Background During the
Industrial Revolution, huge tonnages of raw material were imported through Liverpool and carried to the textile mills near the
Pennines where water, and later steam power, enabled the production of the finished cloth, much of which was then transported back to Liverpool for export. The existing means of water transport, the
Mersey and Irwell Navigation, the
Bridgewater Canal and the
Leeds and Liverpool Canal, dated from the 18th century, and were felt to be making excessive profits from the cotton trade and throttling the growth of Manchester and other towns. Goods were transported between Liverpool and the factories around Manchester either by the canals or by poor-quality roads; the
turnpike between Liverpool and Manchester was described as "crooked and rough" with an "infamous" surface. Road accidents were frequent, including waggons and coaches overturning, which made goods traffic problematic. The proposed railway was intended to achieve cheap transport of raw materials, finished goods and passengers between the Port of Liverpool and east
Lancashire, in the port's
hinterland. There was support for the railway from both Liverpool and London but Manchester was largely indifferent and opposition came from the canal operators and the two local landowners, the
Earl of Derby and the
Earl of Sefton, over whose land the railway would cross. The proposed Liverpool and Manchester Railway was to be one of the earliest land-based public transport systems not using animal traction power. Before then, public railways had been horse-drawn, including the
Lake Lock Rail Road (1796),
Surrey Iron Railway (1801) and the
Oystermouth Railway near Swansea (1807).
Formation The original promoters are usually acknowledged to be
Joseph Sandars, a rich Liverpool corn merchant, and
John Kennedy, owner of the largest spinning mill in Manchester. They were influenced by
William James. James was a land surveyor who had made a fortune in property speculation. He advocated a national network of railways, based on what he had seen of the development of colliery lines and locomotive technology in the north of England. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company was founded on 20 May 1824. It was established by
Henry Booth, who became its secretary and treasurer, along with merchants from
Liverpool and
Manchester.
Charles Lawrence was the Chairman, Lister Ellis, Robert Gladstone, John Moss and Joseph Sandars were the Deputy Chairmen. A bill was drafted in 1825 to Parliament, which included a 1-inch to the mile map of the railway's route. The first bill was rejected but the second passed as the '''''' (
7 Geo. 4. c. xlix) in May the following year. In Liverpool 172 people bought 1,979 shares, in London 96 took 844, Manchester 15 with 124, 24 others with 286. The
Marquess of Stafford held 1,000, making 308
shareholders with 4,233 shares.
Survey and authorisation crosses the Sankey Brook, and the remains of the
Sankey Canal. The viaduct is in use to this day. The first survey for the line was carried out by James in 1822. The route was roughly the same as what was built, but the committee were unaware of exactly what land had been surveyed. James subsequently declared bankruptcy and was imprisoned that November. The committee lost confidence in his ability to plan and build the line and, in June 1824,
George Stephenson was appointed principal engineer. As well as objections to the proposed route by Lords Sefton and Derby,
Robert Haldane Bradshaw, a trustee of the
Duke of Bridgewater's estate at
Worsley, refused any access to land owned by the
Bridgewater Trustees and Stephenson had difficulty producing a satisfactory survey of the proposed route and accepted James' original plans with spot checks. The survey was presented to Parliament on 8 February 1825, but was shown to be inaccurate.
Francis Giles suggested that putting the railway through
Chat Moss was a serious error and the total cost of the line would be around £200,000 instead of the £40,000 quoted by Stephenson. Stephenson was cross examined by the opposing counsel led by
Edward Hall Alderson and his lack of suitable figures and understanding of the work came to light. When asked, he was unable to specify the levels of the track and how he calculated the cost of major structures such as the Irwell Viaduct. The bill was thrown out on 31 May. In place of George Stephenson, the railway promoters appointed
George and
John Rennie as engineers, who chose
Charles Blacker Vignoles as their surveyor. They set out to placate the canal interests and had the good fortune to approach the marquess directly through their counsel, W. G. Adam, who was a relative of one of the trustees, and the support of
William Huskisson who knew the marquess personally. Implacable opposition to the line changed to financial support. The second bill received
royal assent as the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Act 1826 (
7 Geo. 4. c. xlix) on 5 May 1826. The railway route ran on a significantly different alignment, south of Stephenson's, avoiding properties owned by opponents of the previous bill. From
Huyton the route ran directly east through
Parr Moss,
Newton, Chat Moss and
Eccles. In Liverpool, the route included a tunnel from
Edge Hill to the docks, avoiding crossing any streets at ground level. It was intended to place the Manchester terminus on the
Salford side of the River Irwell, but the
Mersey and Irwell Navigation withdrew their opposition to a crossing of the river at the last moment in return for access for their carts over the intended railway bridge. The Manchester station was therefore fixed at Liverpool Road in
Castlefield.
