Great Victorian Railway Journeys: How Modern Britain was Built by Victorian Steam Power

Great Yarmouth, Row Number 60, 1908.

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A steam train passes Weybourne windmill on the North Norfolk Railway connecting Sheringham with Holt.

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The Jetty, Great Yarmouth

The old town contains about 150 streets or passages, locally called rows, extending from east to west, in which many remains of antiquity may still be traced … the inhabitants are chiefly engaged in the mackerel, herring or deep sea fisheries which are here prosecuted to a very great extent with much success.

Yet it makes little reference to the holiday trade which was by then beginning to boom. Great Yarmouth had long been a destination for a few well-heeled tourists who enjoyed the fresh air and the perceived benefits of sea water.

It was the arrival of trains that fired up the holiday trade, with trippers coming from London and other cities to sample the delights of the east coast. Without the onset of train travel, it’s doubtful that the national passion for a trip to the seaside would ever have taken root, for travel by coach was slow and expensive by comparison. The town’s first station, known as Yarmouth Vauxhall, opened in 1844, and so popular was Great Yarmouth as a destination that one estimate insists more than 80,000 people visited the resort just two years after that station opened.

Great Yarmouth was once served by four separate train lines, and a clutch of town centre stations and no fewer than 17 other stations were spread around the borough. It was such a popular destination that the Great Eastern Railway produced postcards featuring views of Great Yarmouth to sell to its passengers.

When a suspension bridge collapsed on 2 May 1845, killing 79, the dead surely included some of the new influx of tourists. People had gathered on the bridge to watch a clown in a barrel being towed down the River Bure by a team of geese. As the barrel passed under the bridge they rushed for the other side to catch more of the spectacle, causing supporting chains to snap. Scores of people, mostly women and children, were hurled into the river and local men took to their boats to save them.

According to an account in the Norwich Gazette, tragedy on a far greater scale was averted:

It can be easily imagined that a mass of people thus precipitated into water, five feet deep, would have but a small chance of saving themselves; and but for the prompt assistance which was afforded, few, very few, would have escaped. Boats and wherries were immediately in motion and from 20 to 30 with gallant crews, were soon among the drowning people, picking them up with wonderful rapidity. Many were put on the shore in their wet clothes who went directly home, and no account was taken of the number thus saved.

The tombstone of nine-year-old bridge disaster victim Thomas Beloe, in nearby St Nicholas’ Churchyard, depicts the tragedy. In fact saving lives became something of a theme for Great Yarmouth, with local boat-builder James Beeching winning the 100 guinea first prize in an 1851 competition to find the best self-righting lifeboat.

THE SELF-RIGHTING LIFEBOAT

Lifeboat design was still in its infancy in the Victorian era and the 1851 competition was launched to design a new and better boat. It had several stated aims. Lifeboats of the future needed to be lighter in construction than previous models so that they could more easily be launched from the beach. They also needed to be cheaper to make so that more could be produced. With such generous prize money on offer the competition attracted 280 entries from across Britain, Europe and even the USA.

Following adjustments, and with inspiration taken from other designs submitted for judging, the Beeching lifeboat became the basis of the longstanding Norfolk and Suffolk class of boats. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century the design was improved, but the Beeching boat’s enduring feature was its buoyancy, with air-filled cases at the bow and stern and cork cladding. It effectively discharged the seawater which frequently swamped small, open boats through valved tubes, and an iron keel acted as ballast. It was stable, self-righting, fast, robust and comparatively roomy. Boats like this saved countless hundreds of lives during the remainder of the century.

A self-righting boat like Beeching’s was popular with lifeboat men. Analysis of the number of capsizes between 1852 and 1874 showed their instincts were probably right. In that time, 35 self-righters rolled with the loss of 25 men out of a total of 401. At the same time 8 non-self-righters capsized, killing 87 men out of 140.

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A lifeboat rests on its carriage, c. 1880.

However, a train from Great Yarmouth heading for Norwich was involved in a night-time collision on 10 September 1874 in which 25 people died and 50 were injured. It occurred after a signalling error had allowed a 14-coach mail train to rush headlong on a single track into the 13-coach passenger train from Yarmouth. Although the fronts of both trains were smashed to smithereens, the rear coaches were left relatively unscathed. One account of the accident ends with an odd incident that perplexed everyone who witnessed the wreckage:

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George Bidder (1806–1868).

It would be difficult to conceive of a more violent collision … yet it is said that two gentlemen in the last carriage of one of the trains, finding it at a sudden standstill close to the place to which they were going, supposed it had stopped for some unimportant cause and concluded to take advantage of a happy chance which left them almost at the doors of their homes. They accordingly got out and hurried away in the rain, learning only the next morning of the catastrophe in which they had been unconscious participants.

The Great Eastern main line from Yarmouth heads to Reedham, distinguished by one of four swing bridges in the area. This bridge across the River Yare, and the one at Somerleyton – on the branch line that connects Reedham with Lowestoft – spanning the River Waveney were financed by Sir Samuel Morton Peto, entrepreneur and engineering enthusiast.

Both bridges are made from a stout collection of wrought iron, brick, cast steel and timber. When it is in place for trains, the bridge ends rest on piers by the river banks. If it is open for river traffic then the bridge pivots on a central pier using cast steel wheels with a diameter of 16 inches. The load of the open bridge is shouldered by two truss girders.

Even today the bridges are an object of wonder. The man who built the bridges, George Bidder, was equally remarkable. The son of a Devon stonemason, his natural ability with maths manifested itself before he could read or write and his father had him perform in shows around the country for money, under the title of ‘a calculating boy’. Fortunately, his potential was spotted by two benefactors, who ultimately paid for his education. In adulthood he teamed up with the great Robert Stephenson to work on major railway projects at home and abroad. Perhaps his proudest achievement was to build London’s Victoria docks.

