A Touch of Class Railways: The Making of a Nation

It's 1858 and thousands line the streets of Birmingham to catch

a glimpse of Queen Victoria.

It's the first time that a reigning British monarch

has ever officially visited the second city.

Victoria is unlike any other monarch in the history of the realm.

She's able to travel the country, see more of her kingdom,

and meet more of her subjects than any of her predecessors.

And this is entirely down to the railways.

The expanding transport network was at the heart of modern,

powerful Victorian Britain.

A Britain bursting with energy and confidence.

Railways were transforming virtually everything, from where we live

to how we work, from what we eat to how we spend our leisure time.

They also reflected Britain's deep class divisions, offering

different services for different people, based on status and wealth.

Yet, Victoria's visit was one example of how trains could

bring people together,

offering us a new shared sense of national identity and culture.

Until now, the wealthy and the poor had inhabited separate and

very distinct worlds.

But by levelling people's experience of travel, did the railways

spell the beginning of the end for Britain's rigid social hierarchies?

Birmingham New Street,

one of the busiest railway stations in the country. All life is here.

A swirling mix of ages, cultures, and social classes.

Hundreds of people pass through railway stations every day.

Each has a different story to tell.

Railways undoubtedly changed the country.

They gave us a great melting pot.

A more open, connected and democratic world, where

people from all walks of life can travel over long distances quickly.

But when passenger railways first appeared in the early 1830s,

it seemed that they would simply reinforce

a rigid social hierarchy where everyone knew their place.

Of course, at first, the trains were mainly for the well-to-do.

Nowadays, many of our old Victorian lines have become heritage railways.

There's the Great Central Railway in Leicestershire and in Shropshire and

Worcestershire, there's the Severn Valley Line, built in the mid 1800s.

As with many heritage lines, the rolling stock used are from

a variety of periods, but you can still get a sense of a bygone

age of steam, an age dominated by a clear class structure.

What were the carriages like in the early days?

Well, first class was nice upholstered seats and some

people even actually put their own carriages on.

Second class would have been all right.

Probably wooden seats, but still reasonably comfortable.

From the start, there were clear distinctions

between first and second class.

Writing later in the 1800s, the artist GD Leslie said that

second offered a livelier experience.

"I generally prefer going in the second class compartments,

"partly from motives of economy, but chiefly on account of the

"greater variety and interest to be found amongst the passengers.

"First class passengers appear to me to be too much impressed with

"their own greatness.

"Little or no conversation have they for strangers."

At first, railways catered mainly for the upper ranks of society.

Third class travel for the workers wasn't introduced until later

on in the 1830s.

The railways companies were not really interested in carrying

people who were not very well off.

They envisaged that the railway was for the upper classes,

for the growing number of middle classes,

but they didn't think that the labourers,

the working classes, would be able to afford to go on the railway,

but actually, there was a great demand from them and gradually,

they started to meet that demand.

Eventually, third class travel came into existence,

but if you're thinking it was probably just hard wooden seats,

a few more people in the carriages and no buffet car, think again.

There's no roof on this carriage,

it's exposed to the elements and you feel fairly unsafe.

The National Railway Museum in York is home to an 1834 Bodmin and

Wadebridge carriage. Believe it or not,

it was probably plusher than most third class carriages from the time.

Many were virtually the same as the wagons used for goods and animals.

With seemingly no profit to be made from poorer travellers,

there was no incentive to invest in their comfort.

Third class carriages were really nothing but simple freight

open top wagons intended to carry all sorts of random loads and

you might just put a few benches in them and put people in them.

But they were really pretty dangerous.

But despite the terrible conditions, the railways did at least create

opportunities for more people to travel, whatever their social class.

Third class passengers, remember in those days,

had probably never travelled anywhere before.

And if they did, it might have been, you know,

on top of a stagecoach, again open to the elements,

so they were prepared to put up with pretty basic conditions of

travel cos it enabled them to do journeys that, you know,

even before 1830 would just never been conceived of.

