Liverpool and Manchester Railway | Hacker News Reader

Liverpool and Manchester Railway

en.wikipedia.org

34 pointsdaverol12 comments

The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the moment when railways got out of beta. There had been various kinds of tracked haulage before that, but it was mostly bulk freight, usually coal. The Liverpool and Manchester in 1830 had all the key features of a railroad - steam locomotives, double track, switches, passenger carriages, tickets, and schedules. (Signals came in 1834). For the first time, anyone who could pay for a ticket could make travel plans and go somewhere useful.

Suddenly the world changed. Before that, most people never got further than 50 miles from where they were born. That changed. The world became much smaller. It's the moment when the Industrial Revolution really got going, pulled along behind a steam engine.

Fun facts, the designer and builder of this railway is widely regarded as Father of Railways [1]. He's also the original inventor of the early safety lamp namely Geordie lamp [2].

He invented the first safety lamp about the same time as Sir Humphry Davy namely Davy lamp using different principles before the invention of electrical based lamp. Geordie lamp is safer than Davy lamp but somehow the original verdict for the invention went in favour of Davy but later overturned in favour of Stephenson.

Geordie lamp is used mainly used in the mines around Newcastle and North East area, whereas Davy lamp is being used all over UK. Interestingly based on the popularity of the Geordie safety lamp in Newcastle upon Tyne and the wider Tyneside region of North East England, its native-born are called Geordie [3].

[1]George Stephenson:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stephenson

[2] Geordie lamp:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie_lamp

[3]Geordie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie

It’s incredible how much the Industrial Revolution was a purely British endeavour. The contributions of other major global powers like France, Spain, and the US were negligible compared to Britain and occurred much later.

Goes to show being first gets you nothing but your notes copied.

It got them to be world's greatest power for a century.

There ended up being 4 lines between the two cities. Hard to believe such a thing was possible in this day and age. I guess if there were no cars trains would be much more popular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool%E2%80%93Manchester_l...

> As of 2016, the fastest journey times are around half an hour, which is little better than over a century earlier.

Which is fine if the reliability and comfort have improved [checks notes] Oh, never mind then.

(For me, it'd be fine for it to take an hour if you know it's absolutely going to be an hour, you know reliably when that hour is going to be, and you're not standing for that hour in a vestibule that reeks of urine. Alas, UK trains have yet to get to grips with running to timetable and also run enough trains to not have them packed out to standing.)

Looks quite similar to those mini trains you see at different places that are popular for kids to take joy rides on.

This country used to invent and build things.

If you mean England, it still does. It just seems to sell them to overseas investors all the time. The pride was replaced with greed.

First mover advantage.

At the time, Liverpool and Manchester were proper cities, and while smaller towns, the railway that opened five years before this one that connected Stockton and Darlington clearly operated a similar model of moving goods and passengers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railwa...

So I’d argue that they were moving first!

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