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The Reedham railway swing bridge crossing the River Yare.

The man who financed the swing bridges has a story that perhaps even exceeds that of Bidder. Sir Samuel Morton Peto was born in Woking, Surrey, to a tenant farmer. After two years at boarding school he was made an apprentice to his builder uncle, Henry Peto. In 1830 he took over the business with his cousin Thomas Grissell, and together they changed the landscape of London by building the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column, among other landmarks. The business then became involved in building railways.

After he bought Somerleyton Hall in 1844, Peto invested heavily in the area, fashioning Lowestoft into a thriving port and town. He built the railway line to it from Reedham, which opened in 1847 after some two years in construction.

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Somerleyton Hall, the home of Samuel Peto.

However, his partner Grissell was becoming nervous about what he perceived as reckless risks taken by Peto in pursuit of railway contracts. The partnership was dissolved and Peto began business anew with his brother-in-law Edward Betts in 1846. They also worked with engineer Thomas Brassey, a millionaire railway builder and civil engineer credited with an enormous number of projects. Previously Brassey had worked with George Stephenson and his acolyte Joseph Locke, and by the time he died Brassey had built a sixth of the railways in Britain and half of those in France.

The trio of Peto, Betts and Brassey built numerous railways at home and abroad. Peto earned the gratitude of Prince Albert by ensuring there were suitable rail links to the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851. However, one of the most significant contributions Peto – with Betts and Brassey – made to history was to build a rail link in the Crimea, where Britain was at war with Russia.

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The inauguration of the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851.

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British navvies commence work on the construction of a railway line between Balaclava and Sebastopol in the Crimea in 1855.

In a conflict ignited by Russian occupation of Turkish territories, British hopes of a swift victory were confounded by climate and disease. However, Britain and her allies got back on the front foot with the first strategic use of railways, built and paid for by Peto. A railway line to ferry men and supplies to the front line was in operation by 1855. Five months later the British target, Sebastopol, had fallen.

That same year Peto was given a baronetcy, and for 20 years he was an MP. But in 1866 his riskier ventures caught up with him as the frenzied speculation in railway building known as ‘railway mania’ reached its third crescendo and brought down a bank, Overend, Gurney & Company, to which Peto was deeply committed. With the bank entering liquidation in 1866 owing about £11 million, he was declared bankrupt. Peto moved to Budapest, hoping to spark railway building there, but he met with no success. He moved back to Britain but died in obscurity in 1889.

Peto had shouldered a lot of the small East Anglian lines into existence. In 1862 many of the small, east coast companies, including the Norfolk Railway, Eastern Union Railway, East Norfolk Railway, Newmarket & Chesterford Railway, Harwich Railway and the East Suffolk Railway, were mopped up by the Great Eastern Railway, along with the more major Eastern Counties Railway. Although they were now officially all one company, it took years for the competitive habit between lines to fall by the wayside.

The branch line to Lowestoft was not the only one to extend from the railway that linked Great Yarmouth to Ipswich. As Lowestoft’s fortunes increased, so Southwold further down the coast became the poorer. A lack of railway line was clearly a factor in any future prosperity the town might enjoy, so local people clubbed together to buy shares in the Southwold Railway Company that would join the main line at Halesworth.

After protracted negotiations, a 3-foot gauge was chosen for the route, which had a single track that ran for nearly nine miles. It opened on 24 September 1879. The locomotives that used the line were limited to a speed of 16 mph and before long it was quicker to cycle there than take the train. Coupled with a reputation for unreliability and a laissez-faire attitude among station staff, the line became something of a laughing stock and the subject of jokey postcards.

But there was plenty to recommend Southwold, including an attractive North Sea coastline and its proximity to Dunwich, the medieval city that was reclaimed by the sea after a series of violent storms. Victorian curiosity was piqued about the city, which by all accounts at one time had 52 churches, city walls, a Royal palace and a mint. In 1900 the railway carried 10,000 passengers, 90,000 tons of minerals and 600 tons of merchandise. It finally closed in 1929 in the face of fierce competition from buses.

Another branch line further south at Ipswich led to Felixstowe, today the nation’s biggest commercial port, which had its fate and fortunes defined by one man.

George Tomline was an enormously wealthy MP who made his home at nearby Orwell Park, named for the River Orwell, in Suffolk. After rebuilding the house he furnished it with fine art, an extensive library and even an observatory. He was known as ‘Colonel Tomline’ but the title was the result of a loose association with a regiment rather than distinguished military service.

Tomline conceived the plan for a railway line that would leave the main Great Eastern Railway at Westerfield and would head for Felixstowe via Orwell Park. On the face of it there was naked self-interest in having his own railway station. However, Tomline maintained his motive was to provide work for hard-pressed local people.

The odds were stacked in his favour from the outset. Following a concerted campaign of purchasing he already owned most of the land needed for the route. When it applied for parliamentary approval in 1875, his company was called the Felixstowe Railway & Pier Company. Within two years (and at a cost of £14,000) the line had opened with three locomotives, 19 passenger carriages and 15 goods wagons on the line. At Felixstowe he built a beach-side station, which was not only on land he owned but was as far away as possible from the Ordnance Hotel, owned by Ipswich brewery magnate John Chevallier Cobbold – a man Tomline apparently detested.

Within two years of its opening, the running of the line was given over to the Great Eastern Railway – but it wasn’t the end of the story as far as Tomline and Felixstowe were concerned. In 1884 his company was renamed the Felixstowe Dock & Railway Company, having secured the necessary permissions for construction work that would provide moorings, warehousing and railway sidings. Although Tomline gave up his interest in the railway three years later he maintained a link with the dock, which finally opened in 1886, three years before his death. Since then it has grown beyond all expectation.

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