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Of greater importance even than effective signals for railway operating was
the electric telegraph, which fortuitously was brought to practical form by
William F.Cooke and Charles Wheatstone (see p. 714) at precisely the period
that the first trunk railways were being built. Cooke carried out successful
experiments alongside the London & Birmingham Railway between Euston
and Camden Town in 1837 and, although the L&B company did not take up
the telegraph at that time, the following year at the instance of Brunel the
Great Western decided to do so. The electric telegraph was completed between
Paddington and West Drayton in 1839 and subsequently extended, and it was
used to pass messages of all sorts, from requests for horses to be available for
passengers on arrival at Paddington, to notifying the presence of a suspicious
character on a train which led to his arrest for murder.
The electric telegraph was first used to control train operations in 1840 on the
London & Blackwall Railway, opened that year. This line was worked by
reciprocating cable haulage: when coaches standing at the stations had been
connected to the cable, the stationary engine driver was telegraphed that it was
safe to start winding. The following year, 1841, the electric telegraph was
installed through Clayton tunnel, London & Brighton Railway, between
signalmen at each end with instructions not to let a train enter until the previous
train had emerged. This was the first instance of the block system, of trains
separated by an interval of space rather than time. Other installations were soon
made through tunnels and on cable-worked inclines. The Norwich & Yarmouth
Railway, opened in 1844, was the first railway to be worked throughout by the
block system, using the electric telegraph on principles developed by Cooke, and
because of this it had been possible to build it as a single line with passing loops.
That was an economy, but in general the installation of a full electric telegraph
system on an existing line was expensive, and it was many years before the block
system wholly superseded time interval working.
EARLY RAI LWAY DEVE LOP M E NT I N TH E U N ITE D

STATES
In the Britain of the 1830s there was already a comprehensive transport
network for passengers and goods by road, canal and coastal shipping built up
over the previous eighty years, but steam railways showed sufficient
advantages to be superimposed on this. In the USA there was no such
network, despite construction of some canals and long-distance roads in the
eastern states and, particularly, rapid increase of steamboats on rivers and
coastal waterways since their introduction in 1807 by Robert Fulton. Distances
were longer and the demand for improved transport was even greater,
especially for better means of crossing the Appalachian Mountains to link the
coastal states with the interior. So although the earliest lines were short, as in
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Britain, and often connected with canals, much longer lines were soon being
built. The first wholly steam-operated railway in the USA was the South
Carolina Railroad, which opened its first short section late in 1830; by 1833 it
had 220km (136 miles) of track in operation. The Baltimore & Ohio was
122km (76 miles) long by 1835 and entirely operated by steam also; in that
year there were some 1600km (1000 miles) of railway in the USA, and by
1850 this had grown to nearly 14,500km (9000 miles).
Therefore, while British railways had substantial and expensive
engineering works designed apparently to last for all time, a different
engineering tradition rapidly developed in the USA. (So did a distinct
railway terminology, but for simplicity British terms will be used here. A list
of some British terms with their American equivalents appears on pp. 607–
8). In the USA there was a strong inducement to build railways cheaply and
quickly, with sharp curves, steep gradients and timber trestle bridges—
improvements could came later, and be paid for out of revenue. Iron was
scarce, timber plentiful: so track at first continued to consist of iron straps
along wooden rails. Iron flat-bottom rails were first imported from England

