ABSTRACT
Only a brief examination of the railway industry is necessary to uncover its three most striking characteristics – novelty, size and concentration. While some authorities have claimed very early beginnings for this form of transport, the railway proper, incorporating the requisite elements of specialised track, mechanical traction, facilities for public traffic and passenger facilities, was essentially a product of the mid-late 1820s. It came with the opening of the Stockton & Darlington (1825) and Liverpool & Manchester (1830) companies. And its basic structure was created in the following half-century. By 1875, over 70 per cent of the ultimate route mileage had been constructed. The scale of this new technology was soon apparent. The capital raised by companies in the United Kingdom amounted to £630 million by 1875, equivalent to an annual rate of £12i million, dwarfing the fixed-capital formation of basic industries such as cotton, coal, and iron and steel. Gross revenue, running at £19 million a year in the 1850s, rose to £52 million a year in 1870-5, equal to the output value of the woollen industry, and double that of coal. Permanent employment on lines opened for traffic reached 56,000 in 1850. By 1873 the figure had risen to 275,000, or 3–3 per cent of the male labour force. Thus, while recent scholarship has sought to modify some of the more extravagant claims made for the railways in their impact on the economy, there is no doubt that they represented a significant addition to the Victorian industrial structure. A third characteristic, concentration, was also visible at an early stage. The great investment ‘mania’ of 1845–7 left 61 per cent of UK railway capital and 75 per cent of gross traffic revenue in the hands of 15 major companies, a mere 8 per cent of the total number of 180 concerns (data for 1850). By 1870, the same number of companies, now only 3i per cent of the total of 430, controlled 80 per cent of the capital and 83 per cent of the revenue. The share of the four largest railways – the London & North Western, Great Western, North Eastern, and Midland – amounted to 38 and 44 per cent respectively.
