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

Charing Cross Station, London, c. 1864, a coloured chromolithograph by the Kell brothers. The station was designed by John Hawkshaw and was the London terminus of the South Eastern Railway.

Railway company managers were powerful people but some left a more distinguished legacy than others.

Sir James Allport spent a career in railways, ending up as the boss of Midland Railways for 27 years, excepting a short spell spent at a shipyard in Jarrow. He was also instrumental in forming the Railway Clearing House, which managed payments between different companies to cover journeys spanning several networks. After his retirement as manager in 1880 he became a director of the company.

Under his leadership, Midland Railway services expanded and the grand station at St Pancras was opened. But he is best remembered for transforming the journeys of third-class passengers. He was the first to realise that, rather than being a hindrance to the railway company, third-class passengers were in fact a valuable asset.

Accordingly, he made third-class carriages much more comfortable and, from 1872, included third-class carriages on every train, charging passengers a penny per mile for a journey. When some angry passengers boycotted Midland Services he scrapped second class, at the same time lowering first-class fares. The result was better revenues for the railway company and a more equitable system of travelling.

© National Railway Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library

Seats for Five Persons by Abraham Solomon (1824–1862).

For his services to cheaper travel Allport was knighted in 1884. But in his later life it wasn’t the gong at the forefront of his mind:

If there is one part of my public life on which I look back with more satisfaction than on anything else, it is with reference to the boon we conferred on third-class travellers. I have felt saddened to see third-class passengers shunted on to a siding in cold and bitter weather – a train containing amongst others many lightly-clad women and children – for the convenience of allowing the more comfortable and warmly-clad passengers to pass them. I have even known third-class trains to be shunted into a siding to allow express goods to pass.

When the rich man travels, or if he lies in bed all day, his capital remains undiminished, and perhaps his income flows in all the same. But when the poor man travels, he has not only to pay his fare, but to sink his capital, for his time is his capital; and if he now consumes only five hours instead of ten in making a journey, he has saved five hours of time for useful labour – useful to himself, his family, and to society. And I think with even more pleasure of the comfort in travelling we have been able to confer on women and children. But it took twenty-five years to get it done.