London’s first railway was the Surrey Iron Railway, a horse-drawn tramroad built to carry freight from the Thames, and authorised by Parliament in 1801. When authorised, the Surrey Iron Railway was the world’s first public railway and its route ran from the banks of the River Thames at Wandsworth to Croydon, a distance of some 8¼ miles, following the course of the River Wandle. The track consisted of cast-iron plates of L-section fixed to stone blocks, with a gauge of 4ft 2in. Traction was provided by horses, which, because of the lack of any substantial gradient, could move five or six wagons, each weighing 3½ tons fully loaded, at around 2½ mph. The line was supported by the many mills and factories spread along its route, showing that some, at least, of London’s urban sprawl pre-dated the arrival of the railways.

Not realising its shortcomings, so obvious to us today with the benefit of hindsight (always 20:20 vision, of course) the promoters of the line had ambitions and were keen to see it extended to Portsmouth, but only succeeded in extending the tracks as far as the quarry at Merstham, a further 8½ miles. All was not lost, however, as part of its route was later to be used by the London Brighton & South Coast Railway.

London’s first railways

It was not until the London & Greenwich and London & Blackwall Railways were built in the 1830s that the railway as we know it arrived in London. As elsewhere in Great Britain, once again these were both short distance.

The London & Greenwich Railway was authorised in 1833. The line ran through some of the poorer areas on a brick viaduct 22ft above street level to clear the existing pattern of streets around its terminus at London Bridge and also to avoid periodic flooding around Bermondsey. As London’s first railway, raising the necessary capital proved difficult at first and so, like many lines, it opened in stages between early 1836 and late 1838, despite being just 3½ miles in length. An unusual feature was the use of low centre of gravity carriages, with frames just 4 in above the track, to avoid carriages falling off the viaduct, which had 4ft 6 in walls, while as a further safety measure, the line was gas lit at night. Also unusual, and impractical, initially granite sleepers were set into concrete.

However, this costly short line was to prove to be a vital link in the capital’s railway network, and in addition to being used by the London & Croydon, it was then used by both the London & Brighton and the South Eastern, initially for a toll of 3d per passenger, although this was increased to 4½ d once the viaduct was widened in 1842 over the 1¾ miles between Corbetts Lane Junction and London Bridge. Three years later, the line was leased by the SER.

The London & Blackwall Railway was originally authorised in 1836 as the Commercial Railway, using a 5ft gauge and linking the Minories, to the east of the City of London, with Blackwall, with the first 2½ miles of the 3½ mile route being on a viaduct 18 ft above street level. An extension to Fenchurch Street was authorised in 1839, the company adopting the London & Blackwall title, and the following year the line opened. The line was worked by cable powered by stationary steam engines to reduce the risk of fire to shipping and cargo in the docks. Each carriage had a brakeman and carriages were slipped and picked up at intermediate stations. It was the first to adopt an even headway service with a train every fifteen minutes. In 1849, the line was converted to standard gauge and steam traction adopted, while the company connected with the Blackwall Extension Railway, which ran from Stepney Junction to Bow, then the Eastern Counties Railway, and in 1856, the line was linked with the London Tilbury & Southend Railway at Gas Factory Junction. The line was too small to remain independent, even with connections with other companies and running rights, so it was no surprise when, in 1866, the Great Eastern Railway leased the London & Blackwall for 999 years.

These early railways in the London area were of minor importance and built largely on viaducts in poor areas, so that there were few objections even though they displaced many slum dwellers and no doubt added to their misery.

It was the London & Greenwich that built London’s first railway terminus, London Bridge, opened in 1836, where it was joined in 1839 by the London & Croydon Railway, which ran over the LGR’s lines but had its own parallel station just to the north of the LGR lines. Earlier, the LGR had used a temporary terminus at Bermondsey, opened in February 1836. Longer distance trains arrived in 1841 when the London & Brighton Railway ran over the London & Croydon tracks into London Bridge, and was joined the following year by the South Eastern Railway.

The opening of London Bridge station in December 1836 was a grand affair attended by the Lord Mayor of London, even though strictly it was just outside his jurisdiction, and around 2,000 guests. This was in stark contrast to the reality of the station, which was basically little more than the end of the viaduct, on which the LGR had been built with more than 800 arches, with low platforms and with the railway offices and booking offices below. The railway only ran as far as Deptford and it was not to reach Greenwich until 1838. Plans for a triumphal arch at the entrance to this crude station were never fulfilled. With remarkable foresight the LGR had bought more land than it needed with the London Bridge end of the viaduct able to take eight tracks.

