What The First Passenger Train Looked Like | Full Steam Ahead EP2 | Absolute History

the age of steam shaped how we live today the victorians laid over 20 000 miles of lines in the biggest engineering project the country has ever seen connecting our towns with high-speed links revolutionizing trade and transportation communication and recreation it was the greatest transformation in our history but how did it happen to find out historians ruth goodman alex langland's shoveling coal is something i'm going to get very very familiar with and peter ginn of bringing the railways back to life as they would have been during the golden age of steam i feel like i'm in a western this is very definitely the best team engine i've ever been on hello hey guys they will be helped by armies of enthusiasts who keep the age of steam alive on britain's 500 miles of preserved railway this is a way to experience train travel isn't it it is they'll follow in the footsteps of the world's finest engineers these are the men that built britain's railways those who ran it industrialism and those for who life would never be the same again internet pack it had nothing like the impact of the railways this is the story of how the railways created modern britain [Music] [Music] the first railways were designed to carry the heavy goods of the industrial revolution stone coal and iron but it wasn't long before they were carrying a very different cargo how did we get from a point of a railway designed for goods to a railway designed for people victorian businessman and investors quickly capitalized on this new form of passenger transport creating a network of iron roads which transformed the country but who were the people who built this network and how did they do it with the railways allowing people to travel at much greater speeds the patterns of life in britain radically changed so i'm really interested in exploring exactly who these early passengers were and what it was like to travel on the victorian railways [Music] in 1820 the only way to travel was by foot or by horse few people made long journeys walking from london to edinburgh took ten days or three days by stagecoach within a lifetime this would be cut to just seven hours by rail [Music] and yet the first trains weren't built to carry people [Music] in 1825 the stockton and darlington railway was built to move coal from the collieries of darlington to the port of stockton on teas [Music] might be a bit bumpy when it sets off yeah i'm holding on i love it i just love it here at beamish in county durham they've built a replica of the first stockton and darlington train pulled by steam elephant it's just sensational this is very definitely the best team engine i've ever been on the original was built in 1815. this is georgian this is victorian this is well before i mean it's a rickety old beast it's really quite heath robinson but this would have been cutting edge in its day wouldn't it it would have been advanced yes it would have been top of the range and do we know who built it yeah chapman and bottle chapman yeah it was a minor right okay so if he's a mine owner his primary interest is not moving people around as much call as possible and you know how how much hold could it pull this thing both on a quarter ton of cards soon miners began hitching a ride to work sitting on the coal trucks the railway owners spotted a business opportunity and started charging for the privilege the rail passenger was born well this doesn't look too bad thank you okay all aboard the first passenger carriages were nothing more than converted coal trucks this must have been amazing when you first got an opportunity to travel by the railways i love how bumpy it is but i suppose the novelty would have worn off quite quickly yeah it's nicely painted it's all lovely and clean in here that is just a wooden wagon with some wooden benches and there are accounts of these wagons filling up with quite a bit of water and obviously as it's moving the water will stash around so it'd be going over your top of your pool yeah it makes sense why the sides are so high if it wasn't any roof because that would be your only protection against the wind wouldn't it at least having something at your back not only were these early railways uncomfortable and slow they only ran short distances connecting mines with towns and ports to move people and goods across the country what was needed was a national network linking britain's towns and cities [Music] but creating this network was going to be an enormous task the problem with steam locomotives is they can't deal with any form of gradient or slope so they need to follow the same contour through the landscape so to get through a landscape like this you'd need to use all sorts of embankments and cuttings and tunnels and viaducts so that you could follow a line snake round the edge of the hills and you'd create the most efficient way of getting from a to b and all of this work would lead to essentially the biggest engineering project in britain's history the network would be built by a quarter of a million nomadic workers known as navis my god imagine effectively living outside in these conditions the boys are joining expert in rural crafts colin richards good to see you and you colin has set up a navi camp as it would have been during the 1840s [Music] the navi term came from the word navigator and the navigators were the people who built the canals for britain and that involved a lot of major engineering with the essentially as a pick and shovel and that skill was immediately transferable to the railways and they had to live somewhere and these settlements sort of move through the landscape at different periods as the railway progressed early camps were ramshackled shantytowns populated by craftsmen their families and their livestock these self-contained worlds would have been home to as many as three and a half thousand navies looking at your head alex that's gonna fit you yeah that should yeah it looks vaguely familiar this one yeah building railways was back-breaking dangerous work but there was one concession to health and safety the bowler hat so i mean we see this as a sort of dress of the gentleman don't we but what you're saying is back here in the victorian period this was the working man's hat that's right it went through a transformation over the centuries but it started out as being sort of essential protection really it's a strong shape and so if you make it strong reinforce it then it can actually take the impact out of things falling on your head excellent by 1845 navies had built over 3 000 miles of railway connecting up the nation's major cities it enabled a mass migration of people from the countryside in search of work more than doubling the populations of london manchester and glasgow [Music] before laying track the navis had to clear a path this involved bridging valleys cutting embankments and felling tens of thousands of trees if you've got a tree in the way of your railway line