BBC documentary series. The very idea of an excursion to distant places became popular from the 1840s onwards. People were taking day trips and seeing parts of the country they had never seen before. However, it wasn’t all seaside and sand. Some excursion trains were set up to satisfy the public’s demand to witness public executions. Other lines transported people to enjoy horse racing and sporting events. Thousands visited resorts, spa towns and the coast. A new wave of Victorian tourists spent their cash on holidays and visited hotels at stations and beyond. The ultimate experience was often to head to the hills and sample clean air, far away from industrial grime and pollution. Working-class northerners now had access to the Lake District. However, one particular Lakeland resident, William Wordsworth, was initially not so happy about the influx of this new type of visitor.
[Music] the on the 30th of April 1851 a huge crowd came from far and wide to this race course in the northwest of England to watch the Chester cor two to one without it was the railways that made such large Gatherings possible thousands of race goers traveled on special Excursion trains sending the cups attendance rate sor the expanding transport network was at the heart of a modern powerful Britain bursting with energy and confidence Railways were Transforming Our World from the 1800s and well into the 20th century from where we work and what we eat to how we spend our Leisure Time thanks to the railways horse Racing’s Chester cup became established as a great sporting holiday a time for f and Escape as the era of steam gathered Pace the summer of 1851 would prove to be a watershed moment in the history of our nation and for a new and exciting age of [Music] [Music] leisure [Music] today most of us take rail travel for granted we use trains for easy getaways and station breaks for everything from sporting events to music festivals before the railways it was a different story for one thing traveling around the country was a very slow business only royalty and the moneyed classes could afford the time and expense of going on holiday holiday for the average factory worker toiling 12 or 13 hours a day 6 days a week the very idea of frolicking about on a beach would have seemed completely Pie in the Sky many had never even seen the [Music] sea with the opening of the pioneering Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 everything changed almost immediately the railway began carrying sightseers they came to look in appreciation at the world’s earliest major Railway Viaduct here in sanki midway between Liverpool and Manchester the cost of traveling along this architectural Wonder was the pricey sum of 5 Shillings per [Music] passenger at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester a replica of a locomotive built for that route is still in regular use for the benefit of visitors the planet was designed and built by Robert [Music] Stevenson the sanki sight seers were in the Vanguard of what was about to become a Leisure Revolution the railways eventually would offer immense freedom and opportunity to many of the nation’s ordinary working men and women [Music] but back in 1830 passengers departing from here the booking Hall of the brand new Liverpool and Manchester Railway would have been slightly skeptical a skepticism Bor from the fact that these new trains had been designed with Freight in mind rather than passengers and Luggage originally the railway company is thought that carrying goods in particular coal and minerals and the like would be the best way of making a profit but they soon realized that actually there was fantastic demand for passengers to travel by Rail and that’s because people couldn’t really get about before without the railways so the railways offer them maybe the first opportunity of visiting the local market town or visiting relatives uh and distant parts of the country and the like and so it really opened up England in a way that had never happened before this widening of travel opportunities across the social classes wasn’t welcomed by all there’s this fundamental contradiction between the idea of opening up places and people being worried that really the Hoy pooy are going to be uh coming and spoiling The View indeed the upper echelons of early Victorian society were suspicious of the very idea of leisure time for the masses they feared that inactivity could lead to social and political disorder and the middle classes felt a moral duty to educate the working masses about self improvement spare time they believed had its dangers nearly a century before the state began to provide free education rail companies were offering Sunday school children from local Mills excursions trips that could be form but had to have a moral [Music] purpose in the middle of the 19th century there was a lot of feeling amongst middle class people that the working classes needed to be protected from the sort of things that they got up to um such as gambling racing beer shops so this is an area where Railway excursions came in and it was kind of moral reform excursions soon became a national Pastime and would quickly become big business perhaps the most famous of those early Excursion entrepreneurs was Thomas Cook who started by organizing trains to Temperance meetings in the early 1840s but despite Cook’s enduring Legacy he was not alone when people talk about railway excursions the name that usually comes to mind is Thomas Cook he features in all the railway history books but there were other people operating at the same time that were much more important to the ordinary person and one of the most important in his day was a chappie called Henry Marcus who was Liverpool based uh who was contracted with the London Northwestern Railway and he by the time he’ finished he’ carried a million and a half passengers on his