But not everyone was pleased about the newly mobile lower classes.

First class passengers got to travel in their own carriages,

of course, but many complained about having to stand shoulder to

shoulder with working men on the platform.

Not only that, there was a distinct nervousness about letting

working class people travel on trains at all.

In the 1840s, Benjamin Disraeli's novel Sybil captured the mood

of the aristocracy. "Equality is not our metier," says Lord de Mowbray.

"If we nobles do not make a stand against this levelling spirit

"of the age, then I am at a loss to know who will fight the battle.

"We may depend on it. These railroads are very dangerous things."

He may have had a point.

The working classes and their supporters found trains

useful when it came to organising protests.

Europe was rocked by a series of revolutions in the mid 1800s.

During this fractious period,

a British revolt seemed a genuine possibility.

In 1839, Birmingham experienced riots and the railways played

an important role, both symbolically and practically.

Thousands of Chartists took to the streets of the UK's second city,

demanding political reforms.

With tension mounting, trouble was clearly brewing.

Workers from far afield were able to get to Birmingham,

thanks in part to the trains. Mass transportation for mass protest.

But that wasn't the only role the railways played in the riots.

Birmingham didn't yet have its own police force and

so the Mayor of Birmingham worried about this mounting unrest

and the speeches every other night by fiery Chartist leaders.

He has to go up to London,

where he gets the Home Secretary

to lend him some Metropolitan Police officers,

so he comes back to Birmingham on the train with 60 police officers.

They bring their staves down to the ballroom where the Mayor of

Birmingham suggests that they should try and disperse the crowd of

heated up Chartists and you can imagine the struggle then between

60 lightly armed police officers and

a crowd of worked up Chartists.

So, the railways played a dual role.

They both enabled political protest

and helped the authorities to control protesters.

But with more and more passengers using the railways en masse,

there was a growing risk of injuries and fatalities,

particularly for those travelling third class.

With conditions in their carriages so bad,

it was only a matter of time before a major accident occurred.

A grim Punch cartoon depicted a cheery undertaker touting for

business on a station platform.

The inevitable disaster happened on Christmas Eve in 1841,

as a train carrying workers from London back home to Bristol

derailed at Sonning Cutting because of a landslide.

Nine people who were travelling in standing only carriages,

which were reserved for the poorest passengers, were killed.

It became a big story,

whose symbolism wasn't lost on the powers that be.

Here you had workmen travelling in appalling conditions after

finishing work at the Palace of Westminster.

"The morning was dark and gloomy, but through the obscure light which

"was obtained were discerned the corpses of eight persons

"frightfully mutilated and crushed amidst the wreck of the trucks

"which were heaped in confusion, one upon the other."

It's hard to see positives when so many people lost their lives,

but the Sonning Crash was an important catalyst for change.

Well, it drew attention to the risks of minimum provision for the

lowest grade of passenger.

The Great Western was treating them really like any other cargo,

they were mixed in with the general goods train and they were being

carried in the most basic sort of open topped wagons with sides so

low that many of the casualties were thrown over the sides when

the train hit the landslip that caused the disaster.

In 1844, future prime minister William Gladstone introduced

a new Railway Act which obliged rail companies to provide third class

travel services in seated carriages, protected from the weather.

He introduced what were called parliamentary trains,

which ensured that on every line,

at least one train per day in both directions would cost just

a penny a mile and while that was still quite expensive because

wages were maybe a shilling or so a day, 12p a day,

at least it meant that working people could use those trains.

He also introduced the increased baggage allowance.

It was part of a plan to increase the circulation of labour

around the country.

And it worked.

People could carry up to 56 pounds of material, so maybe a plasterer

could carry a sack of plaster to his work and that sort of thing.

That was very important because it meant that people working

no longer had to walk to work or go by horse and cart.