The two early London railways were isolated examples, but not for long. Neither could have created the railway age on their own in London, still less the south of England. This is an important point, because it was not simply the railways in London that changed the course of the conurbation’s history and development, it was the railways around London and feeding into London that made the big difference.

Even this is to risk understating their importance. The railways were not simply a means of transport for London; they were also a business and financial opportunity. The railways played an important part in the development of the British financial system, and it was their insatiable thirst for finance that placed great strains on the banking system, itself still to reach maturity, and which acted as a stimulus to the development of the stock market and the concept of the joint stock company and businesses that limited the liability of shareholders. The railways had an impact on London in other ways as well, for they had to be regulated and, strange as it may seem today when massive public subsidies are poured into the railways, they had to be taxed. Having a railway land on its doorstep was as big a godsend to a hard-pressed local authority in the nineteenth century as having a major airport would be today, but in the case of the railways, central government also saw its opportunity to raise revenue, and took it just as surely as in recent years it has begun to tax travellers by air.

Given that London was the capital of a major empire, and that business did not feel itself constrained to remain within the bounds of that empire, the impact of London as a financial centre on railways was not confined to the British Isles or to the British Empire, but to countries that were independent of it and had no ties of language or culture. British companies were active in Latin America and Asia, developing railways and tramways.

The first trunk lines arrive

It was not just the fact that London was already heavily built-up that was a problem for the new railways as they attempted to get as close as possible to the centres of the City and of the West End, some of the railways had to approach through the better class of area where important property owners held sway.

In driving through the better class areas from the north-west, the London & Birmingham, and from the west, the Great Western, not only had landowners to deal with, but also residents who had a voice and a pen, and knew how to use them. The inhabitants of these areas may well have been renting their properties, but they were a class apart from those affected by the first London railways. Today, with widespread property ownership, it is necessary to remember that in pre-Victorian Britain, and even during the Victorian period, home ownership was very much in the minority, even amongst the upper middle and professional classes.

The Great Western got no further towards the centre of London than Paddington, then a village outside the built-up area and to this day an inconvenient location, while the London & Birmingham was also checked on the outskirts and settled at Euston Square, which was slightly better placed, albeit due in no small part to the subsequent pattern of development of the underground, and especially the deep level tube lines.

It is only with hindsight that we can assess the efforts of the early railway planners. The Great Western wanted to keep costs to the minimum and share Euston with the London & Birmingham. Nevertheless, the ambitions and suspicions of the backers of the railways got in the way and negotiations broke down, forcing the GWR to build its own terminus at Paddington and leaving the London & Birmingham alone at Euston. As both the original termini soon proved too small and had to be expanded, it was a blessing that they were not forced to share the same terminus. In any case, part of the problem at Euston, and some of the other London termini such as King’s Cross and Liverpool Street, is on the approaches. These mighty stations have approaches which are literally ‘choke’ points. Even at this time, it was clear to the GWR’s directors that Paddington was not the best site for a terminus, and for many years a number of trains took a roundabout route to reach Victoria.

Running over another company’s tracks in return for payment of a toll was another means of raising revenue for the early railway companies. Initially many companies acted as if they were running a turnpike, allowing anyone to use their own locomotives and wagons or carriages in return for a toll, but this proved difficult, and as traffic grew, most railway companies provided their own rolling stock and allowed other companies onto their lines through a variety of agreements. Exceptions were to follow later, with company-owned wagons appearing, mainly owned by colliery companies, but these ‘private-owner wagons’ were never popular with the railway companies. Later still, the Pullman Car Company and, in the late 1930s the Wagons Lits Company on the Southern Railway, started to run their vehicles on Britain’s railways, but these were different as the vehicles were effectively hired in by the railway as a new standard of accommodation for their passengers.

The London & Croydon paid the London & Greenwich the then not inconsiderable sum of 3d per passenger carried. A similar arrangement was proposed for the South Eastern Railway which would effectively extend the London & Croydon to Redhill and Dover.

