George Stephenson (28 page)

George won his way, confirming once and for all his position of strength. Everything was now going so well for him that the board were beginning to feel guilty at ever having doubted him during the previous years. Not long after he had put Chapman in his place, and had him removed, the directors adjourned to the house of one of their members, during one of the VIP tours, and called a special board meeting in which they passed unanimously the following resolution:

That the directors cannot allow this opportunity to pass without expressing their strong sense of the great skill and unwearied energy displayed by their engineer, Mr. George Stephenson, which have so far brought this great national work to a successful termination, and which promise to be followed by results so beneficial to the country at large and to the proprietors of this concern.

In his handling of Chapman, George had sounded in his high-flown letter as if he were playing the educated engineers at their own game, with his outraged accusations of ‘impropriety' and how he'd been ‘occasioned much uneasiness'. He must obviously by now have been using a higher class of secretary, judging by the well polished rhetoric. However, the few handwritten private letters which survive from this period show his own command of grammar to be just as shaky as it ever had been, but he is at least showing a certain calmness, and, most interesting of all, a capacity to make jokes. The following letter was written by George to Michael Longridge in Newcastle. The Losh referred to is George's former partner, the one he fell out with. Locke is Joseph Locke, one of George's pupils who later became a great railway builder. They too had apparently had some difference of opinion, if only temporarily. Some punctuation has been added – but George's spelling is unaltered.

Leverpool Feb. 8, 1830

My Dear Sir,

You quite alarm me with the newes contained in the times, we must have something new or we will be in the back ground.… do you intend to let Losh of paying any more patent right, have you not an argument with him, woent the Law compels him to fulfill his agreement – I think you have mannagered badly with the N.le [Newcastle] & Carlisle Railway to let it out of our hands, I suppose Losh & his friends has been prepared to meet you – will your frends still be subscribers to the work and if they do not will the work go on, we must have it ultimatly –

Locke has not withdrawen himself from me, I was under the nessisity of taking him from this concren to go on with the stockport bill as I could not go on with it my self on account of the marques of stafford and Robert could not get to it in time to look after the sirveying – the severe winter has pervented us geting on with our masonery so much that we can not be opened before the latter end of may or, the begining of june.

As soon as I can spare time you know you & I are to go and set the Railway out from the meditirranean to the Red Sea. & we shall send the young men to execute it. after it is done, we will take a trip to the east indes by that rute, and set them to work in that quarter after which there will be plenty of orders for boath Losh you and all the manufacturers in England. I hope you will come this way to London –

I am Dear Sir

Yours truly

GEO. STEPHENSON

The last remark is surely a pleasantry, saying that there will be plenty of work for friend and foe alike when he has taken the railway from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. George was confident enough that railways would some day cover the whole of Britain, but in 1830 he can't seriously have been planning for

Indian railways.

As 15 September, the date of opening, drew near, the invitations went out to everyone of importance in political and engineering fields in the land, from the prime minister downwards. The private views now became public views with around three hundred people being taken for short rides every Saturday afternoon, a time when construction work could be conveniently stopped and the line cleared. It was as important for the engine drivers and crew to get used to working a railway as for

the public to get used to seeing one.

At Darlington there had only been
Locomotion
to worry about. Now George had to create from scratch the whole science of organising trains in the plural, arranging signals between them, coupling and uncoupling coaches, working out timetables, who would be using which bits of line at which time, where the line could be crossed and when. He issued special coloured flags to all the enginemen to that they could signal each other. White meant ‘Go on', a red flag ‘Go Slowly' and purple ‘Stop'.

Proper signalling and safety precautions were vital because there were still great fears, in the public prints and in the public mind, about the risk of fatal accidents. Great efforts were made to spread the idea of railways being safe and smooth. The
Liverpool Mercury
did its bit to allay public fears about riding on railways by printing helpful little notes. It guaranteed that ‘locomotives operated so smoothly that water would not spill from a wine glass' and that ‘riders could read and write while travelling, as readily as in their arm chairs at home'. A tame medical expert was paraded, one Dr Chalmers, after rumours had spread that speeding was bad for the eyes. (It's interesting how many supposedly harmful activities have been said over the years to be bad for the eyes.) Dr Chalmers assured potential passengers that even speeds of thirty-four mph would ‘cause no inconvenience or alarm nor would the eye be disturbed while viewing the scenery'.

All the big guns replied in the affirmative to their invitations, from the Iron Duke and Sir Robert Peel to Fanny Kemble and George's Newcastle friend and partner, Michael Longridge. George wrote him a personal invitation – mentioning first of all yet another trip he'd organised for the directors. It was, of course, another success for ‘yours allways truly'.

Liverpool July 4th 1830

My dear Sir,

I duly received yours of the 26th of June. I am well aware that the sentiments expressed in it are sincere, and I know no one who rejoices more than you do at my welfare. The trip was a very delightful one to me, as we took the Directors and a load along with us for the first time. Mr. Bald from Scotland was with us and was I believe highly gratified. If I had slacked the Reins of our horse on that day, they would have run over the ground in less time.

Being as you know a very cautious man and desirous of doing things moderately, we were much longer than we need have been.

In coming back with the Directors not more than half the power of the engine was applied on many parts of the line. On our return home Mr. Lawrence had a splendid dinner provided for the party.

The formal opening of the Railway it is intended shall take place on the 15th of September, when I shall be glad to see you, and hope you will come a few days before, by doing which you will have an opportunity of seeing the different
horses training on the ground
. You ought I think to bring Mrs. Longridge with you, as it will I should imagine be a treat to her. I will take care to have Lodgings provided for you either at my house or elsewhere.

