ABSTRACT
On 30 July 1850, Robert Stephenson was entertained to a public dinner in his honour in the new station at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Four hundred people attended under the chairmanship of the Hon. Henry Liddell, whose speech acclaimed Stephenson's achievements. The lack of any coherent national railway strategy, and the nation's growing free-market system, resulted in a chaotic outcome in the mid-1840s, with demonstrable harm to many private investors and the national economy. British railway growth in the 1830s, achieved through unregulated opportunities for speculative joint-stock companies, had led to an unbalanced network, with many industrial areas still having no railways. Robert Stephenson's numerous engagements in the 1840s were principally for the largest railways in England. The large majority of railway planning and building projects was undertaken by Stephenson's other senior associates, who were engaged by railway companies in offices around the country.