They could actually take their tools and material to the place of work

and use it there and the railway companies encouraged that

because it meant regular travellers.

This was a key period in the history of the railways.

It allowed more people from the lower classes to travel,

and to come into contact with new accents and customs,

places and faces,

and new trades and skills.

Britain was no longer a series of isolated villages, towns and cities,

now anyone with a few pence and the motivation

could travel anywhere.

Within five years of the 1844 Act,

half of all passengers were paying the third-class fare.

Later in the Victorian era,

companies would be made to provide special workmen's trains

making travel even more affordable.

Towards the end of the 1840s,

people started using the railways for leisure,

with entrepreneurs organising trips all over the country.

These excursions were considerably cheaper

than the penny-a-mile services

and they marked the beginnings of mass-market leisure

which, by the end of the 19th century,

and well into the 20th, would be booming.

They're not stupid, the railways,

and they're quick to see the potential

of growing their traffic, third-class traffic.

So if you were a working-class family,

you couldn't afford regular third-class travel -

almost certainly, not over long distances -

but you might be able to save up for a trip by the seaside

or something like that.

The downside of that was that you could put almost anything on a train

to carry excursion passengers,

and they were still using, effectively, open carriages,

open-top carriages, even wagons,

into mid-Victorian times and later still, 1870s.

Despite the drawbacks,

the cheap excursion trains

got more people moving all over the country.

Many of these new passengers were women,

but railways weren't necessarily the safest places

for lone female travellers.

William Birt, general manager of the Great Eastern,

admitted, "I should be sorry indeed

"to allow any respectable female connected with my household

"to travel third class upon the Great Eastern

"during those hours of the day

"in which the workers are travelling."

Birt might have had a point, but often the gentry were no better,

and there are accounts of well-to-do men travelling third class

with the sole intention of taking advantage of lone female travellers.

We know that there were cases of assault

from several high-profile cases which hit the newspapers.

In particular, one which involved a Colonel Valentine Baker,

who assaulted a Miss Kate Dickinson,

very attractive young woman,

described as of very prepossessing disposition.

And Kate had to escape onto the running board of the train -

very dangerous procedure.

Can you imagine it in high-button boots and a crinoline,

clinging on to the side of the train?

To counter this threat, at stations up and down the country

ladies-only waiting rooms started to appear.

And a positive outcome of this

was it created jobs for hundreds of women,

because female-only waiting rooms required female attendants.

That wasn't all women did on the railways, though.

Women also were crossing keepers.

The hours were long, but the work was quite light,

so that was another job women could do.

They often inherited these posts as widows when their husbands died.

Women also actually did work as maintenance workers on the tracks,

even right down to the 1960s.

Despite the need for female staff,

working on the railways was largely a man's world.

Jobs could be tough, but they were seen as providing a decent career.

What was the life of a railway servant like?

The railway attracted lots of people to work for them,

and it was a very desirable job

because it was a long-term job.

It wasn't fantastically well paid but it was steady

and, at the time, most people didn't have steady jobs,

they'd work maybe as labourers for a season,

they'd work in the fields for harvest time, or whatever.

But the railways offered year-round employment

for many people who had never had access

to those sort of steady jobs.

So it was quite a desirable thing, to work for the railways.

Working on a heritage line like the Severn Valley

is very different, of course.

But Bob Heath knows more than most

about what the life of a Victorian railway worker would have been like.

You do this for a hobby, in your spare time,

but to do it for a living every day,

what do you think that would have been like, 100, 150 years ago?

It's hard work, but the people who did it -

most of the people who did it - would have thoroughly enjoyed it.

I mean, you have your days where you'd be too cold,

too hot, wet -

you know what it's like, you've been on a locomotive.

Erm, I mean, the locomotives weren't cabins like these,

they might have had the cab roof finish there

and a little spectacle plate.

So you're open to the elements

and it would have been really hard work.

-A lot of cinders and ash in the face, things like that.