in 1830, but it was not until 1844 that they were first rolled in the USA, and
subsequently American track was typically made up of light flat-bottom rails
spiked to innumerable sleepers spaced far more closely together than
elsewhere. Various gauges were used from 4ft 8 1/2in. up to 6ft (1.43–
1.83m); the broad gauge lines were eventually converted to standard.
Light, hastily laid track prompted consequential developments in
locomotive design. Robert Stephenson is said to have recommended the use of
bogies to a party of visiting American engineers as early as 1830 or
thereabouts, though the John Bull supplied by Robert Stephenson & Co to the
Camden & Amboy Railroad, New Jersey, in 1831 was a 0–4–0 derived from
Planet. Having seen her, Matthias Baldwin built his first locomotive: the
Baldwin Locomotive Works were in due course to build in enormous quantity.
After a couple of years a separate two-wheeled sub-frame or pilot was added to
John Bull at the front, to reduce the number of derailments to which she was
subject. John Bull is now preserved by the Smithsonian Institution, and is the
oldest surviving workable steam locomotive.
The first bogie locomotive in the USA, a 4–2–0, was built by John B.Jervis in
1832, and the first locomotives of this type built in Britain were completed in
1833 for export to the USA. Such locomotives were well adapted to American
conditions and became popular; at the end of the decade demand for greater
power led to the enlargement of the type into the 4–4–0 with a front bogie and
driving wheels before and behind the firebox. With bar frames derived originally
from the designs for Edward Bury (but subsequently little used in the UK) this
became the classic American locomotive of the nineteenth century.
Bogies were also adopted for both goods and passenger rolling stock; this
meant that vehicles could be double the length of their British counterparts,
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and the interior layout of American passenger coaches was derived, apart from
some very early examples, not from road coach practice as in Britain, but from

the river steamboats with which Americans were already familiar. Instead of
separate compartments, American coaches had open interiors with seats either
side of a central passageway, and were entered from end balconies.
Most American railways were single track with passing loops. Development
of the electric telegraph was invaluable in enabling a general dispatcher to issue
instructions to agents at stations to deviate from the timetable if necessary. The
telegraph was first used for this purpose in 1851.
During the 1850s the American railway system continued to expand
rapidly, with the emphasis on states west of the Appalachians. Where railways
were built into regions still to be settled, grants of public lands were made to
the railway companies which they could sell, once their lines were open, to pay
off construction costs and, from subsequent settlement, provide traffic. The
pattern thus emerged, throughout much of the USA, that railways came first
and settlement followed.
By 1860 there were over 48,000km (30,000 miles) of railway in the USA
and still construction continued, with scarcely a hiccup caused by the Civil
War. Now began perhaps the greatest of all railway epics—construction of the
first transcontinental route to link the East Coast with the West. The Central
Pacific Railroad, run by hard-headed local merchants, built eastwards from
Sacramento, California, up and over the Sierra Nevada, and immigrant
Chinese proved their worth as navvies a decade before there was any sort of
railway in China itself. The Union Pacific, headed by shady Eastern financiers
spurred on by land grants per mile of track and aided by the tracklaying
abilities of Irish navvies, built rapidly west from the railhead on the Missouri.
When the two lines met at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869 they had built a
railway 2864km (1780 miles) long.
CONTINENTAL EUROPE
While trunk railways were being built in Britain and the USA, they started to
spread to European countries also. The first steam railway in Germany, running
five miles from Nuremberg to Furth, was opened in 1835. A Stephenson 2–2–2

hauled the first train. By the end of the decade long-distance lines were being
built and by 1850 some 4800km (3000 miles) were open. In Belgium a state
railway system was planned from the start, with the first section opened in 1835,
and the first steam railway in Austria was opened in 1837.
Construction of main line railways in France was delayed by ideological
arguments about whether funding and control should be by the state or by
private enterprise. Work on the first long-distance railway, from Paris to
Rouen, began in 1841. It was financed in part by the London & South Western
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Railway (which saw it as an extension of its own line), engineered by Locke
and built by Brassey, and was opened in 1843. Meanwhile legislation of 1842
produced a plan for a national system radiating from Paris, and by 1848 about
2000km (1250 miles) of railway had been built.
Steam railways came later to some countries—Switzerland, for instance, where
the first, 24km (15 mile) long, line from Zurich to Baden was opened in 1847. In
Imperial Russia the first 22.5km (14 mile) line from St Petersburg to Tsarskoye
Selo was opened in 1837, but it was another ten years before the first section of
the St Petersburg-Moscow railway was open, using the broad gauge of 1.525m
(5ft) which became the Russian standard. Further afield, the first steam railway
in India was opened in 1854, and so was the first in Australia: both used broad
gauges, of 5ft 6in (1.675m) and 5ft 3in (1.60m) respectively. From these starts,
railways quickly spread. In Australia, although Victoria and South Australia used
the 5ft 3in gauge, New South Wales built to 4ft 8 1/2in (1.425m).
Locomotives and rolling stock on the continent of Europe were for the most
part at first derived from British practice, although both the Crampton and
long-boiler types saw much more prolonged use than in Britain—the former
particularly in France, the latter, for slow-moving freight trains, in many
countries. Outside cylinders tended to be preferred by continental designers,
who indeed tended to place more fittings of all sorts on the outsides of their

