Public Transport: How Did It Develop Between 1830 and 1930?

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Public Transport:

How Did It Change and Develop

Between 1830 and 1930?

        I have chosen the topic of how public transport changed and improved, as this is a wide topic spanning two centuries, I shall limit mine from 1830 at the birth of the train’s expedition between Manchester and Liverpool, to 1930, just before World War Two. I have chosen this topic mainly because of London’s Tube; I have been interested in the underground for quite a while and I thought it would be interesting to see the Tube’s predecessors and how the underground was created. Also, it is an invention that affected a lot of people- nowadays people can get from south England to north England in a matter of hours; unthought-of in the time of horse and carriage, as then it would take days.

        [1] It’s the big day in 1830; millions of people have arrived to see the new locomotive in action, bursting to see if it shall succeed or fail. “A whopping speed of 35 miles an hour! Can you imagine?” one woman exclaims as the crowd thickens. This train is to travel from Manchester to Liverpool- both leading cities in the Industrial Revolution. [2]Although very basic trains have been around since the times of BC, this was the longest route made to that date, making it an important milestone. The train to travel this exceedingly long route (for that time) was the Stephenson’s Rocket, built by George Stephenson and his son, Robert Stephenson. [3]8 years later, again in Liverpool, a new concept was developed- the mobile Post Office. Trains were starting to be used between Birmingham and Liverpool to sort mail and deliver them on route without stopping- on a slightly adjusted passenger train. This greatly lowered the delivery time but didn’t slow down the route of the passengers; this concept of delivery is still used for city-to-city mail delivery. [4] By 1840 1,500 miles of railroad track had been built, but it wasn’t until almost six decades later that the next big step in locomotive transport was to undergo- the steam train. One of the first steam trains was the Snowdon Railway- built in 1896. It only travelled at 20mph, so was quite slow, but it was more stabile on the track- [5]the Rocket was quite prone to rocking. The Decapod then greatly increased time in 1902- to 70mph, over tripling the speed already set by a steam train. The next big step was to electric trains, North Eastern Railway (NER) cracked all the speed records with a 90mph train in 1904. This was short-lived, however. Coal was still a much easier and cheaper way to power the trains, so NER soon reverted back to steam engines.

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        [2]Meanwhile, popularity of inner-city transport such as trams and the Underground had never been higher. London Metropolitan Railway set out to develop an efficient system from the train stations on the outskirts of London (there weren’t any mainline stations in the heart of London) straight into the centre. This electrical line, the electricity picked up from a third rail, was opened in 1863. Trams, however, are much older. The first tram was invented and used in Harlem, 1832. This was a horse-driven tram. Werner Von Siemens designed an ergonomical overhead wire system, which transferred electricity to power the tram using ...

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