the Firth of Forth. It was last seen approaching the Tay Bridge, designed by Sir Thomas Bouch and built the year before.

The loss was as complete as if a ship had foundered in mid-ocean, and had something of the impact of the Titanic disaster 33 years later.

Nobody on the land had seen the bridge collapse, except for one or two who observed the puzzling descent of some lights out on the darkened water — possibly the lamps in the falling carriages.

Even the number of fatalities was uncertain, as children and railwaymen travelled free. Estimates ranged from 75 to 300 dead.

Tragically, Bouch's design had proved inadequate to resist the winter gales that roared through the Firth. Also, the bridge had been carelessly built.

ASLEEP ON THE JOB

Working on the railways was a particularly risky occupation. In the mid-1870s, around 700 employees were being killed every year.

Among train crews, the riskiest job was that of a goods guard in a shunting yard. In 1906, the annual death rate among them was 2.7 per 1,000. Signalmen and drivers also made fatal mistakes — sometimes because of their excessively long shifts.

In 1871, the House of Commons heard that nearly 40 drivers for the Midland Railway were working 20 hours at a time.

One passenger guard had started a 43-hour shift at 6.35pm on December 23. On Christmas Eve, he was found asleep, standing upright by his brake wheel. A porter was then assigned to travel with him and make sure he remained awake.

VICTORIA'S SECRET

Like many ordinary travellers, Queen Victoria never quite lost her mistrust of the railways, although she was the first monarch to use them on June 13, 1842 — travelling from Slough (then the nearest station for Windsor Castle) to Bishop's Bridge, Paddington. She was met by cheering crowds.

Although she took the train frequently — in her own royal saloon — she remained anxious about speed. Whenever she suspected a train was exceeding the general 40mph limit, she made her feelings forcefully known.

One of her letters to Prime Minister William Gladstone includes:

'The Queen must again bring most seriously & earnestly before Mr Gladstone & the Cabinet the vy (sic) alarming and serious state of the railways. Every day almost something occurs & every body trembles for their friends & for every one's life . . . There must be fewer trains — the speed must be lessened to enable them to be stopped easily in case of danger.'

A Royal Train might have a pilot engine running five minutes ahead to make sure there were no obstructions or sabotage of the track.

VANDALS AND YOBS

Victorian youths weren't any better behaved than their modern counterparts. In 1859, the London & South Western put on display a carriage with slashed seats — with a warning that all padding would be removed if this happened again.

Graffiti and scratching were also a recurring nuisance. In 1847, one letter writer complained that carriages on the London, Brighton & South Coast had been defaced in ways that made them 'totally unfit for a respectable modest female to enter'.

Another writer deplored the indecencies inscribed on carriage window panes by 'brainless fops who wear diamond rings'

Pilfering was rife. The Mid-Suffolk light railway found that the leather straps which raised its carriage windows tended to vanish for a new life as strops for sharpening cut-throat razors. Other companies suspected that the leather straps were being taken for boot repairs.

When the North Eastern Railway decided to favour its third-class windows with curtains in the 1880s, they were cut off and taken away.

Matters didn't improve after nationalisation.

W. Elgar Dickinson, a cleaner at the Leicester carriage sheds in 1953, had to contend with 'much uneaten or half-eaten food dumped down toilets, stuffed under seats, wiped on seats, flattened on table-tops, jammed in ashtrays, stamped into floors, flies buzzing with excitement around this bounty or drowning themselves ecstatically in pools of beer, lemonade and vomit.'

Light bulbs, he continued, had been taken out and trodden on for the pleasure of hearing them pop; soap, paper and hand-towels were stolen; ashtrays were unscrewed. On one occasion at Leicester, a washbowl and lavatory had gone missing.

By the late 1950s, a squad of 50 men was employed every Sunday in the Southern Region to patch up the destruction of the night before.

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