locomotives than their British counterparts. British designs generally had a
simpler and, to many eyes, more handsome appearance. Notable continental
contributions to locomotive engineering were the Belgian Egide Walschaert’s
valve gear, first used in 1848, and the injector for boiler feed water invented by
the Frenchman Henri Giffard in 1859. American influence was noticeable in
Austria, where the mountain-crossing exploits of American railroads such as
the Baltimore & Ohio had been noted, and in Russia.
NARROW GAUGE
By the early 1860s traffic on the 1ft 11 1/2in (60cm) gauge Festiniog Railway
had increased to the point at which its engineer C.E.Spooner considered it
necessary to replace horse haulage by steam locomotives. It was generally
considered impossible to build locomotives for so narrow a gauge, but
eventually two small 0–4–0 tank locomotives, with tenders for coal, were
supplied by George England in 1863; they proved successful enough for
passenger trains to be introduced in 1865. Traffic continued to increase and
the former horse tramroad was in due course fully re-equipped as a steam
railway. In 1869 it received its first double-ended locomotive carried on bogies
to Robert Fairlie’s patent of 1864, which proved considerably more powerful
than two ordinary locomotives, and in 1872 two bogie coaches, the first in
Britain, were put into service.
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A railway of less than 2ft gauge, and abounding in sharp curves, which
nevertheless carried heavy traffic efficiently and economically through a
mountainous region, was a spectacle which had a marked effect on the
thinking of railway engineers. This was emphasized by the absence of other
railways of less than standard gauge, a consequence of the Gauge of Railways
Act passed in 1846. It was realized that there was considerable scope for
railways of narrow gauge, particularly in mountainous areas, where they could
be constructed cheaply compared with standard gauge lines; not only were the

engineering works smaller, but sharper curves meant there need be fewer of
them; and the locomotives and rolling stock were small and cheap to buy and
run in proportion.
Some narrow gauge lines were built in Britain—the Talyllyn Railway,
opened in 1866, was the first narrow gauge railway laid out for steam traction
from the start—but the effect in Britain, where there were still memories of the
gauge controversy of the 1840s, proved less marked than in many other
countries. An extensive network of 3ft (91.5cm) gauge railway was built in the
Rocky Mountains in the USA; many railways with a gauge of one metre or
less were built in India; in Australia, Queensland opened its first railway on the
3ft 6in. (1.06m) gauge as early as 1865 and Western Australia followed suit.
Light railways of narrow gauge were built in many European countries as
feeders to the standard gauge network whether the terrain was mountainous or
not. France, Austria, Germany, Holland, all made use of them; and the metre
gauge was much used in Switzerland, particularly in the Alps.
After about 1870 it became rare for a developing country, in which railways
were being built for the first time, to use the full standard gauge; and in some
instances short existing standard or broad gauge lines were narrowed. This
was the case in New Zealand, where the 3ft 6in gauge was adopted early in the
1870s. The same thing happened in South Africa, where in 1872 the Cape
government expropriated the few existing standard gauge lines and narrowed
them to match the 3ft 6in gauge system built to open up the country. Most
other southern or central African countries built to either the 3ft 6in or the
metre gauge.
JAPAN AND CHINA
The introduction of railways to Japan is of particular interest. The Americans
had completed a railway across the isthmus of Panama in 1855 and among its
passengers, in 1860, was a party of samurai, members of a mission sent by Japan
to the USA to ratify a treaty of friendship. These were the first Japanese to
encounter rail travel, apart from a few shipwrecked mariners rescued by

