Preface
The introduction of a policy usually depends on the economic and political background of the society at the time, and understanding the historical background of the promulgation of the bill is the premise and basis for discussing the content of the bill and its impact.
Prior to the introduction of the Railways Act 1844, the frenzied construction of private railways in 1836-1837 not only increased the length of British railway lines, but also caused great social problems, which had an adverse impact on the construction of the national railway network and the economic development of Britain at that time.
Against this backdrop, and in order to prevent a recurrence of the disorder caused by the blind construction of the railroad, Gladstone introduced the Railroad Act of 1844 in early 1844.
The rise of the railroad
Britain was still a feudal agricultural country in the 16th and 17th centuries, but in the 18th century, especially in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the rapid development of the industrial revolution, Britain began to transition from a traditional agricultural country to an industrial country. Although the Industrial Revolution did not have a sword and a sword, it had a profound impact on all aspects of human social life and greatly changed the face of the world.
The railway is one of the greatest inventions of the industrial revolution, Britain began to enter the era of railways in the 19th century, and in the 20s and 30s of the 19th century, the famous British economist and historian John Harold Clapan called the "early railway era", as of 1844, "a total of 3524.25 miles of railway lines approved by Britain have been fully put into use, accounting for about 2235.75 miles, accounting for 63.4% of the total length".
The main completed lines are the Eastern County Railway, the Great Western Railway, the Midland Railway, the London-Birmingham and other railway trunk lines, these railways are concentrated in several cities in England and southern Scotland and parts of southern Wales, with London as the base point to radiate to the country's major industrial cities, and the prototype of the British railway system was also formed during this period.
In Britain, the railway first appeared as a means of freight transport, and its emergence is closely related to the development of the British Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution began with the emerging cotton textile industry, where the invention and application of new machines such as the Jenny spinning machine greatly improved production efficiency, and then quickly expanded to other textile industries such as wool and woolen wool.
After the invention of the textile machine, the demand for metal increased dramatically due to the large number of manufacturing machines, which in turn led to the great development of industrial sectors such as mining, metallurgy, construction, and manufacturing. During the Industrial Revolution, a large number of forests were cut down in Britain due to the development of the steel smelting industry, so coal became a new energy source for smelting charcoal.
The development and use of coal further laid the foundation for the invention, use and popularization of the steam engine. After Watt obtained the patent for the universal steam engine in 1789, this new power was soon widely used in various industries throughout the country.
The widespread use of steam engines has increased the demand for coal, a new fuel. However, at this time, the volume of horse-drawn carriages, the main means of land transportation, was far from meeting the demand for coal production, and the cost of land transportation was also increasing dramatically, which meant that more coal had to be transported by sea or river to all parts of the country.
Generally speaking, due to the influence of the climate, the British shipping boom is concentrated in spring and summer, and good weather conditions during this period can ensure that ships can travel safely and punctually to and from various ports, but from November to May, due to the influence of the mid-latitude westerly winds, the strong winds on the east coast of the United Kingdom force ships to stay in port, and the heavy rain and dense fog during the same period make it difficult to travel by land, unable to meet people's daily needs and the demand of manufacturing for bulk goods such as coal.
At this time, there was an urgent need for a means of transportation that could transport coal in bad winter weather to solve this problem. As a result, wooden rail trains were introduced into transportation.
In 1829, when the Liverpool-Manchester passenger line was approved by Parliament, the directors offered a reward of £500 for the design of a locomotive that weighed no more than 6 tonnes, but that it could carry more than three times its own weight and travel at a speed of not less than 10 miles per hour.
Stephenson's "Rocket" (co-designed with his son in 1828) was undoubtedly the only one that met the requirements, and it was only when he improved on the original steam locomotive and greatly increased the locomotive power by introducing a multi-tube boiler to achieve an average speed of 30 miles per hour, and the advantages of steam power were fully realized.
Thanks to the high-quality locomotive of the Rocket, the Liverpool-Manchester railway, built by Stephenson in 1830 and put into operation, became the world's first railway line to rely entirely on steam-powered traction transportation, and it was the operation of this railway that made more and more people understand the great advantages of steam power, and the increase in passenger and freight traffic stimulated people's interest in railway investment, and many railway projects began to be brewed.
As a result, the Liverpool-Manchester railway has been hailed as "a sign of the end of the old British transport order" and ushered in the "railway era" in British history.