excursions and yet unfortunately nobody’s ever heard of him because he finished in 1869 he was generally speaking a one-man business and he didn’t leave any records so nobody know knows about him apart from what you can find in newspaper advertisements and [Music] handbills excursions that were morally improving were very important to early Railway revenues but catering to people’s vices was just as important as catering to their virtues trips to the horse races were an important source of early Railway revenue and the railways boosted the number of spectators at venues like Chester race course throughout the 1800s and well into the 20th century the railways transformed the sport of horse racing because horses could be taken by train straight to the meet being fresh and race ready top jockeys could travel around the country to ride at different meetings and it helped to build up a nationwide program of events race courses at places like Newbury cheltam and anry would eventually have their own stations the station at epom down Mounds home of the Derby would end up with nine platforms designed to cope with the massive influx of trains on Race days as well as horse racing another of the first spectator sports to be helped by the railways was prize fighting it’s amazing to think that large crowds traveled around the country to watch bare knuckle fights laying bets on men beating each other to a bloody pulp prize fights were actually illegal bare knuckle boxing so the organizers would hold the event probably at the boundary between two different CED so you didn’t know which police force was in charge and all the people would arrive uh the supporters of one priz fight on one train and the PRI fight on the other train uh they would hold the event in a field nearby and then after the event they’ get back in their respective trains and go away again it was treated as being a dubious Enterprise and frowned on even at the the time later in 1868 Parliament ended up Banning Railway companies from running prize fight specials sport was one thing but the victorians also used the new rail network to attend fashionable events that involved Spectators sometimes with a mab twist public executions had always drawn crowds and now special execution trains were laid on for Willing Spectators this quiet part Park in Liverpool was once the site of kirkdale jail and on execution days there would hang people on the Scaffolding in full view of the public on the 12th of September 1863 Excursion trains brought thousands upon thousands of people to Josel for the best view to see Jose Maria Alvarez John Hughes James O’Brien and Benjamin Thomas hang for murder a correspondent from the Liverpool Mercury reported never before was seen such a mass of people at an execution at kirkdale at a quarter to 12 there were over 100,000 persons on the ground and this number was increased by large arrivals of excursionists from Huddersfield and Blackburn up to the last moment too the rush of people from Liverpool was something [Music] extraordinary shortly after midday the four convicted murderers were dispatched simultaneously and the well- behaved if morbid crowd simply dispersed and went home 5 years later Parliament ordered that in future no executions would take place outside prisons in the 1840s the railway excursion business really took off modern West Coast Mainline trains can carry 600 passengers in 11 coaches the 2 hours Journey it takes from Manchester to London but the star part of the Railway age they went for something bigger much bigger this was the era of the monster trains which were every bit as massive as their nickname suggests in 1844 an Excursion from Leeds to Hall reportedly took 7,800 day Trippers in 250 carriages hauled by 10 locomotives millions of people were catching the railway bug leading to an Era of true mass transportation and it was good news for Britain’s picturesque towns many of which were on the coast they could throw themselves open to business the seaside holiday had [Music] [Applause] arrived it was born here Fleetwood a resort on the Lasher Coast that was created because of the railways the land initially no more than a series of sandunes was transformed into a new town and seap Port designed to cater for this new era of tourism in 1840 the first passengers arrived in search of sun Sea and Sand along the Preston and wire joint Railway dick Gillingham is a local historian with the Fleetwood Museum this was the first place from the Lancashire workers point of view which they could reach by trade uh just six years later the railway reached Blackpool and Lim and then in years beyond that other Resorts were reached by the railway and how many people were the town’s people originally expecting to turn up they were expecting a very limited number of passengers just 20,000 passengers for the year probably and in fact 20,000 came in the first month and in the first year of operation the first summer season if you like over a 100,000 people came on the train a terrific number for a town which at the time only had a population of 2 and a half thousand so it was a huge boost to the trade of the town and for somebody coming from a smoky industrial town somewhere like Charley or Bolton or Preston arriving here what would that experience have been like well when they got off the train it’s just a short walk to the beach obviously the terrific Vista in front of them the Lakeland Hills magnificent views it was an all inspiring uh thing to look out there and wonder where it all ended really in the 1840s the seaside holiday business previously The Preserve of the rich embraced the mass Market many of those traveling would have done so down this very line now known as the East Lancashire Heritage Railway in the 19th century the line provided vital links between the industrial towns of the North and the nation’s favorite Coastal [Music] getaways