American ships and taken to the USA before return to Japan. The Japanese were
amazed by the experience of rail travel, not merely by the speed, but even by the
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presence of several people travelling together in the same coach. For Japan had
still to emerge from 200 years of isolation during which the government not only
minimized contact with the outside world almost to non-existence, but also
restricted travel within Japan itself as much as possible. There were no passenger
vehicles: travellers had the options of an extremely uncomfortable palanquin, a
packhorse or their own feet—most, whether from choice or economic necessity,
chose to walk—and they were required to present a permit at barriers built across
the highways at intervals in order to be allowed to proceed at all.
Attendants of the samurai on the American mission recorded extremely
detailed observations of the Panama railway, from the locomotive, its
construction and working to details of the track and signalling. In 1869 the
Japanese government changed and isolation ended: the new rulers decided to
construct railways. The superintendent appointed to the government railway
bureau in 1872 was Inoue Masaru who during the 1860s had been studying
civil engineering at London University (illegally, by then current Japanese
thinking). From his studies in Britain at this period he concluded that a gauge
of 1.06m would be most suitable for his mountainous homeland, and this was
the gauge adopted.
The first railway in Japan, from Tokyo to Yokohama, 27km (17 miles) was
opened in 1872. Japan was still totally unindustrialized: Britain provided not
merely capital and equipment, but engineering and operating staff. But from
the first the Japanese intended (with British encouragement) to build and
operate their own railways and railway equipment themselves. Within 20 years
they were doing so. The first locomotive built in Japan, a 2–4–2 tank
locomotive, was completed in 1893. It incorporated many parts made in
Britain, and the locomotive superintendent under whose guidance it was

constructed was R.F. Trevithick, Richard Trevithick’s grandson. By 1907 there
were 10,760km (6690 miles) of railway in Japan, with over 2000 locomotives.
Locomotive manufacturing progressed so rapidly that from 1915 imports were
almost entirely discontinued.
China’s entry into the railway age was even later and much slower. A first,
short, line built by the British in the mid-1870s was dismantled later in the
decade after a Chinese worker was run down and killed by the train, and it
was not until the late 1890s that railway-building started in earnest, mostly on
the standard gauge.
PULLMAN AND WAGONS-LIT
By the 1850s in the USA the marvel of rail travel was beginning to wear thin,
and the discomforts, particularly during the night, were all too evident. At the
end of the decade, several people including George Mortimer Pullman were
experimenting with simple sleeping cars, and in 1865 Pullman’s first purpose-
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built sleeping car, the Pioneer, entered service on the Chicago & Alton Railroad.
By day it appeared a normal, though luxurious, passenger coach of the usual
American pattern; by night, the seats converted into longitudinal sleeping berths,
and upper berths, also longitudinal, hinged down from above the windows.
Partitions separated berths from one another, heavy curtains separated them
from the central gangway. Vehicles such as this proved popular and their use
spread rapidly. Simple dining cars first went into service in 1863, and in 1868 a
de luxe Pullman dining car was running on the Chicago & Alton Railroad.
In the late 1860s the Belgian Georges Nagelmackers visited the USA and
was impressed by what Pullman was achieving with his sleeping cars. He
returned home in 1869, determined to emulate it in Europe by forming a
company to operate sleeping cars internationally, across frontiers between
countries as well as between different railway administrations. By the end of
1872 he had sleeping cars on trial over three routes: Ostend-Berlin, Paris-

