ABSTRACT
Perhaps more than any other nineteenth-century phenomenon, the railways were indelibly associated with iron. The growth of the Britain's iron industry and the railways were closely intertwined. If iron defined the railways as a whole, railway stations were at the forefront of attempts to assimilate both iron and glass into architecture and to create new, modern styles appropriate for the age. In a similar manner to other new building types, such as market halls, pumping stations and glasshouses, the solution adopted for many railway stations lay in a dual architectural identity. This chapter investigates first, early responses to large iron-and-glass train sheds as sublime spaces. Secondly it investigates late-Victorian and Edwardian responses to the interiors of railway stations and their aesthetic qualities as spaces. It also investigates the representations of railway tracks as motifs that encompassed the wider space of the entire railway network.