different Seaside Resorts attracted different clientele Blackpool became a mecca for lishers working classes while Southport appealed to the slightly better off customer moram served the West riding textile towns and became known as Bradford by the Sea the new rail connections were making Beach holiday is possible all over the country from Western super mayor to scabra eastborn to toi and Bournemouth to skag [Music] NES beaches will always attract holiday makers but in industrial Victorian Britain there was one more simple healthy attraction that was now easy to reach clean [Music] air the Lake District had already been attracting well-healed visitors and artists drawn to its dramatic Landscapes William woodsworth one of our great Romantic Poets and a native of the Lakes had written a guide book which was proving popular his famous poem I wandered lonely as a cloud was inspired by the sight of daffodils on the shores of zwater many others now wanted to sample the same air and increase their contact with nature the Railways made that [Music] possible the Finesse Railway now known as the lak side and havewe Heritage Railway was historically used for moving coal and iron ore but it was tourists to increasingly being brought into the Lakes by rail but woodsworth was horrified by the prospect of train loads of workingclass people descending upon his beloved Lakes as a new line was proposed between Kendall and windir woodsworth launched a campaign against it he believed that bringing in uncultured Travelers would destroy the beauty of the places they’d come to enjoy for woodsworth these were the wrong sort of tourists as for Holiday pastimes he wrote If a scene is to be chosen suitable to them for persons thronging from a distance it may be found elsewhere at less cost of every kind wordsworth’s campaign failed and the line opened in 1847 but one of the ironies surrounding the poet was that while he was against tourism he himself would become one of the Lake’s greatest tourist attractions woodworth’s great great great great grandson still owns ryal Mount the house where the poet lived and died well I think he was sort of partly a poet liking to be a recluse but partly wanted the public Acclaim so you have this slight balance he had on average 600 people a year coming through the house and these people would have been welltoo people they it’s a bit of a struggle to get here you’re actually making a slight pilgrimage you’re coming to see a great poet and that is a wonderful thing he would have loved that because he could have gone off into the hills and read his poetry they could have come here been given refreshment by his wife and his his daughter and his sister and the other women of the house and then he could have come in and held Court temporarily and then out he goes and that would have been played up to his ego because towards the end of his life he undoubtedly had an ego and by the time the railways had expanded and more people were coming to the area do you think that woodsworth was part of a bygone age the railways opened here in 18 1840s and he was dying in he died in 1850s so he was right at the end of his life the Industrial Age was coming there was no getting away from that um and therefore you know his age was coming to an end and the new age was starting having said that he wrote a very famous which he actually was very fond of his Guide to the Lakes which ironically was encouraging people to come to the Lake District and therefore he had this slight Paradox of I’ve written this book people should come to the lakes and yet they’re all going to come up and ruin the lake so it was this it was this SL double-edged sordo to be fair wsth wasn’t the only one who was nervous about the impact of the railways the passengers themselves often questioned the wisdom of traveling by train it took a bit of courage to go on your first train cuzz it must have been a a very mysterious experience here was this engine which somehow generated the power to pull along maybe a dozen carriages how did it work how did it get its power and would it explode which was something that did happen occasionally Excursion trains were slightly more prone to accidents than uh regular trains that’s because they tended to be longer they were running it irregular time so sometimes signalers uh kind of forgot about them uh they often used older Rolling Stock so they had more than their fair share of uh serious accidents so there was a little bit of trepidation about uh taking this new uh mechanical way of getting around but most people uh managed to set their fears aside and take the plunge because of the advantages that the railways offered the 1851 Chester cup was a great success but the day was marred with tragedy returning home from the race meeting nine people were killed when Excursion trains crashed in a tunnel between here and Manchester by June 1851 the Bolton Chronicle had had enough each week now brings its batch of Railway disasters as regularly As the World Turns around accidents are not to be waited for but prevented and to delay improvements is neglect Criminal in fact if not in [Music] law despite the concerns over safety that very same year would also see millions of people take advantage of the railways to travel to the great Metropolis many for the first time in their lives as well as opening up isolated parts of the country the railways place the capital within much easier reach of the general public and this would make all the difference when the Great exhibition opened in London Lon the exhibition was a brain wave of Victoria’s husband Prince Albert it was conceived as a grand display of the wonders of Industry from around the world and was to be temporarily cited in London’s HDE Park in a glass structure nicknamed The Crystal [Applause] Palace pictured here in later years the palace