-Yeah.

As the railways spread across the country,

there was an unexpected consequence

that would quite literally play a part in making the nation.

The railway enabled ordinary people

to travel beyond their local village,

quite possibly for the first time ever.

And that had an important effect,

because people could then meet future spouses much more easily,

widening the gene pool

and, therefore, getting rid of the problem of the village idiot,

which was actually a product of the fact that people intermarried

with their cousins and second cousins

and actually caused that problem.

It wasn't just the passengers

who helped to widen the gene pool, though.

When the railways got longer

and people had to drive in the trains,

be the fireman, had to actually stay overnight in places,

that meant that, to some extent, they were living two lives.

They would live in Newcastle some of the time,

in London some of the time,

and some of them definitely established second families.

So they would have a family

in Newcastle, where maybe they originally came from,

and then a family in London,

and neither of them obviously knew of each other's existence,

because there was no telephone and no communication between the two.

That was not infrequent.

The idea of an alternative home

also appealed to one particular passenger in a class all of her own.

The railways presented Queen Victoria with the opportunity

to expand her property portfolio.

Without the railways, it's likely Victoria

would never have bought Balmoral,

beloved second home of the royals to this day.

By road it took days to get there,

by rail it was just hours.

Despite their regular use of them,

Victoria and Albert never became total converts to the railways -

they were just too fast for them.

But they did see the potential in engaging with their subjects

in a way that the monarchy had never been able to do before.

In 1858, they came to Birmingham -

the first time the city had been visited officially

by a reigning monarch.

It showed just how the railways were enabling Victoria

to get to all corners of the kingdom -

not just to her rural getaway,

but to the heart of industrial, working Britain.

A newspaper account from the time

noted that "the brawny men working amidst showers of sparks,

"digging in dark mines,

"plunging around furnaces,

"came into the open air and had a holiday

"and sped to honour the Queen."

It's clear how excited the city was about Victoria's visit,

but it wasn't just the locals who turned out in their thousands.

Birmingham gave its hundreds of thousands to the streets,

and all the country towns and villages

swelled the mass of living people.

The royals, of course, travelled in luxury,

in their own private trains,

and this is Queen Victoria's carriage.

It's so plush and opulent

it's like a room in Buckingham Palace on the rails.

First-class travel was far from shabby,

but this was another level altogether.

Everything on the train was as she wanted it.

You were travelling for hours, days at a time,

so it had to be a home from home, and almost a court on wheels.

So it had all mod cons,

even though Victoria distrusted electricity.

So, Victoria's carriage finished its working life

with electric lights but still had gas and oil.

She didn't like there being two separate carriages,

a day saloon and an evening saloon.

So the corridor connection was a new invention at the time -

she didn't like that idea at all.

So, if she wanted to go between the day saloon and her evening saloon,

to go to bed, for example, then the train had to stop

which, of course, was an operational nightmare.

She insisted that her train only travelled at 40 miles an hour

during the day and 30 miles an hour in the evening,

though we understand that the train crews' interpretation of that

was somewhat liberal.

"What speed are we doing?"

"We're doing 40 miles an hour, Ma'am."

You know, it was like that.

Royal patronage, of course, was a very important thing as well.

If the Queen was seen to enjoy and endorse rail travel,

then it was good for the rest of the nation to travel by train.

Victoria and Albert gave a publicity boost to the railways,

but their experiences were a far cry

from those of the majority of train travellers.

Of course all passengers would have got hungry on long journeys,

but even the food reflected deep class divisions.

On one line, a hungry traveller

could choose between luncheon baskets.

The aristocratic hamper offered select cuts of meat

and a bottle of claret.

But on the other hand, for a much cheaper price,

you could have had the democratic hamper,

which came with nondescript cuts of meat and a bottle of ale.

Although the caterers were mindful of the less well-off passengers,

railway companies in general still seemed reluctant

to invest in their comfort.