Cologne and Vienna-Munich. They were four-wheeled vehicles, with three
compartments each for four passengers, convertible for day or night use and
with a side corridor. Nagelmackers’s activities got off to a difficult start,
however: finance, persuading railways to co-operate, and attracting the
passengers all presented problems.
James Allport, general manager of the Midland Railway in England, made
an extensive tour of American railways in 1872 and was as impressed as
Nagelmackers had been by Pullman’s sleeping cars. The Midland, old-
established as a provincial railway based on Derby, had opened its own route
to London, St Pancras, in 1868, and was even then building it own route
through the Pennines to Carlisle. When complete this would enable the
Midland, in co-operation with two Scottish companies, to compete for Anglo-
Scottish traffic with the existing West Coast Route from Euston and the East
Coast Route from Kings Cross. On both of these, six-wheeled sleeping cars
were introduced in 1873.
But the Midland route to Scotland was long, and by British standards
steeply graded. Some extra attraction was needed. Allport was already having
improved coaches built, and in 1873 the Midland arranged with G.M.Pullman
to build and send over some Pullman sleeping cars (they were shipped in parts
and assembled at Derby) for operation on the Midland Railway. The first, the
Midland, entered service early in 1874: it was much more luxurious than
anything seen in Britain previously. It was also, of course, carried on bogies,
the first standard gauge bogie coach in Britain. Several others followed, some
of them ‘parlour’ or drawing room cars, luxury vehicles for daytime use.
Pullman sleeping cars provided a great inducement to passengers to use the
Midland route to Scotland when it was completed in 1876.
They were not, however, the only inducement. Ever since the Liverpool &
Manchester, most British railways had offered three, and sometimes four,
classes of passenger accommodation. On the Midland, Allport, pursuing his
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policy of improvement, had abolished second class in 1875. Second class
coaches were re-graded third class and the old third class ones replaced as soon
as possible: all third class carriages were to have upholstered seats. At the same
period, the Midland started to build bogie coaches—with compartment bodies
of British pattern—for its long-distance trains. It also continued to assemble
Pullman cars at Derby for use on other railways as well as its own, and on
occasion to modify them. In 1878 a parlour car was rebuilt to include a kitchen
and became the first dining car to run in Britain the following year, on the
Great Northern Railway between Leeds and London. Another car was
modified in 1881 to become the first railway vehicle, anywhere, equipped with
electric light.
On the Continent, Nagelmackers founded the Compagnie Internationale
des Wagons-Lit in 1876 to take over his operation, and despite earlier
difficulties it had 53 sleeping cars and 22 contracts to operate them. In 1881
the company first operated a dining car, and in 1883 the Orient Express, it
passenger coaches being Wagons-Lit company sleeping cars and dining car,
was established between Paris, Vienna and Giurgevo (now Giurgiu), Romania,
whence ferry, rail and steamer services carried passengers onward to
Constantinople. Six-wheeled coaches were used at first, but after a few months
the company’s first bogie sleeping cars and dining car were available. From
1889 the journey was made throughout by rail.
LARGER LOCOMOTIVES
Although the 4–4–0 was the typical American locomotive during the middle of
the nineteenth century, by the 1860s and 1870s larger locomotives were
needed for increasingly heavy trains. Traffic was increasing, but long single-
track routes with few passing loops resulted in a tendency for trains to become
longer and heavier rather than more frequent. Also, rail which was still light
necessitated construction of locomotives with many wheels to spread axle
loadings along the track. Three enlarged versions of the 4–4–0 developed. The

ten-wheeler or 4–6–0, first built in 1847, was initially used, like the 4–4–0, for
both passenger and freight trains. The 2–6–0 was introduced in the 1860s and,
more powerful size-for-size than a 4–4–0, came to be used increasingly for
freight trains. Where something more powerful still was needed, 2–8–0s were
used—the first was built for the Lehigh Valley Railroad, Pennsylvania, about
1866. The 4–6–0 was largely displaced from freight trains, but locomotives of
this wheel arrangement were used increasingly for heavy passenger trains.
Speeds increased as the standard of track improved.
For special purposes much larger locomotives were built. The Central
Pacific, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada, had a climb of 850m (2800ft) in
40km (25 miles), and for this a 4–8–0 was introduced in 1882. The following
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year an even larger version, the 4–10–0 El Gobernador was built, the largest
locomotive of her day in the world, She remained an isolated example, but the
4–8–0 became the first of a type used successfully on this line for many years.
Brakes had originally been applied throughout a train by brakesmen
moving from vehicle to vehicle. In 1868, George Westinghouse introduced
continuous air brakes, operated throughout the train by compressed air
supplied by the locomotive. They had the disadvantage that if a coupling
broke and the train split, so did the air pipe, with the effect that the brakes
ceased to operate on the disconnected part of the train. Westinghouse then
developed the idea of an automatic air brake, patented in 1871, which would
operate automatically on all vehicles in a train if it became divided. Air
reservoirs on each vehicle were charged with compressed air from the
locomotive through the train pipe. Reduced air pressure in the train pipe,
deliberate or not, caused a valve to open and admit compressed air from the
reservoir to the brake cylinder.
In Britain, trains tended to be lighter and more frequent than in the USA,
and track, at least until towards the end of the century, was heavier and more

