Branch Lines and Politics: The Case of Southern Albert County Railways, 1864-1911 (original) (raw)
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The journal of transport history, 2019
Reviewed by: Friedrich (Rudi) Newman , Independent Scholar, UK Railways have played a major role in global development, but from their earliest days, there have been those disquieted by their expansion. While now an accepted technology, criticisms and the eponymous "Nimby-ism" attitude continue with new proposals just as they have for centuries. This publication offers a new take on the subject of opposition to railways. References to opposition are common in many studies but near-invariably as only a small part of research concentrating elsewhere. Here it occupies the main focus, looking at its form across Britain over two centuries. The authors make no pretence of this being a comprehensive history, rather aiming to create a detailed introduction with the aim of encouraging further study. Subdivided into 14 chapters, it opens with overviews of British industrialisation, pre-railway transport and early rail network development before introducing the challenges of nineteenth century landowners and how early railway ventures were promoted. Aimed for a non-academic public audience, these chapters largely provide background for readers unfamiliar with Britain's railway development. It then commences with the reactions of landowners to the coming of the railways, followed by other types of landowner opposition. As with subsequent chapters, there is extensive use of examples and many close with an amusing, if atypical, example demonstrating the great variety of situations that occurred. Returning to Victorian rail development, it next turns to parliamentary regulation and the "Railway Interest" before considering other forms of opposition such as Sabbatarianism. With the network complete, the focus shifts to operation: varied sources of criticism (safety, stations and suchlike) and depictions in the Arts. To provide balance, examples were given of support for railways, before concluding with a substantial chapter detailing changes and issues from the 1920s onwards to the present.
The development of the railway network in Britain 1825-1911
2018
This chapter describes the development of the British railway network during the nineteenth century and indicates some of its effects. It is intended to be a general introduction to the subject and takes advantage of new GIS (Geographical Information System) maps to chart the development of the railway network over time much more accurately and completely than has hitherto been possible. The GIS dataset stems from collaboration by researchers at the University of Cambridge and a Spanish team, led by Professor Jordi Marti-Henneberg, at the University of Lleida. Our GIS dataset derives ultimately from the late Michael Cobb’s definitive work ‘The Railways of Great Britain. A Historical Atlas’. Our account of the development of the British railway system makes no pretence at originality, but the chapter does present some new findings on the economic impact of the railways that results from a project at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with Professor Dan Bogart at the Univers...
Journal of Historical Geography, 2005
Focusing on Midland Railway (MR) strikes in the 1870s and 1880s, this paper examines how the geographical properties of railway work shaped the conduct of collective action. It examines three sites of contestation within the industry discussed in terms of network and organisational spaces. These are considered in terms of the relative power of workers and managers to exploit the strategic resources available for them to conduct industrial action. The paper examines why it was so difficult for railway workers to pursue industrial action in the 19th century. It concludes by arguing that a key factor is railway companies power to define and redefine the spatial scale of railway labour variously at national, regional and local scales each configured in such a way as to hold railway workers in place. q
32 - Historical Outlines of Railways in Southwestern Ontario
1990
The following items are brief histories of the railway companies in the area between Toronto and London. Only the railways built in or connecting into the area are shown on the map below, and connecting lines in Toronto, Hamilton; and London are not included. The histories cover the years from 1850 to 1921, with some subsequent information provided for continuity. Within each of the corporate groups, the companies are listed chronologically. The sources of information are various; where the literature conflicts in dates, the more authoritative source is generally used this occasionally results in differences from popular railfan books.
Railroad Competition and its Management in the United States and Britain before 1õ14
1988
This paper offers a brief excursion into the comparative history of competition in the railroad industries of the United States and Britain. It starts from the observation that when faced with the unprecedented dynamics and costs of duopolistic and oligopolistic competition, railroad leaders in both countries searched for stability. The response in America appears to have moved from informal cooperation to pools and finally, once these had failed, to large-scale consolidations. In Britain the response and outcome were somewhat different. Having sought stability through pools, rates agreements, leases, working agreements, and corporate investment, and having found these wanting in certain respects, railway leaders were unable, for political reasons, to contemplate mergers. In any case market conditions in Britain set a close boundary on the operating economies that were achievable through cooperation. The major factors here were coastal shipping competition, especially for long-haul ...