In fact, despite the ever-increasing popularity

amongst the lower classes,

conditions in third class were still dismal.

By the mid-1800s, third-class carriages may have had roofs,

but conditions remained cramped and unpleasant.

Passengers had to endure lengthy journeys on timber benches

in rows of five or six.

However, by the 1870s,

big changes were introduced to low-cost travel by one rail company,

thanks to a man who had a vision.

Birmingham-born James Allport was boss of the Midland line.

He considered it his duty to provide for the less well-off.

Allport realised that the railways were catering far too much

just for the well-off,

so he opened up the railway for third-class people

and encouraged them to use it.

His big change was to abolish second class

so that people only had first and third class,

and third class actually became

the main way that the railway earned its income.

Effectively, third class became second class,

and what we know now as standard class.

It was really Allport's initiative that changed that.

The railways had been very snooty

about encouraging third-class passengers onto the railway -

Allport changed that.

Allport's reforms opened up the full timetable to third-class travellers.

Other lines followed the Midland's lead

and, by 1913, 96% of all rail journeys were third-class.

With nearly all travellers sharing the same carriages,

the railways had achieved a striking example of social levelling.

But Allport made sure wealthier customers were still catered for.

He introduced the so-called Pullman coaches to the Midland line.

These were inspired by a visit to America,

and included hotel-style services, a restaurant car,

waiter-served meals and, later, accommodation.

These cars became a regular staple of long journeys until 1985,

and although this one is a 1960s replica,

it's a clear part of Allport's legacy.

Whilst Allport and the Midland saw profit to be made

from both the rich and the poor,

another canny company saw that there was money to be made from the dead.

In the 1800s, London was experiencing a major problem -

overcrowded graveyards.

But there was a solution - of course, provided by the railways.

It was the so-called necropolis train,

operating from Waterloo from 1854 to 1941 -

its sole purpose to ferry London's dead from the city

to a large cemetery in Surrey.

And yes, you could pay for your coffin to go first,

second or third class -

it was a strictly one-way ticket, though.

Back in the land of the living,

traditional travelling divisions were breaking down even more

by the turn of the century.

When the City and South London Underground line opened in 1890,

it had dispensed with different class carriages,

so the lord of the manor could easily find himself

sitting next to his gardener.

This was a first step

towards the essentially classless London Tube system we know today.

Trains were being used for all manner of transportation

but, in the late 1890s,

one very special train journey was made,

one which would do much to unite the hearts and minds of the nation.

In 1897, Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee

with a pageant through the streets of the capital.

The lucky few in London

could observe the pomp and circumstance first-hand.

But within hours, thanks to the train and the enterprise of one man,

people in the north of England

could also witness what happened.

Richard James Appleton,

a Bradford man known as "The First Knight of the Camera",

was in London filming it as part of a bold publicity stunt

to promote The Daily Argus newspaper.

Film was the new media of its day,

and several film-makers recorded the event.

Unfortunately, Appleton's actual footage has not survived,

but we do know it was developed on a specially adapted train

with its own darkroom -

a dangerous task, given the chemicals required

and the constant jostling of the tracks.

It may not have been instantaneous by today's standards,

but it was the closest mankind had ever come

to a shared moment of great historical importance.

Over the course of a few special screenings,

tens of thousands of people in the north of England saw this footage.

We can't know what they felt,

but I imagine it was a sense of pride, unity and wonder.

That's what I love about the Jubilee story.

Yes, the railways reflected class divisions

and, to a degree, continue to do so -

we still have first class after all.

But they also mixed things up.

They created opportunities and transported people far and wide.

They helped us to share customs and culture,

and opened up a world to the masses beyond their front doors.

As one Victorian writer put it,

they made the Land's End and John o'Groats house

next-door neighbours.

Of course, the great thing about the railways is,

whichever carriage you're travelling in,

however much you paid for your ticket,

everyone arrives at the same place at the same time,

and surely that's equality.