Nihilistic impressions of British railway history *

Originally the intention of this paper was to investigate productivity on Scotland’s railways between 1870 and 1900, in order to assess whether the railway sector shared the fate of the Scottish economy in general and slowed down in its rate of growth. Ample evidence exists to suggest that railway productivity growth was decelerating: increasingly adverse traffic patterns, high urban land costs for relocated termini, severe intercompany rivalry, the growing drag of interrelatedness, and unfortunate investment decisions in suburban railways and branch lines – ‘more than half of the North British (the largest Scottish railway company) is made up of branches to mouldering old towns and cross lines over hills sacred to sheep and wandering botanists’ [ ¹ ]. Yet these facets of Scottish railway operations are not in themselves sufficient indication of declining or decelerating productivity; no definite statement can be made unless productivity is actually measured. Without quantification of inputs and outputs any remarks on productivity trends – no matter how substantial the data on which they are postulated – are mere hypotheses.