This lively historical account, first published in 1876, portrays the early struggles and development of Britain's first large-scale railway amalgamation.

First Published in 1971.This book is mainly about Nottinghamshire, but not exclusively so as there is a great deal of similarity between the four wages districts (Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and South Derbyshire) which make up the East Midlands. For a detailed consideration of the history of mining Trade unionism in the locality, reference should be made to a previous book ‘The Miners of Nottinghamshire 1914 to 1944’. The present volume contains an abbreviated account only.

Railway workers were a uniformed and respectable section of the Victorian and Edwardian working class. They built their trade unions in the face of employer hostility and their organisations played a crucial role in the construction of effective labour politics. Local political organisations owed much to the patience and creativity of railway workers, not least in small towns and country districts. Respectable Radicals uses rich archival sources to analyse this history through a series of case studies. It focuses, among other topics, on disasters, strikes, the modernisation policies of companies, inter-union rivalries and the promises and frustrations of labour politics. A dominant theme is the complex relationship between changing experiences of work, shifting trade union strategies and political identities. The result is a new perspective on a significant sector of trade unionism and on the character of labour politics from the 1890s to the 1950s.

George Hudson was the greatest British railway entrepreneur of the 19th century. In 1848, he controlled over 1,000 miles of railway and, when it came to railway promotion, it seemed he could do no wrong. However, in early 1849 it came to light that some of his business methods had been less than ethical and he was forced to relinquish the chairmanship of each of his companies. His fall from grace was spectacular and his detractors, of whom there were many, were quick to denounce him as a fraudster, a charlatan and a crook. Even today, when the name George Hudson is mentioned, these same insults are often levelled at him. This new biography takes a fresh look at Hudson’s extraordinary life, from his humble beginnings as a farmer’s boy, to becoming Lord Mayor of York before catching the railway bug. He was MP for Sunderland between 1845 and 1859. After his fall from grace, Hudson endured a 20-year court battle with the York and North Midland Railway (subsequently the North Eastern Railway) for outstanding debts. Hudson made many mistakes in creating his railway empire, but did he deserve all the vitriol that still accompanies his reputation? In seeking to answer this question, Matthew Wells looks at the evidence, including what was said about Hudson during his lifetime and what Hudson himself had to say about the actions he took.

Although a great deal has been published on the economic, social and engineering history of nineteenth-century railways, the work of historical geographers has been much less conspicuous. This overview by David Turnock goes a long way towards restoring the balance. It details every important aspect of the railway’s influence on spatial distribution of economic and social change, providing a full account of the nineteenth-century geography of the British Isles seen in the context of the railway. The book reviews and explains the shape of the developing railway network, beginning with the pre-steam railways and connections between existing road and water communications and the new rail lines. The author also discusses the impact of the railways on the patterns of industrial, urban and rural change throughout the century. Throughout, the historical geography of Ireland is treated in equal detail to that of Great Britain.

To the early railway traveller, the prospect of travelling to places in hours rather than days hitherto was an inviting prospect, however a journey was not without its fears as well as excitement. To some, the prospect of travelling through a tunnel without carriage lighting, with smoke permeating the compartment and the confined noise was a horror of the new age. What might happen if we broke down or crashed into another train in the darkness? To others it was exciting, with the light from the footplate flickering against the tunnel walls or spotting the occasional glimpses of light from a ventilation shaft. To the directors of early railway companies, planning a route was governed by expense and the most direct way. Avoiding hills could add miles but tunnelling through them could involve vast expense as the Great Western Railway found at Box and the London and Birmingham at Kilsby. Creating a cutting as an alternative was also costly not only in labour and time, but also in compensation for landowners, who opposed railways on visual and social grounds having seen their land divided by canals. Construction involved millions of bricks or blocks of stone for sufficiently thick walls to withstand collapse. However, the entrance barely seen from the carriage window might be an impressive Italianate arch as at Primrose Hill, or a castellated portal worthy of the Middle Ages as at Bramhope. This book sets out to tell the story of tunnelling in Britain up to about 1870, when it was a question of burrowing through earth and rock with spade and explosive powder, with the constant danger of collapse or flooding leading to injury and death. It uses contemporary accounts, from the dangers of railway travel by Dickens to the excitement of being drawn through the Liverpool Wapping Tunnel by the young composer Mendelssoln. It includes descriptions from early railway company guide books, newspapers and diaries. It also includes numerous photographs and colored architectural elevations from railway archives.

This open access book draws on conceptual resources ranging from medieval scholasticism to postmodern theory to propose a new understanding of secular time and its mediation in nineteenth-century technological networks. Untethering the concept of secularity from questions of religion and belief, it offers an innovative rethinking of the history of secularisation that will appeal to students, scholars, and everyone interested in secularity, Victorian culture, the history of technology, and the temporalities of modernity. Stefan Fisher-Hyrem (PhD) is a historian and Senior Academic Librarian at the University of Agder, Norway.