1836-1837 The first railroad construction frenzy
Although the advantages of steam power were demonstrated in 1830, the acceptance of this new means of transportation was still going through a process. In addition to the power factor, another important reason for the slow development of steam locomotives in the 20s of the 19th century was people's fear of this new means of transportation.
Newspapers of the nineteen-twenties of the nineteenth century described trains as "bloody, ugly, spitting monsters that not only devour peasants' land but also harm people's lives," even during the construction of the Liverpool-Manchester railway.
When the railway investigators entered the land to be developed, "the local tenants behaved in such a manner that they threw stones at the investigators and sent people to obstruct the investigators' work in the area under investigation", and some even considered "the construction of the railroad during this period to be the most serious encroachment on private property since the English Civil War".
Similar opposition came mainly from the landlord class, who feared that the construction of the railroad would break the tranquility of the estate and harm their own interests, so they protested fiercely, hoping to keep the railway line as far away from their land as possible, if not to force the railway company to abandon the plan.
This hostility to the railway improved with the opening of the Liverpool-Manchester railway, and because Stephenson adopted a new type of locomotive with fast speed and less noise, people gradually began to look at the railway in a different light, no longer thinking of the train as a smoking monster, and traveling by train gradually became a pleasure, a fashion, and people fully appreciated the novelty brought by the speeding of the train, as someone wrote at the time: " It's so fast that the professors and artists are still giving talks in Liverpool on Monday, coming to Manchester on Tuesday and Preston on Wednesday."
As a result of the gradual acceptance of this new means of transport, the number of passengers began to increase substantially, and "between 1770 and 1835 the number of passengers in the Liverpool area increased at least eightfold," and in the case of the Liverpool-Manchester railway, "the directors of the company expected to carry about 450 passengers a day, but in fact in 1835 the number of passengers averaging 1,500 passengers a day, and its total annual income amounted to £120,334, more than six times as expected".
The railroad soon reached a profit of 10 percent, and the great commercial prospect stimulated the merchants' desire to invest, and the confidence of investors in the railroad increased dramatically, as can be seen from the statistics, "30 miles of new lines approved for construction in 1831, 200.75 miles of new lines approved for construction in 1835, and a total of 900 miles of railway lines authorized by the end of 1835." As a result, some people boldly predicted that "this new means of transportation will soon replace road and river transportation as the main means of transportation."
Due to the continuous improvement of railway tracks and steam locomotives, people gradually began to recognize this new mode of transportation, and the increasing volume of freight and passenger traffic stimulated the desire of merchants to invest in railways, which, together with the good economic situation of Britain in the thirties of the 19th century, finally led to the first great frenzy in the history of railway development in Britain in 1836-1837.
In the intervening two years alone, "39 new railway ordinances were granted in Britain alone, not to mention a few in Ireland," and Parliament authorized about 1,000 miles of new routes, which was more than the total length of railways in Britain at that time.
Although the railway craze of 1836-1837 greatly increased the length of the British railway, it also caused many of the above problems, which not only hindered the further development of the British railway network, but also dealt a certain blow to the British economic situation, which urged the state to pay more attention to the problem of railway regulation, in order to solve the current problems of the railway and for the healthy development of the railway in the future, the legislative issue was put on the agenda.
The country's preliminary regulation of railways
In Britain's early years, railways were built entirely by private companies, and railroad merchants had much greater autonomy. This was not the case in continental Europe or in other countries, in the case of Belgium, where "on May 1, 1834 the State declared that the opening of any main line in the country should be decided and constructed by the State."
The same was true in France, where the Railway Law of 1842 stipulated that the construction of railways was to be designed by government-appointed designers, and that private railway companies could only lease one section of the line, and that there were strict time and conditions. "In England, the situation is quite different, the government does not interfere in railway affairs from the outset, and when the railway companies decide to build new railways, they only have to obtain the right to purchase land authorized by the government and parliament, and if they encounter obstacles, they can do so by means of compulsory purchase, after which only the magistrate sets the maximum price of transportation, according to custom.
In addition, in the 20s and 30s of the 19th century, railway construction in Britain was almost completely in a state of free development.
However, as more and more people began to accept the train as a new means of transportation, coupled with a series of problems caused by the frenzied construction of railways in the thirties of the 19th century, the British government realized the importance of regulating railways, and set up a special committee to investigate these related issues and put forward corresponding normative measures, and the state took the first step in regulating and controlling railways.