population was being squeezed into its outer reaches. Those houses that remained were smeared with smoke as steam trains brought dense and eerie pollution into the city. Only the very rich could resist the onward march of the railways.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE LONDON TERMINALS
1836 London Bridge Station was built in primitive form for the London & Greenwich Railway and was soon subject to a rebuild.
1837 Euston, operated by the London & North Western Railway.
1838 Paddington, still bearing the hallmarks of its designer Brunel, built to receive Great Western Railway services.
1841 Fenchurch Street, the smallest of the railway terminals in London, originally constructed for the London & Blackwall Railway, and rebuilt 13 years later in time to accommodate the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway. It was the site of the first station bookstall.
1848 Waterloo Bridge Station, as it was called, opened after being linked to the busy outer-city satellite at Nine Elms for the London & South Western Railway.
1852 King’s Cross opened for the Great Northern Railway on the site of smallpox and fever hospitals. It was designed by Lewis Cubitt along remarkably simple lines save for an Italianate clock turret. A hotel was built to accompany the station and opened two years later.
1858 Victoria, named for the nearby street, was the home of London, Brighton & South Coast Railway trains, although it was soon popular with other companies.
1864 Charing Cross, arguably the only London station to breach the West End, opened with six wooden platforms for what was initially a limited service to Greenwich and mid-Kent.
1866 Moorgate came into being in an extension to the Metropolitan Line and only became a main-line terminus in 1900.
1868 St Pancras was built by the Midland Railway after it found King’s Cross too expensive. It became remarkable for the railway hotel’s vast Gothic frontage.
1874 Liverpool Street was built to replace Bishopsgate Station, being closer to the city centre and more user friendly.
1899 Marylebone was home to the final main line to enter London, the Great Central, but plans by chairman Sir Edward Watkin to continue expansion with a channel tunnel were never realized.
© National Railway Museum/SSPL; © National Railway Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library
Charing Cross Station, London, c. 1864, a coloured chromolithograph by the Kell brothers. The station was designed by John Hawkshaw and was the London terminus of the South Eastern Railway.
Railway company managers were powerful people but some left a more distinguished legacy than others.
Sir James Allport spent a career in railways, ending up as the boss of Midland Railways for 27 years, excepting a short spell spent at a shipyard in Jarrow. He was also instrumental in forming the Railway Clearing House, which managed payments between different companies to cover journeys spanning several networks. After his retirement as manager in 1880 he became a director of the company.
Under his leadership, Midland Railway services expanded and the grand station at St Pancras was opened. But he is best remembered for transforming the journeys of third-class passengers. He was the first to realise that, rather than being a hindrance to the railway company, third-class passengers were in fact a valuable asset.
Accordingly, he made third-class carriages much more comfortable and, from 1872, included third-class carriages on every train, charging passengers a penny per mile for a journey. When some angry passengers boycotted Midland Services he scrapped second class, at the same time lowering first-class fares. The result was better revenues for the railway company and a more equitable system of travelling.
© National Railway Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library
Seats for Five Persons by Abraham Solomon (1824–1862).
For his services to cheaper travel Allport was knighted in 1884. But in his later life it wasn’t the gong at the forefront of his mind:
If there is one part of my public life on which I look back with more satisfaction than on anything else, it is with reference to the boon we conferred on third-class travellers. I have felt saddened to see third-class passengers shunted on to a siding in cold and bitter weather – a train containing amongst others many lightly-clad women and children – for the convenience of allowing the more comfortable and warmly-clad passengers to pass them. I have even known third-class trains to be shunted into a siding to allow express goods to pass.
When the rich man travels, or if he lies in bed all day, his capital remains undiminished, and perhaps his income flows in all the same. But when the poor man travels, he has not only to pay his fare, but to sink his capital, for his time is his capital; and if he now consumes only five hours instead of ten in making a journey, he has saved five hours of time for useful labour – useful to himself, his family, and to society. And I think with even more pleasure of the comfort in travelling we have been able to confer on women and children. But it took twenty-five years to get it done.
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