ABSTRACT
A national network of railways developed, bringing those smoking harbingers of the industrial world almost to the doorsteps of the population. Historians have in the past attached great importance to railways as a factor in economic growth. George Stephenson built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, a short line in the North East, which was the first railway both to use locomotives and to carry passengers and freight; it was opened in 1825. The hypothesis is that the spending of capital on the railways made the whole economy more efficient, even if the capital would have been spent on something else had railways not existed. Naturally, after a period of time, industries located themselves where they could most effectively use railway transport. The relative share in population of the North West and to a lesser extent Yorkshire grew steadily from the inception of large-scale industrialisation and throughout the nineteenth century.