was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton a director of the Midland Railway and it was the trains that brought the crowds and average of 40,000 a day 6 million over a 6month period the great exhibition of 1851 was a real Watershed for leisure Mobility for ordinary people but the great exhibition was important in other ways as well for many people it was the first time they had seen huge crowds of ordinary people in great numbers and of course the 1840s was a time when there were great worries about chartism about riots about crowd unrest so the working classes had a bit bit of a reputation uh and people were actually quite genuinely worried that if it if there was a a big crowd of ordinary people they would somehow cause a riot and for the first time the commentators said well actually these people are quite well behaved so it was a again a water shed for perceptions of the working class in great numbers the signal was [Music] given and 1,00 tons of steel and glass came hling to the ground the Crystal Palace came to a fiery and indeed explosive end but it used in a new era for London as an Excursion destination for people up and down the country according to the times 30 years ago not one Countryman in 100 had seen the Metropolis now there is scarcely one in the same number who has not spent a day there passing of the bank holidays act in 187 71 helped to develop the idea of the weekend short break and created more opportunities for special Excursion trains by the turn of the century Resort towns like Blackpool really hitting their Glory Days A popularity that would continue well into modern times yes you feel you’re rarely on top of the world how can you be down in the dumps when your heart’s up in the clouds and you can throw away cares to the Four Winds this is the height of happiness but these huge numbers of holiday makers would simply not have been possible without the railways not only as a mass form of Transport but also as a force for social change it wasn’t true that black pool only started when when the railway came but certainly in 1846 when the the branch line reached Blackpool it heralded an awful lot of visitors and meant that there were very soon changes to Blackpool they laid out streets and walks they developed hotels lodgings churches Gas Works water supply so it made a tremendous difference uh to to the infrastructure in Blackpool as the Edwardian ER adored marketing of seide towns reach new levels of sophistication the National Railway Museum in York has an extensive collection of Railway posters featuring Resort towns from up and down the British Coast by the end of the 19th century the railway companies began to use color lithography and they had much better illustrations sometimes they would be made by the Publishers but increasingly they began to use artists to actually create their posters for them the advertising is quite aspirational the the pictures are quite carefully selected they’re telling a stor so if you look at the uh the posters for Fleetwood for example in in the 1930s uh they’re advertising the Marine Hall and the Lio it’s really something to look forward to isn’t it you spend all your year working yeah and and of course these these appeared in Railway stations with a lot of steam trains in and out those Railway stations could look pretty grimy uh and often quite somber colors and you’ve got really vibrant posters carefully positioned to catch the eye so this is really advertising as a profession isn’t it poster advertising been around for sometime but the railway companies began to take it really seriously and they had people whose job it was specifically to grab customers and get into trouble but [Music] ra Railways made all kinds of outdoor activities and recreational trips possible from cycling and rambling to angling and [Music] golf the railways transformed the World of Sport making Countrywide competitions possible and driving the formation of national sporting leagues this is the Sir Alex Ferguson stand Graham Simmons works for the Manchester United Museum and has supported the Club all his life it All Began around about 1878 when a group of Engineers and Coach Builders who work for Newton Heath Railway Depot they wanted to form a football club and so they went to their employer to ask for their help which they agreed to and from that uh the team was known as Newton Heath Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway cricket and Football Club when this film was shot in 1902 the club had just changed its name playing here in the slightly darker tops they were now known as Manchester United the old Newton Heath Club of 1902 now seen rushing to say how it was the railways which had allowed clubs up and down the country to grow not least because it meant that supporters could now travel far and wide for a away matches from Humble begin Innings to a group of Railway workers that worked hard all week and then they played football on a Saturday afternoon as a as a form of leur a form of escape with the help of the railways we’ve grown into a national and Global football [Music] club from prize fights to football and Temperance meetings to beach breaks the railways changed how Britain came to see and experience [Music] Leisure nowadays our habits have changed many of us own our own cars and we’re just as likely to Sun ourselves on the cadel so as we are in [Music] scabra but it’s amazing to think how many of the Leisure opportunities we now enjoy were first made possible by the railways by collapsing space and time these thundering beasts helped us connect as a nation in all kinds of unexpected ways and today well it’s fitting that all across the country there are restored Heritage Railways where people come for a day out to experience the wonders of steam power nearly 200 years after their transformation of our national culture and sense of identity that’s quite a tribute