substantial. W.Bridges Adams had invented the fishplate for joining rails in
1847, bringing to an end the practice of connecting rails by butting them
together in joint chairs. Steel rails were first laid in 1857, and by the 1870s they
were common on main lines. Locomotives, therefore, tended to be smaller and
less powerful than in the USA, but could have high axle loadings. ‘Single
driver’ locomotives, that is, with a single pair of driving wheels, continued to
be popular for fast, light trains, for designers feared that coupling driving
wheels together reduced a locomotive’s ability to run fast. However the typical
British locomotive for passenger trains in the last three decades of the century
was the 4–4–0 with inside cylinders and frames and a front bogie; the first
were built for the North British Railway in 1871. The inside-cylinder 0–6–0
continued to be the usual locomotive for freight trains.
British trains, then and now, were and are smaller in height and width than
their standard gauge counterparts elsewhere: the price of having pioneered
railways is that bridges and tunnels on early lines which seemed, when built, to
be of ample size have later proved restrictive and so the British loading gauge,
that is the dimensions to which trains can be built or loaded without risk of
fouling lineside structures, is smaller than that of other countries.
During the 1870s British railways experimented, amid considerable
controversy, with various types of continuous brakes—some operated by
chains, or atmospheric pressure (vacuum brakes) rather than compressed air,
some non-automatic, some automatic. In 1889 there was a serious accident
near Armagh on the Great Northern Railway of Ireland: an excursion train
fitted with non-automatic vacuum brakes stalled on a gradient and was
divided, after which the rear portion ran away and collided with a following
train. Eighty people were killed. Later the same year the Regulation of
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Railways Act 1889 made automatic continuous brakes compulsory on
passenger trains. However, while some railway companies adopted

Westinghouse brakes, more of them used vacuum brakes—a less effective
system, since it is dependent on atmospheric pressure, though simpler, for the
partial vacuum in the train pipe and cylinders could be created by a steam
ejector on the locomotive rather than a pump. The desirable aim of having all
goods wagons fitted with continuous brakes has eluded British railways down
to the present day. Most European railways adopted air brakes on both
passenger and freight stock.
The effect of the Armagh accident would have been mitigated if the block
system had been in full operation on the section of line concerned, which was
still being worked on the old time interval system. The 1889 Act not only
made continuous brakes compulsory, but also the block system, and
interlocking of points and signals. In the USA, block signalling came into use
in the 1860s, and interlocking in the 1870s.
Another important safety device which came into use in Britain at this
period affected single lines. These had been worked by timetable and
telegraph, or (from about 1860) by train staff and ticket, or both. The train
staff was a wood or metal staff, unique to its section of line, handed to a driver
as authority to take his train on to it. Where two trains were to follow one
another, the driver of the first was shown the staff and given a ticket
authorizing him to proceed. This arrangement lacked flexibility, and in 1879
Edward Tyer introduced his electric train tablet apparatus: several metal
tablets, each of which could authorize a driver to enter a section, were housed
in instruments at each end of the section which were electrically linked so that
only one tablet could be removed from them at any time. The tablet was a
driver’s authority to proceed, and the system enabled several trains to follow
one another through a section. Electric train staff instruments introduced soon
afterwards performed the same function but used train staffs of similar form to
those used for staff and ticket working.
COMPOUNDS
Compounding, that is to say expansion of steam successively in one

cylinder after another, was applied to stationary engines in the 1760s and
marine engines in the 1850s, after which, because of the resulting
economy, it became popular in this usage of the steam engine (see p. 278).
Application to locomotives was delayed until the late 1870s, presumably not
only because of the difficulty of adapting it to the cramped and specialized
layout of the locomotive, but also because exhaust steam was needed at a
fairly high pressure to draw the fire, instead of being condensed as was
usual in marine practice.