For Temperance, the Beach and Sport - The Victorian Excursion Train

The excursion train was an important part of British leisure pursuits in the Victorian period. Social, political, leisure and work groups made agreements with railway companies, or through intermediaries that soon became known as travel agents, to convey them to and from a place in a day for cheaper fares. This reduced the cost of travel for the passengers, while providing the companies guaranteed with income.

It is unsurprising that the first excursions were on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), Britain’s first intercity line, in 1831. In first year the company had offered some of the first special trains in the country. Two weeks after the line was inaugurated, in October 1830, individuals could travel from Liverpool to the Sankey Viaduct and back in the Duke of Wellington’s coach for five shillings. This was followed by a special train for visitors to the Liverpool Charity Festival a few days later.

However, the first real excursion was run in May 1831 when the company agreed through an independent promoter to take 150 members of the Bennett Street Sunday School from Liverpool to Manchester and back again for one third of the regular fare. This set the pattern for all excursion trains from then on.[1]

Excursions soon grew in number and popularity with groups being conveyed to race meetings, church bazars, or just to visit cities for a day out. The Sheffield & Rotherham Independent reported in April 1841 that during that year’s Whitsuntide Holidays the North Midland Railway would operate ‘an excursion train from Sheffield to Derby, when no doubt that thousands of our townsmen will take the opportunity of visiting that pleasant town and its arboretum.’[2] Probably the most interesting excursion train of the period was arranged by Bodmin and Wadebridge for a public execution in 1836.[3]

Furthermore, it was in this period that Thomas Cook began as an agent arranging excursions. The first he organised was on the Midland Counties Railway in 1841, and took 570 temperance campaigners to a rally at Loughborough. His business grew rapidly and by 1850 it spread as far as Scotland and North Wales. However, he was one of many travel agents that appeared in the period.[3]

However, with locomotive technology limited, and with carriages small in capacity, excursion trains were huge in size and have been described as ‘monstrous.’ An excursion train from Sheffield to Leeds in September 1840 was pulled by five locomotives and possessed seventy carriages.[4] Another in September 1844 from Leeds to Hull carried 6,600 passengers in 240 carriages pulled by nine locomotives.[5] Indeed, such was their size that in the period excursion trains usually arrived late at their destinations. This meant that the passengers only had a short time at their destination, given they had to rejoin the train to return soon after.

The Great Exhibition between 1 May and 15 October 1851 was the high point for the early excursion trains. By this time many small lines had been absorbed into larger networks that had terminals in London. Consequently, travel agents and groups were able to arrange excursions to the Exhibition from as far afield as Yorkshire. Indeed, some groups even set up ‘exhibition clubs’ to arrange the trips. Thus, all companies serving London experienced considerable traffic increases when the Exhibition was open. The Great Western Railway’s passenger traffic increased by 38.3%, the London and South Western’s by 29.9%, the London and Blackwall’s by 28.5% and the South Eastern;s by 23.8%. Furthermore, Thomas Cook claimed that, acting as agent, he had brought 165,000 individuals to Euston. Thus, most concluded that the railways and excursion trains contributed to the exhibition’s success.[6]

Excursions by this point were an accepted railway activity, even though many railway companies, for example the London and North Western Railway, were not entirely certain they were profitable. Indeed, after the Bank Holiday Act of 1871 the number of excursions exploded and they took vast swathes of people to large religious gatherings, coastal resorts, race meetings, cities, sports events, the boat race and to fairs that many organisations ran. Furthermore, the National Sunday League, which was a not-for-profit organisation set up in 1855 to pressure for museum and park openings on Sundays, began arranging their own excursions from the 1870s. After a small start, by 1914 the League organised 540 such excursions in that year. Furthermore, large companies, such as Bass in Burton and the railways themselves arranged day trips for their workers, principally to the seaside. The GWR’s annual ‘Swindon Trip’ drained the town of half its population, giving a day out to around 26,000 people.[7]

Ultimately, the growth in excursion train numbers after the late 1860s was spurred on by people possessing greater free time and the increased range of available leisure activities. However, the exact number of people using them across the period is unclear. A Royal Commission on Railways between 1865 and 1867 found that the L&YR, L&NWR and Midland Railway carried 1,140,000 excursion passengers in 1865. This constituted 3% of their passenger revenue.[8] This proportion possibly grew and in the period between 1901 and 1909 excursion trains contributed 10% of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway’s income from passengers. However, the latter company served principally passenger districts, whereas the three former companies did not, and the samples were from different periods in the history of the excursion train. Thus, the comparison is not really fair.[9]

Nevertheless, the excursion train added to the cultural life of the country in the Victorian period, and allowed many to experience much that they wouldn’t have had the chance to otherwise. Thus, for the people of Britain, the excursion train was a great success.

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[1] Simmons, Jack, The Victorian Railway, (London, 1991). p.272

[2] The Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, Saturday, April 10, 1841, p. 8, Issue 1107

[3] Simmons, Jack, ‘Excursion Trains,’ The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, (Oxford, 1997), p.150

[4] The Sheffield & Rotherham Independent Saturday, January 02, 1841, p. 2, Issue 1093

[5] Simmons, The Victorian Railway, p.273

[6] Simmons, The Victorian Railway, p.275

[7] Simmons, ‘Excursion Trains,’ p.150

[8] Simmons, The Victorian Railway, p.278

[9] Simmons, ‘Excursion Trains,’ p.151

Making a Mess of a Station - Extending Waterloo Station in 1878 and 1885

Waterloo handled 86,397,666 passengers in financial year 2009/10, making it Britain’s busiest railway station.[1] Yet, Waterloo has always been one of Britain’s busiest stations. The structures that make up the current Waterloo Station complex were the product of the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) rebuilding of the station to cope with the massive increase in passenger traffic after 1890. Yet, the station that stood before the current incarnation looked very different. It was a mess, actually consisting of three stations with three nick-names.

Waterloo Bridge Station, as it should be more accurately known, was built because in 1839 the LSWR's main line did not reach London, its first terminus being at Nine Elms. Yet, the LSWR was determined to strike reach the city, and in 1848 the company opened their new line to Waterloo Bridge. As Colin Chivers and Philip Wood have commented, this new station was never intended to be a terminus, nor the great station that it became. Indicative of this, an original plan (which I cannot reproduce) shows that 3 of the 6 lines went through the station and into the back wall, so as to allow easy extension to the city or Southwark.[2] Yet, the hoped-for extension did not happen and Waterloo quickly became the point on which all LSWR operations were focussed. The first major alteration to the station came in 1860 when four more platforms were built on its north side, bringing the total to 8.[3] Through various alterations this number had risen to 12 by 1878.

After 1870 the number of passengers that the company carried on its line, particularly on its suburban routes, began to increase rapidly. In 1870 the LSWR conveyed 13,387,357 passengers, in 1875 this had risen to 20,998,310 and by 1880 30,294,406 people travelled with the company. This was an overall increase of 126.29%.[4] I have commented in an earlier blog post that this put a strain on the company’s services and about the many complaints were directed against the management as a result (Found Here). But, with such an unexpected rise in the level of traffic it is unsurprising that the management of the LSWR was caught unawares. Thus, in 1874 the LSWR's directors decided to act. While an aspect of their plan was to add an extra line between Clapham Junction and Surbiton,[5] they predominantly focussed on the bottle-neck at Waterloo Station. Here many trains were kept waiting outside the station as there were insufficient platforms for the ever-increasing number that were scheduled to cope with the rising traffic.

However, without an accurate way of predicting how traffic would grow, the extension of Waterloo Station from 1874 onwards was a very ad hoc affair, that reflected that the LSWR managers were simply reacting to the business environment and had no way of knowing what the future would bring. In 1874 the company submitted in its bill of that year a plan to ‘widen and improve’ Waterloo station on the south side.[6] Opened in December 1878, the new ‘South’ station was entirely self-contained, having its own booking office and taxi yard. Crucially, it added a further two platforms to the Waterloo complex.[7]

Continued traffic growth in the 1870s meant that soon after these new platforms opened the extra capacity it provided was deemed insufficient to cope with ever-rising train movements. Thus, in 1881 the company submitted a further bill to parliament for another extension of the station on its north side.[8] Opened in stages in 1885, this new ‘North’ station added a further six platforms to the station, bringing the overall total to 18.[9] This was also technically a separate station and had its own booking office and taxi yard


This was how the station would remain until 1902 (see map - showing 1895). The ‘North’ Station served the Windsor and Reading Lines, the ‘Central’ station served the West of England Main Lines, and the ‘South’ station served the Hampton Court, Kingston and Leatherhead lines.[10] Amongst the public the nickname of  the ‘south’ station was ‘Cyprus,’ after the British annexation of 1878, and the north station became ‘Khartoum,’ after the Sudan campaign of 1885.[11]

The result was that after the adaptations of the original station in 1878 and 1885 passengers were left with a confusing three-part station. Subsequently, when Jerome K. Jerome wrote his book Three Men in a Boat in 1889 the following was said of the station:- “We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start is going to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things thought it would go from number two platform, while another porter, with whom he discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from number one. The station-master, on the other hand, was convinced it would start from the local.”[12]

Furthermore, the LSWR itself did not help to decipher the Waterloo complex for its passengers as the 18 platforms had only 10 platform numbers.[13]

In sum, in 1878 and 1885 the LSWR's management reduced the pressure of traffic on its infrastructure by expanding Waterloo Station. But while they had to do something to solve the problem of accommodating passenger traffic growth, the management could not predict how this would change in the future. Thus, If they had built too much capacity into the station this may have caused unnecessary expense if traffic growth had fallen off. The result was that the station was added to in a piecemeal manner; making Waterloo increasingly confusing for travellers. It would only be a complete rebuild of Waterloo in the early twentieth century that would unravel the mess that the extensions of the nineteenth had caused.

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[1] Clinnick, Richard, ‘From Britain’s busiest…to the quietest, Rail Magazine (March 9-March 22 2011) Issue 665, p68-69

[2] Chives, Colin and Wood, Philip, Waterloo Station circa 1900: South Western Circle Monograph No.3, (Catford, 2006), p.2-3

[3] Chives and Wood, Waterloo Station circa 1900, p.4

[4] Board of Trade, Railway Returns

[5] The National Archives [TNA], RAIL 411/247, Traffic Committee Minute Book, Minute No. 724, 17^th October 1878

[6] House of Commons Parliamentary Papers [HCPP] 1874 (14) Railway, &c. bills. Report of the Board of Trade upon the railway, canal, tramway, gas, and water bills of session 1874, p.15

[7] Chives and Wood, Waterloo Station circa 1900, p.9

[8] HCPP, 1881 (67) Railway, &c. bills. Return to an order of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 7 February 1881;--for copy of report by the Board of Trade upon all the railway, canal, tramway, gas, and water bills of session 1881.

[9] Chives and Wood, Waterloo Station circa 1900, p.9

[10] TNA, RAIL 411/255, Traffic Committee Minute Book, Minute No. 911, 18^th August 1886

[11] Faulkner, J.N. and Williams, R.A., The LSWR in the Twentieth Century, (Newton Abbot, 1988), p7-8

[12] Jerome, Jerome H. Three Men in a Boat, (London, 1889)

[13] Faulkner and WilliamsThe LSWR in the Twentieth Century, p7