Among the new experiences of the early industrial era for many people was railroad travel, made possible by the steam locomotive during the early nineteenth century. By 1850, Great Britain had almost 10,000 kilometers of railroad lines and Germany almost 6,000. To industrial age enthusiasts, it was a thing of wonder, power, and speed. Samuel Smiles, the nineteenth-century British advocate of self-help, thrift, and individualism, wrote rhapsodically of the railroad’s beneficent effects:

The iron rail proved a magicians’ road. The locomotive gave a new celerity to time. It virtually reduced England to a sixth of its size. It brought the country nearer to the town and the town to the country. . . . It energized punctuality, discipline, and attention; and proved a moral teacher by the influence of example.1

Like almost everything else, railroads and railway travel were shaped by the social changes of the early industrial era, including the growth of a more numerous and prosperous middle class of industrialists, bankers, and educated professionals of various kinds. Such people invested heavily in railroads, spurring the rapid expansion of railways in Britain. Moreover, travel on the new trains was segregated by class. First-class passengers occupied luxurious compartments with upholstered seats; second-class travelers enjoyed rather less comfortable accommodations; and third-class travel, designed for the poor or working classes, originally took place in uncovered freight wagons, often with standing room only and located closest to the locomotive, where noise and the danger of fire were the greatest. In 1844, regulations required that third-class carriages be roofed.

Source 17.6, dating from the 1870s, illustrates this intersection of an emerging middle class and railway travel, showing a family in a railroad compartment, returning home from a vacation.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

The Railroad as a Symbol of the Industrial Era

Notes