ABSTRACT
The justification for compiling an atlas of British railway history may appear obscure to some eyes. Naturally one can hide behind the familiar claim that nothing quite like it has been attempted before. The publication of new photographs further supports such an argument. However, it is not difficult to find reasons for an overtly geographical perspective. A fundamental characteristic of British railway development in the nineteenth century, for example, was the geographically fragmented nature of control. There was no real sense in which one could talk of a British railway system. Railway operation was divided between a multiplicity of independent companies, each with its distinctive territorial identity and each with its own way of doing things — from operations to architecture. Equally significant was the measure in which railways transformed the country’s geography. Railways were great ‘connectors’, notionally drawing towns and cities together, and in total having the effect of shrinking the geographical size of the country: the substitution of machine for muscle transformed the frictional effect of distance on movement. Railways also had demonstrable impact upon the shape of cities and towns. Rail lines out of London became foci for the spreading tentacles of suburbia. In the centres of cities, railways came to be a prime determinant of the layout of streets and buildings, not to mention their own occupancy of vast areas of central land. A yet more simple geographical view lies in the record of the spread and contraction of Britain’s railway system. Some parts of the country gained railway communication long before others. Some benefited from being served by several different companies. The network maps in this book reveal an interesting symmetry in the sequence of openings and closures, the last lines opened often being the first to be closed, with the modern-day network showing an uncanny resemblance to that of 1850.