Such arrangements were necessary because the railways were the most costly and capital-intensive business ventures ever attempted at the time, and even today, governments in many countries, and especially in the United Kingdom, fight shy of enlarging the railway network. Britain’s railways were seldom built as a major long-distance through route, but piecemeal. Not only was the initial pressure to build a line local, connecting Liverpool with Manchester being a good example, but raising capital was easier with a succession of related railway schemes than as a single major scheme. It was also important to get the railway up and running as quickly as possible so that at least some revenue could be earned. Of the early schemes, the Great Western was the most ambitious, with a main line running more than a hundred miles from London to Bristol. The need to start earning meant that it opened in stages, initially between London and Maidenhead, and the first Paddington Station, when it opened in 1838, was a temporary structure, and unlike the later magnificent cathedral to the steam age with its two transepts (cathedrals make do with one), it was thrown together in some haste simply using timber. In this form, it lasted sixteen years.

Euston opened the same year. The London & Birmingham was clearly wealthier than the Great Western, or perhaps it was not burdened by Brunel’s fanatical insistence on a 7ft broad gauge, which added significantly to costs so that cost overruns were all too frequent. William Hardwick was commissioned as Euston’s architect and the approach to the station portrayed its greatness with a magnificent Doric portico. People travelled to view the new station which seemed to say so much about what was to become known variously as the ‘steam age’ and the ‘Victorian-era’, and boded so well for both. It got even better, for by 1849, Euston had acquired a Great Hall and a Shareholders’ Room. On the other hand, the train shed that lay beyond this grandeur was a disappointment, for low iron fabrications covered the two platforms, and there was no question that cheapness awaited the traveller after he had purchased his ticket.

The early railway termini differed greatly from those of today. Both Paddington and Euston were typical of their age in having separate arrival and departure platforms. Even as they grew, this system prevailed for many years. Illogical to modern eyes, these spoke of a more leisurely age when a train would arrive, and its carriages would be taken away for cleaning after the passengers had alighted, while the locomotive would reverse and ‘run light’ in railway parlance to an engine shed to receive water and coal. This system eventually came under scrutiny because of the amount of space required for running roads for carriage workings and locomotive workings, but the death knell really came with the arrival of first electric and the diesel traction, which meant that trains could be driven into the terminus, and while the passengers alighted and the train waited for a fresh passengers boarded, the driver simply walked from a cab at one end of the train to one at the other. Even when diesel locomotives or electric engines were used, a replacement was simply coupled on to the other end of the train, or in railway parlance the ‘rake’ of passenger carriages, ready to take it on its return journey, leaving that which had worked the train into the terminus to reverse out into a siding, and await its turn to take the next departure. Many of the early stations, even those which are today major termini, would have just one or two arrival platforms and a single departure platform.

At this stage, railway travel was still in its infancy. A dozen departures a day would be commonplace, far less than in even an off-peak hour at a major terminus today.

As a sign of the times, there were facilities for not only loading horses, but also carriages. Indeed, the early first-class carriages often resembled three road coaches combined, but without any outside passengers. Second-class rolling stock consisted of what we today would regard as an open goods wagon, with high sides and simple wooden planks running from one side to the other as seats. Third-class rolling stock was simply a flat goods wagon. This sounds dreadful by modern standards, but at the time, the stagecoach or mail coach was for the comparatively well-off and the poor either walked or, if they could afford it, climbed on to the carrier’s wagon, sometimes sitting on its load.

The lack of corridor carriages meant that on approaching a major terminus, the train stopped at a station immediately before it, sometimes one constructed just for that purpose, so that tickets could be inspected. In some cases, street urchins would use this as an opportunity to sneak past the railway officials and board the train for a free ride to the terminus.

After London Bridge, Fenchurch Street, Euston and Paddington, there was a delay before any further terminus was opened in London. The London & South Western had settled quietly at Nine Elms. The delay in building further termini was to have considerable repercussions. Parliament had noted the upheaval that railway expansion into the centre of London was having. The outcome was an attempt to limit this upheaval, yet a failure to do so that only made subsequent upheaval even worse.

Parliament takes an interest

Parliament had a peculiar on-off relationship with the railways. There was no central direction of railway development as in many continental countries. This was no bad thing in many ways as it enabled locally important cross-country links to be built that might otherwise have been neglected or delayed. Yet, Parliament was not without its involvement as new railways had to receive legal authorisation in the form of an Act, and at the committee stage this was open to public scrutiny.