Construction The first contracts for draining Chat Moss were let in June 1826. The Rennies insisted that the company should appoint a resident engineer, recommending either
Josias Jessop or
Thomas Telford, but would not consider George Stephenson except in an advisory capacity for locomotive design. The board rejected their terms and re-appointed Stephenson as engineer with his assistant
Joseph Locke. Stephenson clashed with Vignoles, leading to the latter resigning as resident Surveyor. The line was long. Management was split into three sections. The western end was run by Locke, the middle section by
William Allcard and the eastern section including
Chat Moss, by John Dixon. The track began at the
Wapping Tunnel beneath Liverpool from the south end of
Liverpool Docks to
Edge Hill. It was the world's first tunnel to be bored under a metropolis. Following this was a long cutting up to deep through rock at
Olive Mount, and a nine-arch viaduct, each arch of span and around high over the Sankey Brook valley. The railway included the crossing of Chat Moss. It was found impossible to drain the
bog and so the engineers used a design from Robert Stannard, steward for
William Roscoe, that used wrought iron rails supported by timber in a
herring bone layout. About of spoil was dropped into the bog; at Blackpool Hole, a contractor tipped soil into the bog for three months without finding the bottom. The line was supported by empty tar barrels sealed with clay and laid end to end across the drainage ditches either side of the railway. The railway over Chat Moss was completed by the end of 1829. On 28 December, the
Rocket travelled over the line carrying 40 passengers and crossed the Moss in 17 minutes, averaging . In April the following year, a test train carrying a 45-ton load crossed the moss at without incident. The line now supports locomotives 25 times the weight of the
Rocket. The railway needed 64 bridges and viaducts, all built of brick or
masonry, with one exception: the Water Street bridge at the Manchester terminus. A cast iron
beam girder bridge was built to save
headway in the street below. It was designed by
William Fairbairn and
Eaton Hodgkinson, and cast locally at their factory in
Ancoats. It is important because
cast iron girders became an important structural material for the growing rail network. Although Fairbairn tested the girders before installation, not all were so well designed, and there were many examples of catastrophic failure in the years to come, resulting in the
Dee bridge disaster of 1847 and culminating in the
Tay Bridge disaster of 1879. The line was laid using
fish-belly rails at , laid either on
stone blocks or, at Chat Moss, wooden
sleepers. The physical work was carried out by a large team of men, known as "navvies", using hand tools. The most productive teams could move up to 20,000 tonnes of earth in a day and were well paid. Nevertheless, the work was dangerous and several deaths were recorded.
Cable or locomotive haulage , alongside the
Bridgewater Canal at
Patricroft, pictured in 1839 In 1829, adhesion-worked locomotives were not reliable. The experience on the
Stockton and Darlington Railway was well-publicised, and a section of the
Hetton colliery railway had been converted to cable haulage. The success of the cable haulage was indisputable, but the steam locomotive was still untried. The had sought to de-emphasise the use of steam locomotives during the passage of the bill, the public were alarmed at the idea of monstrous machines which, if they did not explode, would fill the countryside with noxious fumes. Attention was turning towards steam road carriages, such as those of
Goldsworthy Gurney's and there was a division in the board between those who supported Stephenson's "loco-motive" and those who favoured cable haulage, the latter supported by the opinion of the engineer,
John Rastrick. Stephenson was not averse to cable haulage—he continued to build such lines where he felt it appropriate—but knew its main disadvantage, that any breakdown anywhere would paralyse the whole line. The line's gradient was designed to concentrate the steep grades in three places, at either side of Rainhill at 1-in-96 ) and make the rest of the line very gently graded, no further than 1-in-880. When the line opened, the passenger section from Edge Hill to
Crown Street railway station was cable hauled, as was the section through the
Wapping Tunnel, as the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Act 1826 forbade the use of locomotives on this part of the line. To determine whether and which locomotives would be suitable, in October 1829 the directors organised a public competition, known as the
Rainhill trials, which involved a run along a stretch of track. Ten locomotives were entered for the trials, but on the day of the competition only five were available to compete: The
Rocket, designed by George Stephenson and his son,
Robert, was the only one to successfully complete the journey and, consequently,
Robert Stephenson and Company were awarded the locomotive contract.
