Brunel: The Man Who Built the World (Phoenix Press) by Brindle Steven

Author:Brindle, Steven [Brindle, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780226484
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

It was the heaviest blow to his reputation that Brunel ever endured, but his career was too solidly founded to be shaken by it. By 1850 the Railway Mania had subsided, though a number of the lines promoted back in the 1840s were still under construction, beneath the watchful and controlling eye of Duke Street. Still, the pace of work at home had fallen off markedly, and like other British engineers and contractors, Brunel was now looking overseas for work.

In the 1850s there was, doubtless, more demand for engineers’ services from overseas, but working abroad was an uncertain business. Brunel sent an assistant engineer to produce a survey for the Piedmont Railway, but this fizzled out (1843–4). His office designed the Florence to Pistoia Railway, which was built c. 1844–8, but by the time it was finished the Duchy of Tuscany was embroiled in revolution, and Brunel was never paid in full. He had a role, at more of an arm’s length, in the planning of the East Bengal Railway (1855–9) and the Melbourne to Williamstown Railway (1858–9).

In the end, railway building all came down to money, and when the Railway Mania of 1846 subsided, and the stockmarket boom turned to bust, much of Brunel’s work – and his peers’ – dried up, which is why they had to turn their attention overseas. Brunel has often been described as extravagant, careless with his shareholders’ money but is this really fair? The GWR’s main line went a long way over budget, costing over £6 million against his initial estimate of £2½ million, but the same was true of many of the first railways, and reflected the degree to which these huge projects were a leap in the dark. Real courage was required, and in the end it was usually rewarded. The GWR paid its first dividend, of 3%, in 1841, and over the next decade, during which it was building and expanding continuously, it nevertheless returned an annual dividend of between 3 and 8%. In 1841 the GWR, which had cost £6,678,000 to build, had a stockmarket value of £8,390,000: the biggest company, the London & Birmingham, had cost £6,091,000 to build, and was worth £13,378,000, but this was an exceptionally good performance. Brunel’s critics produced endless claims about the extra cost of the broad-gauge lines, the GWR cost £56,300 per mile, higher but not spectacularly higher than the London & Birmingham, at £53,100, or the Liverpool & Manchester, at £51,000. Brunel was as well aware of the value of money as anyone: and no one who has looked at his correspondence with the GWR’s contractors would say for one moment that he erred in their favour. If the GWR was expensive, this was because of Brunel’s insistence on the highest standards of materials and execution: this was, after all, to be the ‘finest work in England’.

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