I am dear Sir,

Yours allways truly,

GEO. STEPHENSON

Mic: Longridge Esqr.

p.s. You shall have my opinion on the form of Rails in the course of a few days. I think the I Rails an infringement of your Patent, I have seen Foster and told him so.

G.S.

As Fanny Kemble had predicted, there was a great demand for tickets and places for the opening celebration. Guest houses suddenly started boasting about their nearness to the railway – a complete reversal of only a year or two previous when no one wanted to be thought to be anywhere near the dreadful railway line. A hotel in Wavertree Road, Liverpool, described itself as only a few hundreds from the railway tunnel, of all places, and offered ‘sitting apartments and bedrooms, furnished in the completest manner', and ‘wines and spirits of the choicest quality'. Another hotel owner built a grandstand outside his hotel, and a massive public one, holding one thousand people, was constructed beside the Sankey Viaduct. There is an early example of ticket touting, at least that's how it appears from a local Liverpool paper where a stock broker was offering seats in the carriages to people who bought shares through him. He must have managed to collar quite a number of tickets, none of which was meant for sale in any way but given free to directors' guests and other important people.

Two days before the opening, Liverpool was crammed with visitors, just as it is today before the Grand National, and it was difficult to find anywhere to eat or sleep. On the day itself, Wednesday, 15 September, crowds were assembling three hours before the opening at the company's engine yards at Crown Street and at least fifty thousand had gathered to watch the trains pull out of Liverpool.

There were eight locomotives, each pulling its own train, each with its own colour to assist the important passengers find their place. The tickets were printed according to the colour of the train.

The
Northumbrian
was the newest and most developed of the
Rocket
type engines, but even as it led the triumphal procession Robert Stephenson had ready for delivery in Newcastle an even newer engine which was to replace it as a brand leader in a matter of weeks – the
Planet.

George was in charge of
Northumbrian
, and he probably did most of the driving himself, but there were a couple of brakesmen on each engine to do the dirty work. There was also a flagman assigned to each train, travelling at the rear, acting as the first guardsman.

From the list, it will be seen that the others drivers were George's son, his brother, and his leading assistant engineers, such as Locke (now back to help), Gooch and Allcard, all known to railway historians for their later successes. Swanwick was hardly more than a boy, the son of a great friend of George's, and had only recently been taken on as one of George's apprentices (paying fifteen shillings a week for the privilege). He later became George's private secretary and assistant.

The Duke of Wellington, as prime minister, was in his own specially designed carriage, dripping with gilt and crimson drapes, which was in the middle of the leading train drawn by
Northumbrian
. The other VIPs included Lord Grey (later prime minister), Lord Melbourne (later prime minister), Sir Robert Peel (later prime minister), the Earl of Salisbury (father of a later prime minister), Prince Esterhazy (the Austrian ambassador); a host of earls and viscounts including Gower, Wilton, Glengall, Lauderdale, Belgrave, Ingestre, Cassilis, Sandon, Colville, Dacre, Delamere, Granville, Stanley, Skelmersdale and Wharncliffe; many leading MPs such as William Huskisson, Arbuthnot, Calcraft, Gascoyne; Bishops like Coventry and Lichfield; engineers such as George Rennie, Rastrick, Wood and Vignoles. It was estimated that the eight trains held 722 VIP passengers in about thirty separate coaches.

It is not recorded if the king had been invited, though the status of the monarchy at the time was not very high. George IV, who had just died in June 1830, had been known mainly for his girlfriends and good times and had been succeeded by his brother William IV, who was known for his love of the sea and nicknamed Sailor. (Without knowing it, everyone was waiting for Victoria.)

They'd been very lucky to get the Duke of Wellington and he'd been rather brave to come, considering that reports from the northern provinces had indicated that he was no longer considered the country's number one hero, saviour of the nation, but a reactionary old style Tory who was against any change, especially anything smacking of parliamentary reform. He'd already fallen out with some of his younger, more liberal Tory cabinet ministers, such as Huskisson, over his intransigence. Several moderate Tories had pushed the duke into attending the opening, hoping he might make his peace with Huskisson, bring the extremes of the party together and keep the reforming Whigs at bay. The reform movement had been growing for some time and was finally to sweep away Wellington and the Tories later that year and allow in Grey as prime minister, maker of the 1832 reform bill. Parliamentary reform was, however, just one element in a general feeling of social discontent, made worse by unemployment and economic depression. The Tories were particularly hated in the north west since the Peterloo massacre of 1819 when the Tory government called in the troops to a public meeting of factory workers and eleven people had been killed.

The duke had never believed the stories from the north about dissatisfaction, dismissing it as simply a few radical agitators stirring up the working classes, and considered himself perfectly safe to come and see, and be seen, at the Liverpool opening. In one way it could be argued that railways – to which he was lending his great name by attending the opening – were indirectly hastening the reform movement. ‘Parliamentary reform must follow soon after the opening,' wrote a Manchester reformer just before the event. ‘A million of persons will pass over it and see that hitherto unseen village of Newton; and they must be convinced of the absurdity of its sending two members to Parliament whilst Manchester sends none.'

The directors knew, even if the duke didn't, how unpopular he was and had made elaborate arrangements for his security. Police guarded the entire thirty miles of the route and all railway crossings had been closed except one at Huyton. (Seat of yet another later PM.) All the same, there was talk of disaster in the air. In his diary, just two days before the opening, Greville records a talk with his brother-in-law in which he mentions the great ceremony due on the fifteenth, but ‘fears ruin and the collapse of the Government'. One of the precautions taken to ensure the safety of the duke was that his train should have sole use of one line of the track while the other seven trains would proceed, at six-hundred-yard intervals, on the other line. If this had not been the case, disaster might have been averted.