Double track The line was built to (
standard gauge) and
double track. A decision had to be made about how far apart the two tracks should be. It was decided to make the space between the separate tracks the same as the track gauge itself, so that it would be possible to operate trains with unusually wide loads up the middle during quiet times. Stephenson was criticised for this decision; it was later decided that the tracks were too close together, restricting the width of the trains, so the gap between tracks (
track centres) was widened. The narrowness of the gap contributed to the first fatality, that of
William Huskisson, and also made it dangerous to perform maintenance on one track while trains were operating on the other. Even in the 21st century, adjacent tracks on British railways tend to be laid closer together than elsewhere.
Opening '' at the
Manchester Science Museum The line opened on 15 September 1830 with termini at
Manchester, Liverpool Road (now part of the
Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester) and Liverpool
Crown Street. The festivities of the opening day were marred when
William Huskisson, the Member of Parliament for Liverpool, was killed. It was easy for passengers to get down and stretch their legs, despite being instructed not to, particularly as there was an interval between the delayed passing trains. Huskisson decided to alight and stroll alongside the train, and on spotting the duke decided to start a conversation. The
Rocket was spotted heading in the opposite direction as people shouted at Huskisson to get back on the train. The Austrian ambassador was pulled back into the carriage, but Huskisson panicked. He tried to climb into the carriage, but grabbed the open door, which swung back, causing him to lose his grip. He fell between the tracks and the
Rocket ran over his leg, shattering it. He is reported to have said, "I have met my death—God forgive me!" The
Northumbrian was detached from the duke's train and rushed him to
Eccles, where he died in the vicarage. Thus he became the world's first widely reported railway passenger fatality. The somewhat subdued party proceeded to Manchester, where, the Duke being deeply unpopular with the
weavers and mill workers, they were given a lively reception, and returned to Liverpool without alighting. A grand reception and banquet had been prepared for their arrival.
Operation (now A49) at Newton-le-Willows The was successful and popular, and reduced journey times between Liverpool and Manchester to two hours. Most stage coach companies operating between the two towns closed shortly after the railway opened as it was impossible to compete. Within a few weeks of the line opening, it ran its first excursion trains and carried the world's first railway mail carriages; by the summer of 1831, it was carrying special trains to the races. The railway was a financial success, paying investors an average annual
dividend of 9.5% over the 15 years of its independent existence: a level of profitability that would never again be attained by a British railway company. The railway was purposefully designed for the benefit of the public, carrying passengers as well as freight. Shares in the company were limited to ten per person and profits from these were limited. Although the intention had been to carry goods, the canal companies reduced their prices, leading to a price war between them and the railway. The line did not start carrying goods until December, when the first of some more powerful engines,
Planet, was delivered. The line's success in carrying passengers was universally acclaimed. The experience at Rainhill had shown that unprecedented speed could be achieved and travelling by rail was cheaper and more comfortable than travel by road. The company concentrated on passenger travel, a decision that had repercussions across the country and triggered the "
railway mania of the 1840s".
John B. Jervis of the
Delaware and Hudson Railway some years later wrote: "It must be regarded ... as opening the epoch of railways which has revolutionised the social and commercial intercourse of the civilized world". At first trains travelled at carrying passengers and carrying goods because of the limitations of the track. Drivers could, and did, travel more quickly, but were reprimanded: it was found that excessive speeds forced apart the light rails, which were set onto individual stone blocks without cross-ties. In 1837 the original fish-belly
parallel rail of , on
sleepers started to be replaced. The railway directors realised that Crown Street was too far away from the centre of Liverpool to be practical, and decided in 1831 to construct a new terminus at
Lime Street. The tunnel from Edge Hill to Lime Street was completed in January 1835 and opened the following year. The station opened on 15 August 1836 before it had been completed. On 30 July 1842, work started to extend the line from Ordsall Lane to a
new station at Hunts Bank in Manchester that also served the
Manchester and Leeds Railway. The line opened on 4 May 1844 and
Liverpool Road station was then used for goods traffic. On 8 August 1845, the was absorbed by its principal business partner, the
Grand Junction Railway (GJR), which had opened the first trunk railway from Birmingham to Warrington in 1837. The following year the formed part of the
London and North Western Railway. == Signalling ==