The Early 1900's - The Railway Age

Railways were not a sudden invention; steam engines had been used in mines for over a century to pump water away. However, these engines were very large and fixed in one spot.

The idea of running wagons on rails was not new either. There had been wooden or iron track wagon-ways for 300 years, mostly in mining areas.

The first man to combine the steam engines and wagon-ways was Richard Trevithick. An engineer, he designed a steam engine that could run on wheels in 1803. In 1804, his engine pulled wagons carrying 18 tonnes of iron ore and 70 men for five miles (14km) in South Wales, but it was so heavy that the track broke when it reached five miles per hour (8kph).

Trevithick's work was continued by a number of engineers. The most famous of these, George Stevenson, worked at a mine in North East England and built many steam engines which were lighter and more powerful than Trevithick's. When Stevenson was appointed chief engineer of the Stockton and Darlington railway in 1821, he persuaded them to use locomotives instead of horse drawn coaches. The opening day, September 27th 1825, was the first time passengers were able to travel on a public steam railway.

In 1830, The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened. An engine contest was held on the line, Stevenson's Rocket winning easily in trials watched by more than 10,000 people. The Liverpool and Manchester line was the first regular long-distance passenger service in the world, and in its first year 460,000 people travelled on it. The railway age had begun.

Pickfords was part of the railway age. In the 1830's, control passed form the family to a partnership of five, headed by Joseph Baxendale. Baxendale gradually changed from using canals and long distance horse vans, to the railways.

Baxendale also helped to plan new railways. He was chairman of the South Eastern Railway Company when its line was extended to Folkestone and so linked with Paris through the port of Boulogne. He was also the first to use removable railway containers, the forerunner of today's shipping container.

Pickfords stayed in the railway business over the next fifty years by being appointed 'local carting agents' for the London and North Western Railway.

The railways made long distance transport by road or canal unimportant. Several British inventors tried to apply steam power to coaches. Gurney's steam stagecoaches and Hancock's 'four-wheeled steamers' were a novelty in the 1830's. One reason why this success was short lived was the Red Flag Act of 1865 that limited the speed of mechanical road vehicles to four miles per hour (6kmp) in the country and two miles per hour in town. A man carrying a red flag had to walk 60 yards ahead!

The first bicycles were introduced into Britain from France. There was a great craze for the hobbyhorse or dandy-horse, though it was little more than a scooter.

In 1839 a Scottish blacksmith, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, added pedals that drove the back wheel. But an invention in France in 1865 produced the more popular 'bone-shaker' bicycle, driven by pedals attached to the front wheel. To increase speed, the front wheel was made bigger and bigger until it measured five feet across with a back wheel of only 14-18 inches in diameter. This was known as the penny-farthing.

A rider perched five feet up on his saddle could have a nasty fall so it was the chain driven safety bicycle with wheels of equal size that became popular. Today's bicycle is very similar, with the addition of Dunlop's air-filled tyres, better brakes, a free wheel, three-speed gears and various types of handlebars.

Now the only new canals built were ship canals, which were for ocean going steam vessels. The Suez Canal, designed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, was completed in 1869 and work began on the Panama Canal in 1888. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in the 1890's. Between 1819 and 1900, great changes had been made in shipping by using steam instead of sail, iron (and then steel) rather than wood, and by the turbine engine. Before 1914, luxury liners were regularly crossing the Atlantic.

In the air, lighter-than-air gases were used to fill huge balloons, the largest of which were called airships.

In 1852, Henri Giffard made the first powered airship flight in France. But it was Count von Zeppelin's rigid airship of 1900 that proved air travel was possible.