In 1846, a Royal Commission was set up to look at the London termini, since there was a scramble between railway companies to find locations as close to the centre of London as possible and Parliament thought that some order should be brought to bear. Enterprising ideas of some of the railway companies would have seen a north-south link between Charing Cross and Euston, which would not only have eased the capacity problems at the former, but would have made it far easier to run trains through from the Channel ports to the Midlands and beyond. The disruption being caused by the railways as they gouged routes through the heavily built up inner suburbs of London and as lines, especially south of the River Thames, crossed one another, was another factor that concerned Parliament. The terms of reference for the Royal Commission were:

‘…whether the extension of railways into the centre of the metropolis is calculated to afford such additional convenience or benefit to the public as will compensate for the sacrifice of property, the interruption of important thoroughfares, and the interference with the plans of improvement already suggested.’

The team of commissioners charged with this exercise were the victims of their age. Their brief was well considered by any rational assessment, but no one understood the true nature of the problem and the impact that the railways would have on the travelling and working habits of the population could not be foreseen. Here we have it, the paradox that it was too early to predict the best way forward, and once the matter really could be examined sensibly with the benefit of experience, opportunities had been lost, and the further development of the London area meant that any attempt to alleviate the problem would be prohibitively expensive and the disruption immense.

One could argue that this was no bad thing. For example, one matter considered was the creation of a single large terminus for all of the railway companies. This begs the questions of where and just how large. After all, there were still fewer than 5,000 route miles in the country as a whole, less than a quarter of the eventual total, and there was no such thing as an underground railway network at the time. Fortunately, the commissioners were adamant that there was no advantage in a single terminus since the number of through passengers across the centre of London was negligible, which was true at the time. They also foresaw problems of congestion at and around such a terminus, while its management, divided between what would eventually be twelve companies, would be extremely difficult. The convenience of long distance passengers of a central London terminus seemed of little importance to the commissioners when set against the disruption that it would cause, and the various stage coach departure and arrival points had usually been just outside the centre. If the convenience of long distance passengers took second place to that of those whose lives and property would be disrupted by any extension into the central area, that of short distance passengers weighed still less.

In their final report, the commissioners recommended that no railway should enter the central area on the north side of the River Thames. By ‘central area’, they meant from Park Lane in the west to the City Road and Moorgate in the east, and from Euston Road in the north to what would now be the Embankment, but additionally this extended south of the Thames to Borough High Street. Any plans to allow the railways to intrude into this box in the future should only be allowed under an overall plan that had been carefully considered and ‘sanctioned by the wisdom of Parliament’. Then, as now, property south of the river was less valuable than that to the north of it, and the commissioners also felt that the disruption to highways and to property would be far less. The commissioners were content with the already authorised construction of Waterloo and felt, wrongly as many passengers have found, that London Bridge was convenient for the City, but they were happy to see the lines from Kent extended to Waterloo.

A glance at a street plan for London will see that for lines from north and west, the commissioners’ recommendations held good, even though it left many of the main termini, and especially Paddington, not well sited for either the City or the West End, with only Charing Cross and then Marylebone, the last to be built, anywhere near convenient for the latter. Only Cannon Street and Liverpool Street were well sited for the City, the latter having been built as ‘an exception to the rule’. The winners were the southern companies, who for the most part were able to forge ahead, cross the river onto the north bank of the Thames, and serve both the City and the West End, effectively breaching the commissioners’ ban on termini on the north bank. The one exception was the London & South Western, which had to remain at Waterloo, relatively isolated until relieved by the completion of the Waterloo and City Line in 1898, and as far as access to the West End was concerned, by the opening of the Bakerloo Line in 1906, followed by what was at first known as the Hampstead tube, today’s Northern Line.

Parliament’s concern was not surprising, taking as an example of the impact that railways had as they approached the centre of London was the extension of the London & South Western Railway from Nine Elms to Waterloo in 1854, which required the demolition of 700 houses for a much narrower spread of tracks than exists today. The Great Eastern extension to Liverpool Street built during 1861-64 was passed by Parliament on condition that it ran workmen’s trains from Edmonton and Walthamstow, at a return fare of 2d per day for the journey of 6-8 miles; and was one of the few allowed to pierce what almost amounted to a surface railway exclusion zone because the final leg of the extension was in tunnel.