Liverpool and Manchester Railway: Encyclopedia II - Liverpool and Manchester Railway - Historic Line

Liverpool and Manchester Railway - Historic Line

Liverpool and Manchester Railway - Up to Construction

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was intended to achieve cheap transport of raw materials and finished goods between Manchester and its natural port outlet; Liverpool. The main means of transport (the Bridgewater Canal ), built some 50 years earlier was felt to be making excessive profits from the existing trade and throttling the growth of Manchester. (Similar feelings with regard to the railways led in turn to the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in the 1890’s). There was support for the railway from the cities at either end, but opposition from the landowners over whose land the railway was originally proposed to pass. The initial survey for the line of the railway being done surreptitiously and/or by trespass was defective, (George Stephenson was given a very hard time on this during Parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill), and Parliament threw out the first Bill for construction of the railway on these grounds. The second Bill was for a railway on a considerably different alignment, avoiding the properties of particularly vociferous or effective opponents of the previous Bill, but as a consequence facing the challenge of crossing Chat Moss

Liverpool and Manchester Railway - Construction

Designed by George Stephenson and Joseph Locke, the 35-mile line was authorised by Parliament in 1826, at the second attempt, but construction was quite difficult, including the famous 4.75 mile crossing of Chat Moss bog.

Having found it impossible to drain the bog, Stephenson began constructing a large number of wooden and heather hurdles which were placed on the surface of the bog and sunk into it using stones and earth until they could provide a solid foundation - it was reported that at one point tipping went on solidly for weeks until such a foundation had been created. To this day the track across Chat Moss floats on the hurdles which Stephenson's men laid and if one stands near the lineside one can feel the ground move as a train passes. It is worthy of note that the line now supports locomotives twenty-five times the weight of the Rocket, which hauled the first experimental train over the moss in January 1830.

In 1829 there was still sufficient doubt as to whether the locomotives of the day would be powerful enough to operate the railway that the directors of the company prepared an alternative plan to use stationary steam engines and haul the trains between engines by rope. The gradient profile of the line was arranged so as to concentrate the steep grades in three places (either side of Rainhill at 1 in 100 and down to the docks at Liverpool at 1 in 50 ) and make the rest of the line very gently graded, say 1 in 2000. To determine whether and which locomotives would be suitable, the directors organised the Rainhill Trials. When the line opened the final passenger section from Edge Hill to Crown Street railway station was cable hauled as was the section down the Wapping Tunnel.

The line was built as double track. Firstly, there was no convenient means of operating the line as single track as the line predated the telegraph. Secondly, the amount of traffic was expected to require double track.

A decision had to be made about how far apart the rails of the double track should be. It was decided to make the space between the separate tracks the same as the track gauge itself, so that is would be possible to operate over-gauge trains up the middle, something which probably never happened. In later years, it was decided that the tracks were too close together, restricting the width of the trains, so the gap between tracks was widened.

Liverpool and Manchester Railway - Opening

The line opened on September 15, 1830 with termini at Liverpool Road, Manchester (the station is now part of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester) and Edge Hill, Liverpool. The festivities of the opening day were marred when William Huskisson, the popular Member of Parliament for Liverpool, seized the opportunity of a temporary halt to alight and talk to the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, through the Duke's carriage window. Standing on the permanent way, he misjudged the speed of an approaching locomotive Rocket and was run over, becoming the world's first railway passenger fatality. (He was not killed instantly; an engine was detached and rushed him to Eccles, where he died in the vicarage). The somewhat subdued party proceeded to Manchester, where (the Duke being deeply unpopular with the labouring classes) they were given a lively reception (bricks thrown, etc), and returned to Liverpool.

Notwithstanding the unfortunate start to its career, the LMR was very successful. Within a few weeks of opening the LMR had run its first excursion trains, carried the first mails, and was conveying road-rail containers for Pickfords; by the summer of 1831 the railway was carrying tens of thousands by special trains to Newton Races.

The tunnel from Lime Street to Edge Hill was fully completed in 1836 and when it opened carriages were separated from their engines and lowered to Lime Street station by gravity, their descent controlled by brakemen, and hauled back up to Edge Hill by rope from a stationary engine. The tunnel is approximately 1811 metres (1980 yards) long.

On 30 July 1842 work started to extend the line from Ordsall Lane to the new Manchester Victoria station. The extension was opened on 4 May 1844 and Liverpool Road closed.

Liverpool and Manchester Railway - Pioneer

Being one of the first railways, many lessons had to be learnt from experience, but not many passengers were killed except by their own negligence. The LMR developed the practice of red signals for stop, green for caution and white for clear which spread by the early 1840s to other railways in Britain and the United States. These colours later changed to the more familiar world standard of red, yellow and green. The LMR was also responsible for the gauge of four feet eight and a half inches (4' 8½", or 1435mm) that came to be used more or less universally.

In 1845 the LMR was absorbed by its principal business partner, the Grand Junction Railway; the following year the GJR formed part of the London and North Western Railway.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Historic Line", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki