Unlocking the Early Railway Manager - Pt 4 - The Ex-Soldier Myth

I have come to a revelation. One of Britain’s most noted railway historians of the last 50 years, Michael R. Bonavia, was just plain wrong in his 1971 book, The organisation of British Railways when he claimed that ex-military men, such as Morrsom and Huish, played a large role in the early railway industry. His theory stated that as ex-officers they were some of the only individuals around at the time that had experience of marshalling large bodies of men in hierarchical organisations, that directors chose them to command their embryonic railway companies.[1]

As I showed in my last blog post on this topic (here), the evidence from the 1848 railway officials directly simply didn’t support this as only 3.54% of railway managers listed had military titles. But one study wouldn’t be enough to disprove an argument. My initial thought when encountering this was that perhaps the 1848 directory was published too late in the industry’s development to adequately reflect the ex-military influence. So I moved to catalogue the 1841 railway officials’ directory in my possession.

This directory listed the officials of 26 of Britain’s railways, which between them employed 84 men in 96 senior management positions. Naturally, this sample left out some the country’s railways. Yet, given the small size of the industry at the time, the 26 constituted a good sample of industry’s management class. Of the 84 managers, only 2 (2.38%) were listed as having military titles. These were Colonel Landman of the London and Greenwich Railway, and Captain William S. Moorsom, of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway. Both were employed by the company in an engineering capacity.

Although, the sample vexed me as I knew that in 1841 Captain Mark Huish, who would later become the first General Manager of the London and North Western Railway, was Secretary of the Glasgow, Paisley and Greenock Railway at the time.[2] Therefore, I was worried that many railways were left out and the contribution of some military men may have been overlooked. But this was a minor concern. Overall, this research backed up the evidence from the 1848 directory that military men did not play a major role in railway management in the early railway industry.

Finally, I looked at the 1847 directory. This would be even more helpful at confirming the extent to which ex-officers were involved in the industry, as it detailed far more information about companies’ management class than the other directories. They only listed those individuals who were the top managers within the railways, such as the engineers or secretaries. Yet, the 1847 directory showed, particularly within the larger companies, the names of individuals serving in other senior management capacities, such as Locomotive Superintendents, Accountants and Treasurers. Thus, it would allay my fear that I was missing in the other samples military officials who had not taken up positions at the very head of companies, but which were fulfilling senior administrative roles.

The 1847 railway official’s directory contained the names of 167 individuals who were serving 82 railways in 219 positions. Of these only 3 were military men (1.80%). These were Captain Moosom, working as engineer for the Southampton and Dorchester Railway, Captain Huish, working as General Manager for the L&NWR, and Captain F.A. Griffiths, who was Secretary of the Southampton and Dorchester Railway. Thus, while this differs from the percentage of military men listed in the 1848 directory (3.54%), which probably reveals that the 1847 directory wasn’t as accurate or as wide-ranging as I initially thought, overall it confirms the minimal involvement of ex-military men in the management of the early railway industry.

Thus, over the three samples I have been able to show, without a shadow of doubt, that the notion that military men were the driving force in early railway management is erroneous. Indeed, while some military men may have not listed their titles in the directories and may have been missed, this is an almost insignificant fact against the tiny percentage of individuals that did list their titles. Indeed, there is nothing here to suggest that ex-military officers had a central role at all. Furthermore, it seems that this myth, as it now can rightfully be called, may have originated from the legend of one Captain Mark Huish. He was an innovator in railway management, while being notorious for his hard-headedness, and thus he looms large in the history of the early railways.[3] But, consider this: he was the only ex-military man who went down in history, but if they were truly prolific in the industry, wouldn’t we have heard of more?

[1] Bonavia, Michael, The Organisation of British Railways, (Shpperton, 1971) p.9-26
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Huish
[3] Gourvish, Terry, Mark Huish and the London and North Western Railway, (Newton Abbott, 1972), p.255-267

The Philanthropy of Railway Companies - 1910

One of things that I've noticed when going through the minute books of the London and South Western Railway was the large number of donations the company made to charitable causes, especially in the 1880s, 1890s and early twentieth century. However, it was also noted that the railway companies, for unknown reasons, refused many requests to contribute to organisations on many occasions. Yet, this was all I saw of the charitable activities of railway companies in the period. Therefore, imagine my surprise when found in the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers a report detailing all the charitable donations that British railway companies made in 1910.

In that year the railway companies of England, Wales and Scotland (I have excluded Ireland) earned £116,240,054 and cost £72,170,459 to operate.[1] In the same year, the industry donated a mere £14,068 4s 0d to external organisations, the large proportion of which were of a religious or charitable nature. This constituted a measly 0.000195% of the industry’s entire operating costs for 1910. Thus, the railways of Britain, while in large part seeing to the needs of their own workers though housing, pensions, training and healthcare schemes, were miserly when giving to those beyond their organisational borders.

Reflecting the paternal activities of the railway companies, the majority of their donations were to ‘Hospitals, Infirmaries and Dispensaries,’ which totalled £6,690 15s 6d. Combined with the donations to other ‘medical’ organisations listed amongst the recipients, ‘Convalescent Homes and Nursing Associations’ (£424, 5s 0d) and ‘Ambulance, medical, surgical aid, and truss societies’ (£308 1s 0d), the total that the railway companies gave to these types of bodies was £7,423 1s 0d, or 52.76% of the overall total. The fact that medical organisations were the largest beneficiaries of what little charity the railways provided, is indicative of the fact that they relied on them to support their own workers who fell sick or who were disabled in the course of their employment. Therefore, propping up medical organisations through donations was extension of the railways’ own internal paternalistic activities.

Religious organisations received the next largest amount of charity from the railway companies. ‘Church funds’ and ‘missions’ received £1,698 3s 0d overall (12.07%). As has been stated in earlier blog posts (here and here), early on different railway companies had varying approaches to religion, ranging from indifference to active encouragement. The fact that different attitudes were still present by 1910 is shown by the different proportional amounts that companies gave to such organisations. The London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) gave £100 5s 0d, or 9.17% of its overall total, to religious organisations, while the Great Western Railway (GWR) gave £125, or 9.89%. Yet the Lancashire and Yorkshire (L&YR), North Eastern (NER) and Great Central Railways (GCR) gave nothing, while the London and North Western Railway gave £822 1s 8d to churches and their attendant organisations, 31.22% of their overall total. Given that most donations were decided on by the companies’ directors, the varying contributory amounts given to religious bodies clearly related to the different levels of religiosity existing within company board rooms.

The early twentieth century was also a period when railway companies were starting to provide opportunities for their employees to train externally; opening up opportunities for them to gain further experience and possible promotion. To this end the railway companies donated £1,110 18s 0d (7.89%) to educational institutions. Looming large amongst the recipients was the London School of Economics (LSE), which at the time was training London based clerks in the art of railway management. You can read more about the courses in some of my earlier blog posts (here, and here). The five railways who sent clerks to the LSE in 1910 were the L&SWR, GWR, GCR, NER and Metropolitan Railway. Additionally, £1,278 14s 0d (9.09%) was spent on ‘Mechanic’s, Seamen’s and Fishermen’s Institutes.’ However, the majority of this total was constituted by the London and North Western Railway giving £1,087 10s 0d to the Crewe Mechanics’ Institute where it sponsored training 42 for individuals. Yet, as shown, the railways that were giving to educational institutes to varying degrees. This is indicative of the fact that the idea that railway employees could advance themselves and boost their careers through work-based education was only starting to permeate the industry.[2]

Overall, I do not have space to discuss all the donations that railway companies made in 1910 and have only mentioned the most prominent recipients here. However, what this post has shown is that the donations that company boards made could represent the state of the industry at the time, the beliefs and ideas of directors, and the environment in which the companies operated. Thus, more research needs to be done on this forgotten area of railway history to see how much we can learn about the attitudes of directors and managers. But then, I think I have lost count now of the areas I keep flagging for further research.

[1] Railway Returns 1910
[2] House of Commons Parliamentary Papers [HCPP], 1911 (266) Railway companies (charitable and other contributions, 1910). Return to an order of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 10 August 1911;--for, return "showing in detail the amounts contributed by the railway companies of the United Kingdom, during the year 1910, to institutions and associations of various character, not directly controlled by the companies, and not for the exclusive benefit of the companies' servants."

Unlocking the Early Railway Manager - Pt 3 - Three Engineers (again) and Some Soldiers

This is the third part of the ‘Turnip Rail Project’ that I hope will determine the nature of early railway manager. For those of you who are unaware of the process I am undertaking, I will, on my blog, be doing some new and original research. Simply put, our knowledge of early railway managers is minimal. There are some historians who have made broad statements about their backgrounds and work, however, more actual statistical research needs to be done. If you would like more information please see the first Blog post in the series (here) and the follow-up (here) where I presented my first findings and preliminary thoughts.

Principally, the 1848 Railway Officials Directory showed that three engineers, Joseph Locke, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson, dominated the engineering activities in the early British railway industry. However, my good friend Kevin was good enough to point out that many of these engineers may have been appointed for ornamental reasons so as to lend integrity to the company and allow them to attract potential investment.

I thought I would look a bit further into this. I found that of the 51 companies that had Locke, Brunel and Stephenson involved, in only 23 cases was their engineering role shared with one or more other engineer. Thus, the possibility of their appointments having ‘ornamental’ status was increased in these cases.

This left 28 of the cases where Locke, Brunel and Stephenson were the sole engineer listed, and while the actual day-to-day engineering of these lines may have been under the charge of men in their employ, the whole of the engineering side of their businesses would have been under their ultimate control. The 28 lines on which they had charge of engineering totalled 1396.16 miles, or 33.17% of the 4208.85 miles that the three men were involved with in some way. The 28 concerns were mostly small or medium sized railways, and the only large one was the Great Western Railway over which Brunel had complete control of its engineering affairs. Thus, as they were only engineers involved their appointments were more than just being ‘ornamental.’

Conversely, the 23 companies that had multiple engineers, but were under the three men’s partial charge, constituted 2812.6875 miles, or 66.82% of the total. Indeed, in many of these cases the railways were some of the largest concerns in the land, such as the London and North Western, London and South Western, Midland, York, Newcastle and Berwick and South Eastern Railways. Thus, it could be argued that the sheer size of the companies meant that the work involved in engineering was simply beyond the scope of one engineer.

This said, only six of the 23 railway companies were over 100 miles long, leaving 15 railways that were short in length but with multiple engineers engaged on them. The total length of these 15 railways was 679.58 miles (16.15%). Subsequently, these companies were the best candidates for being railways where the involvement of one of the engineering luminaries was for the purposes of attracting investors. Lastly, in only five cases, all of which involved Stephenson, was there any hint of him taking an ‘ornamental’ position as he adopted the title of ‘Consulting Engineer.’

Thus, there seems to be three tiers of these engineers’ involvement in the companies. Firstly, there were those companies where they had sole control, and while they may have been originally appointed for ‘ornamental’ reasons to attract investors, they had practical responsibilities. Secondly, there were cases where they did share control of engineering within a company with another individual, but the size of the company may have precluded sole control being possible given their other commitments. Indeed, these companies were some of the largest and, therefore, were most unlikely to have appointed them for ornamental reasons as the companies didn’t need that type of support to gain investment. Lastly, there were a handful of companies where they were most likely appointed for ornamental reasons because they shared the engineering title within small railway companies that possibly didn’t need two engineers. Therefore, the proportion of engineering appointments of these three engineers that were purely ornamental was seemingly small.

I also want to talk about the ‘military’ aspect of management. One of the principal claims by railway historians has been that ex-military officers were brought in to manage the early railways as they were some of the few individuals who had experience at administering large bodies of men. As stated in the last blog, the the 130 in the sample had 322 management posts. These were held by 226 individuals. If I am to believe Bonavia’s assessment of the senior management within the early railways, military men should feature prominently among the senior managers, especially in the administrative positions.

Unfortunately for Bonavia the evidence doesn’t support his argument. In the 1848 sample only 8 of the 226 (3.54%) men involved in managing Britain’s railways were listed as having a military title. Of these, seven were ex-army captains and one had been a member of the Royal Navy. Of the eight, three, Jee, McClean and Moorsom, were engineers; four, Badham, Hartnoll, O’Brien and Charlewood, were secretaries; and one, Mark Huish, was ‘manager.’ Of course, there may have been more military men within the 226 listed managers that didn’t cite their military titles, so there may have been more that I am missing. Furthermore, there may have been more ex-military men employed further down in the companies’ hierarchies that were not shown as the directory covered only senior managers. Yet, on this information alone it could be tentatively said that, amongst the senior managers of Britain’s railways in 1848, the number of military men was smaller far than Bonavia supposed. In reality I have been a bit bold with this statement. But, hopefully, the level of involvement by ex-military men may become clearer when I look at the other railway official’s directories from 1841 and 1847.

Unlocking the Early Railway Manager (The Turnip Rail Project) - Part 2 - Three Engineers

So this is the first part of my ‘Turnip Rail Project’ to actually feature research. I have had one of my friends describe it as a ‘research Time Team.’ If last weeks’ Time Team is anything to go by I certainly hope not; they found very little. For those who didn’t read my previous blog post, this is a project that I will present as I go that will determine the nature of the early British railway company managers. I will, therefore, include all my preliminary thoughts, mistakes and ideas. Primarily I will focus on the railway manager in the 1840s using three ‘railway officials’ directories from 1841, 1847 and 1848. If you want a bit more background, have a look at my last blog post here.

Anyway, in my time off over the last few days, away from my PhD and work, I have been ploughing through and processing the information contained in the 1848 directory of railway company officials. Yes, I am really that wild. I have also been watching Deadwood at the same time, so at least I can say that I have been doing something enjoyable (although Deadwood is pretty grim). Despite this distraction it has been a laborious task. But, the fruits at the end were most interesting.

I chose to start on the 1848 directory simply because it contained more information than the other two, and would reflect the state of British railway administration at a time when railways were in their ‘teenage’ years. In total I have collected data from 130 individual railways that were listed in the directory. For each, I have catalogued the number of officials in each railway, the number of posts listed, the names of the individuals and their positions. I have also noted the mileage of each railway, and in total the 130 railways operated 7117.55 miles of line in 1848. Originally I had calculated that there were 45,000 miles, but it is a wonder what a missing decimal point can do to my calculations.

Firstly, I will look at the sample of the managers’ post holdings. In total, 130 railways had 322 senior managerial posts according to the directory. Of these, 178 (55.28%) post were engineering roles (Engineer, Consulting Engineer, Assistant Engineer, Resident Engineer). Of course, I didn’t think straight at first, and for a very short while fell into the trap of thinking that this was 178 individual engineers. However, after playing around with Excel, I revised the stats. There were in fact 92 individuals, taking 177 positions on 123 railways. This meant that for some unknown reason 7 railways did not employ an engineer or did not list one. This may need a bit of looking into.

What is interesting is that while many Engineers only took assignments with one company, possibly indicating local relationships with the railway builders, personal connections with directors and individuals coming in from other industries to try their hand at railway building, a good number served multiple concerns. Three of the individuals on the list are names that have gone down in railway history. In 1848 Robert Stephenson (shown) was serving 26 railway companies, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Locke were both working with 13.

It is unlikely that they were directly involved all the time, and it is clear that on many of the companies that they worked on they received help. For example, Robert Stephenson was co-engineer with William Baker on the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stour Valley Railway, as well as J.E. Errington on the Lancaster and Carslisle Railway. Stephenson was also co-engineer on the London and North Western Railway with Joseph Locke. Lastly, Isambard Kingdom Brunel had a staggering seven Assistant Engineers on the Wiltshire, Somerset and Weymouth Railway. However, this was a unique example. In the majority of cases railways had only one or two engineers. Furthermore, the two engineers occasionally took the separate roles of ‘Resident Engineer,’ who was employed by the company, and ‘Consulting Engineer,’ who was called in when required. However, I admit that this was the arrangement on the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) and it may have been different elsewhere.

Going back to the ‘big 3 engineers,’ (Brunel, Locke and Stephenson) I feel that the evidence does suggest that railway engineering in this country in 1848 was controlled by them. 51 of Britain’s railways had the 3 individuals involved. Simply based on the number of companies in existence, this put 28.81% of companies under their ultimate or shared engineering control. Yet, the engineers served many of the largest railway companies at the time, such as the London and North Western Railway, the London and South Western Railway, the Great Western Railway, the Midland Railway, the Eastern Counties Railway, the South Eastern Railway, the South Wales Railway and the York, Newcastle and Berwick. Thus, if mileage is taken into account, the three engineers were heading up engineering activities on 4208.85 miles of Britain’s railways, or 59.13%. Quite simply, this is a staggering amount of influence on the emergent railway industry.

Of course my brain is now buzzing with ideas about the influences that these relationships had on technology, more specifically the development of broad verses narrow gauge railways. After all, it wouldn’t be hard for the narrow gauge ideas of Locke and Stephenson, who engineered 3186.76 miles of Britain’s railways between them (44.77%) in 1848, to dominate when Brunel, who favoured broad gauge, only engineered 1022.08 miles (14.36%).

Yet, this isn't the overall purpose of the project. Hopefully in my next blog I’ll detail some of the findings and thinkings about the rest of the individuals in the survey. I'd be very interested to know whether the other engineers that weren't working with the luminaries had any links to them and what their backgrounds were. Also what about the other individuals listed? They were predominantly secretaries and their backgrounds were may be hard to get at. Also in the sample there were few managerial titles that we see in later railways such as 'Locomotive Superintendent' or 'Traffic Manager' and it'd be interesting to see if there was a correlation between the size of the railway and where these titles appear in the directory...anyway, I'll leave my musings for another time.

Pleas keep using the hash-tag - #TurnipRailProject - if you tweet about it!

Unlocking the Early Railway Manager - A Project to Follow

One of the main areas of research that has yet to be covered by railway and business historians is the nature of the early British railway manager. Of course, some historians have commented on this topic before, however, few have done any real in-depth research on it. Bonavia in his 1971 book on the organisation of British railways gave little time to how railways were managed before 1923. Subsequently, he only gave broad statements as to who became the first senior managers in British railway companies. In his estimation ex-military officers were prominent in railway management after lines had opened, as they had experience at coordinating and marshalling large bodies of men. Also heavily involved were the ‘secretaries’ of companies, although, he did not comment on their backgrounds. Lastly, involved were the engineers, men such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Joseph Locke and William Cubitt, who, while they built the railways, they also played a role in the administration of them. [1]

Overall, Bonavia’s history did not give a full picture of railway management within early British railways (which I classify as being before 1860) and there remains a large gap of knowledge amongst historians. I acknowledge that all three groups of individuals, the ex-military men, the engineers and the secretaries, all played a role, but to what extent did individuals from each of these actually get involved in the industry? Which group dominated? Therefore, what is needed is a statistical survey of the management class in the formative years of the British railway industry

In the next few posts I hope to answer a these questions. But I start from a position of not knowing the answer. I sit here with no conclusions and with a blank canvas to fill. I do, however, have on my desktop three directories of railway officials in pdf format from 1841, 1847 and 1848. In the next few weeks I will be researching them and my findings, as they come, will be posted on the blog. But this will be an on-going process that I hope you follow and as such I will not hold back from posting my thoughts, erroneous conclusions, premature ideas and mistakes as the research moves forward. I will also detail my research processes and how they change (which they predictably will). Hopefully, this will make for interesting, and entertaining reading.

I will first be looking at the 1848 directory as it seems to have a lot more information in it on early railway managers from a larger number of railways than the other directories. It was also created at a point where the railways are just starting to come into their own as an industry. Thus, it would provide information on managers when the industry was starting to demand large numbers of men to administer the railways. So, on with the show, I’ll report back soon.

P.S. Oh, I will be using a hash-tag as the research goes on - #TurnipRailProject - Please use it!!

[1] Bonavia, Michael, The Organisation of British Railways, (Shpperton, 1971) p.9-26

Working Out Costs in the Early Railway

The way that early railway managers controlled cost is a bit of an enigma to us. We know to a good extent how this was done after the 1870, however, when the practice of cost and management accounting started, why it started and how the statistics that early cost accounting techniques generated were applied, is a bit of an unknown quantity in railway (and business) history.

Indeed, the only real research that has been done on this area was undertaken by Terry Gourvish in the 1970s when he looked at Captain Mark Huish’s management of the London and North Western Railway Between 1846 and 1858.[1] The only failure of this excellent study is that it focussed on a man who was a unique innovator in railway management practice. Yet, Gourvish didn’t study the cost accounting techniques of the majority of railways. Furthermore, the innovative techniques, such as the ton and passenger mile statistics which worked out the cost of moving one ton of goods or one passenger one mile, were abandoned by the L&NWR after Huish was forced out of the company.[2] Therefore, there is a research vacuum that needs to be filled.

In my studies of the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) I have determined that the origins of cost accounting within the company are to be found in the Locomotive Department. The expenditure of the department represented an area of company operations were costs were determined by the performance of drivers, the quality of the coal and the efficiency of the locomotives themselves. Thus, it was only natural that with so many variables that the genesis of the L&SWR’s cost accounting could be found there.

Yet, in my studies I have also found that the company compared the performance of its locomotive stock with that of other companies frequently. Indeed, by the 1860s I am aware that this was a regularly undertaken exercise.[3] The implication is, therefore, that not only was the Locomotive Department where cost accounting developed on the L&SWR, but it was where it was to be found in the elsewhere emergent industry.

Notably, the first case of comparison mentioned in the L&SWR Locomotive Committee minute book came on the 24^th April 1840 at the Locomotive Committee, only a year and a half after the L&SWR had started operating. This was comparison of the costs of the L&SWR’s motive power with that of the London and Birmingham (L&BR) and Grand Junction Railways (GJR).[4] The letter, which informed the committee of this information, came from Edward Bury, the Locomotive Superintendent of the London and Birmingham Railway since 1838.[5] What was contained in the letter is unknown, however, it is most likely to been the cost of locomotive operation per train mile.

Therefore, this first comparison allows a number of conclusions to be made about early railways’ cost and management accounting. Firstly, statistical measurement of locomotive operating performance would have to be the same on different railway companies for informative comparisons to be made between them. Therefore, this reveals that the L&B, GJR and L&SWR, were collecting the same sorts of information relating to locomotive operation.

However, when this process of statistical uniformity amongst railway companies began is unknown. In Bury’s letter to Joseph Woods he stated that the results presented were from the ‘half year ending December 1839.’[6] This either means that the origin of the L&SWR formulation of cost accounting can be found in universal norms that were widely known when it started operating, or, it was part of an industry-wide formulation process, whereby different locomotive department chiefs collaborated to lay down a particular set of performance measures. Whatever the answer is, it is clear that these standards developed very quickly within the industry.

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[1] Gourvish, Terry, Mark Huish and the London and North Western Railway, (Newton Abbott, 1972)

[2] Gourvish, Mark Huish and the London and North Western Railway, p.255-267

[3] TNA, RAIL 411/469 Locomotives, boilers, rolling stock, etc: correspondence, 1868-1878, half yearly report of costs in the locomotive, carriage and wagon department, November 11th 1871, p.280

[4]The National Archives [TNA], RAIL 412/4, Locomotive Engine, Locomotive Way and Works, Locomotive Power, and Traffic Police and Goods committees, 24th April 1840

[5] Marshall, John, A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers, (Newton Abbot, 1878), p.46-47

[6] TNA, RAIL 412/4, Locomotive Engine, Locomotive Way and Works, Locomotive Power, and Traffic Police and Goods committees, 24th April 1840

[7] TNA, RAIL 411/469 Locomotives, boilers, rolling stock, etc: correspondence, 1868-1878, half yearly report of costs in the locomotive, carriage and wagon department, November 11th 1871, p.280

"Tailing in" - Perilous Early Railway Practice

I am always constantly astounded by some of the operating procedures that occurred in the early railways. Indeed, on many occasions I worry that the railway managers, rather than serving the public, were in fact trying to secretly get them injured, maimed and killed through instituting procedures that were highly dangerous. The most baffling of these was the practice of ‘tailing-in’ passenger carriages or, as we would know it today, ‘fly shunting’. This practice, which would probably scare the majority of us, was very common at terminal stations the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR), as well as on other railways.

My first encounter with the practice came on reading a Board of Trade report on an accident that occurred at Hampton Court station in 1855. This gave a good description of ‘tailing in.’ A train would stop at a ticket platform outside the station where the passengers would have their tickets checked. At the same time the locomotive would be detached and driven on a little way. A rope, of about 16 yards in length, would then be hitched to the front carriage and the rear of locomotive, while a porter stood on the front of the first carriage. The train would then begin to pull away and as the rope became tight the carriages would pick up speed. The train would proceed down one road and a set of points would then be changed. Just before the critical moment, the porter on the carriage would unhook them and the carriages and, driven by their own inertia, they would glide into the station.

Or that was the theory. In the case in question the porter had not acted in time, or perhaps had some trouble in detaching the rope. Either way, the train dragged the one carriage it was hauling from the rails. The Board of Trade official criticised the practice. He could not see why carriages could not be detached just outside the station and pushed into it. Furthermore, he stated that if this method of shunting was to be continued it was desirable that some better way of detaching the rope be found, rather than relying on a porter. Lastly, he stated that there was no written procedure laid down by the management or the station agent. [1]

For all the failings of the practice, it did continue on until the 1868 at most L&SWR terminal stations. On the 9^th of June 1868 at Windsor station, a train was being roped in, and as the procedure was about to finish, the carriages violently hit the buffers.[2] In this case the driver had pulled the train, consisting of eight carriages, at too fast a speed. The result was that three passengers were hurt, two of whom were travelling in the rear carriage. Overall, the accident report called tailing-in ‘dangerous and objectionable.’ Furthermore, it must be remembered that in this period, trains did not have the sprung buffers that ours have today, and as such 3 individuals were injured. [3]Thus, on the 19^th June the L&SWR forbade the activity across its network.[4]

‘Tailing in’ was a product of a railway industry that was developing. Almost alien to our eyes, it represented the very ad hoc origins of some early railway practices, in that early railway managers were groping forward, unsure and constantly learning the best ways to manage services, technology and operations. Yet, as the industry developed, the L&SWR’s management did not feel it necessary to change what had been proven to be an evidently a poor and dangerous procedure, and this was presumably for cost reasons. Therefore, it was only after the accident at Windsor that the practice was halted, the L&SWR’s hand being forced by the Board of Trade.

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[1] TNA, RAIL 1053/53, Railway Department report on accidents for 1855. (Described at item level), report on accident at Hampton Court Station, 14^th December 1855

[2] Williams, R.A., The London and South Western Railway, Volume 2: Growth and Consolidation, (Newton Abbott, 1973), p.47

[3] House of Commons Parliamentary Papers [HCPP], 1867-68 [3959-V] Reports of the inspecting officers of the Railway Department to the Board of Trade, upon certain accidents which have occurred on railways during the months of April, May, June, and July 1868. (Part third.)

[4] Williams, The London and South Western Railway, Volume 2, p.47