Cathedrals of Steam by Christian Wolmar

Author:Christian Wolmar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

NINE

THE WORKERS’ STATION

THE RAILWAYS SERVING the East of England were an impoverished group, not least because the region was poor railway territory mostly given over to agriculture with a low population density. The potential for attracting Londoners to make shorter train journeys had been neglected by the rival companies and they struggled to establish successful markets for longer journeys. The biggest of these companies, the perennially cash-strapped Eastern Counties, had a terrible reputation for poor punctuality and delay. W.M. Acworth, who wrote an amusing history of the railways, called it the ‘pariah of companies’. He related how ‘a strapping 16 year-old’ had been refused a child’s half-price ticket by an inspector only to insist ‘that he was under twelve when the train started’, and Acworth went on to misquote Thackeray: ‘even a journey on the Eastern Counties must have an end at last’.1

Even though the north-eastern suburbs were already more extensive than those in other parts of the capital, the Eastern Counties Railway had ignored this potential market for short-distance travel through a policy of running infrequent services combined with high fares. It was, therefore, little surprise that the Board of Trade, which was generally reluctant to allow mergers of large railway companies, broke with normal practice to wave through the plans to create the Great Eastern even in the face of a wide range of objectors concerned about giving too much regional power to a particular railway company. The main component of the new company was the Eastern Counties but it also included four other sizeable railways and a number of their subsidiaries and associated companies, which did indeed result in the creation of a regional monopoly, an unusual feature at the time.

The decision to build a large station on the edge of the City was predicated on a change of attitude. The Great Eastern would now focus on the commuter market as a route to prosperity. As we saw in Chapter 5, Bishopsgate was an inconvenient terminus, both poorly located and too small, but despite various attempts in the 1850s to find another site, the poor financial state of the Eastern Counties and concern from City interests stood in the way of progress.

That changed quickly once the amalgamation went through in 1862 and the directors examined potential sites for the new station. While the Great Eastern had also taken over a few services that ran into Fenchurch Street, there was no potential for expanding this little terminus nestled in a far-off corner of the City, and negotiations with the North London Railway to make use of Broad Street got nowhere. Finsbury Circus was briefly considered as a possible terminus, as was a site in Wormwood Street, a couple of hundred yards south of the present Liverpool Street station, but both were rejected as impractical.

The only feasible site was on the east side of the North London’s terminus at Broad Street, which meant that once again the capital was about to get two adjoining stations run by separate companies and operating to a different set of destinations without any coordination.

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