yeah it needs to come down and it needs to turn into sleepers to provide a smoother ride it was essential that the track could flex under the weight of the train [Music] tracks aren't anchored to the ground instead the rails are held in place by horizontal sleepers which rest on a bed of crushed stone known as ballast the best material for sleepers was a hardwood like oak which was both durable and shock absorbing [Music] as it's hitting that it's almost ringing like a stone this is the heartwood round here and that's the kind of stuff that makes absolutely perfect sleepers for every mile of track some 2 000 sleepers were needed the problem is there was never enough wood in england and there hadn't been really since medieval times so a lot of the railway builders had to resort to importing foreign timber particularly from north america but you certainly wouldn't let a fantastic piece of english oak like this go to waste starting to open up a bit i'm amazed that you or i have never had a hernia don't say that there's still a lot more wood to go oh that's a proper crack let's go and another one go in there who's going there she goes [Applause] there we have it there we have our sleepers two or three in there yeah early railways were built while britain was still industrializing so they were constructed using crafts and tools that had been around for centuries [Music] here's our sluice gate and the mechanization they did have was often water powered that is filling up extremely quickly isn't it and an endless source of power all right let's get soaring [Music] alex and peter have come to gunton park sawmill which was built in the 1820s oh how do you do chaps good afternoon they're meeting bev warner and his team who helped restore and now run the mill we're just going to pull this in yeah surprisingly easy it's surprisingly easy is it i thought this was mechanized this meal but the old man used to do this so don't worry you will be as a young man quite capable he could be a young man peter although the wood was cut using water power getting the tree into the mill requires muscle power all right pull come on me oh well that is going slowly how about let's go let's get up with it paul paul [Music] come on you're nearly there i should go easy in a minute they're doing not at all badly especially for the first time paul to move the tree weighing three tons the team are using a system of rollers and pulleys a technique going back millennials oh that's it keep going on that one folks what's up now then bev it's back into the uh mill itself and we have yet more work for you to do right all right let's go let's head off lead on in the 1840s this water-powered sawmill was state-of-the-art it was originally built to cut timber into gate posts and house beams but such was the demand for railway sleepers it would have been working round the clock now in terms of the cutting here it's not a case of driving the saw through the timber what you want to do is actually drive the timber through the saw yeah it's all done by that inching mechanism that was the clever bit that was designed by the he was a clock maker who actually made it uh so you can see here how this is just the work of a clockmaker it's just ticking like a clock isn't it i mean i i thought it was going to be loud here but actually it's really quite a mellow sound we're getting there here we go here we go now we are starting to cut even more power now this is the only surviving working water powered sawmill in the uk so simple get so complex such a fine piece of kit in its heyday this mill would process eight trees a day this blade is currently set to its lowest setting but back in the 1820s 1830s when this was first built it would have been tearing through this wood at a rate of knots just incredible the power that's in here and we're through and there we have it another sleeper mills like these relied on being close to a water supply so it wasn't long before the railway builders turned to portable steam-powered saws instead [Music] the wooden sleepers are cut to size now there's just one more job to do before they're ready to be laid [Music] they must be protected with a coat of bitumen is bitumen it's actually a form of tyre which you can dig out of the ground and it's almost in between a coal and an oil and it was discovered that if you apply heat to it it had this incredible preservative quality and it would also bind stone to create sort of time academ but for our purposes for the sleepers this coating was a barrier against the dam so you could extend the life of a sleeper by 30 years by applying this coating so your investment in the railway was made far more secure by this coat in a bitumen [Music] right here we go the bitumen needs to be applied quickly and evenly before it cools that's too much too much too much less less look how quickly that's going cold though yeah this is not easy sealer it's just peeling off the wood not wishing to be critical but that's a little bit lumpy along there and so you know there's bitumen along there which isn't actually needed for the purpose of preserving the timber what's amazing from our perspective is we just don't know how people did this in the very early days of track laying and just by doing it here in freezing conditions we're learning that in fact we've either got to get the timber warmer we've either got to get this warmer but to get that coat applied nice and evenly we certainly need a little bit more heat here don't we there is another option go on we work faster okay then let's get on okay here we go here we go one two building railways was big business navis worked in gangs competing for employment on the ever-growing number of passenger routes being built across the country well you understand that you get paid by the number you do right not the time it takes you and also if you were to use you know more bitumen than rival gangs yeah then you would be out of favor you could lose work because there's you know competition right across the country and if you're using too much material and you're too slow you're out on your ear let's get this right come on we've got two more opportunities here so i've got to just keep the brush now or brush this brush that's not a brush i think you left it in the pot a bit longer seen better days i'll give it a clean up we'd be fine don't worry that's right there we go although a navi's life was tough they earned three times more than an agricultural laborer yeah yeah yeah yeah what's that over there the navies they worked hard but they also sort of played hard and they needed uh sort of a contrast to the the effort they were putting in during the day and alcohol was an escape really do you want to try a little snifter one one one right one one and one you always say that yes i know exactly isolated on a camp away from society navis were heavy drinkers [Music] records show they drank an average of nine pints of beer a day some even resorted to making their own illegal moonshine using homemade stills to flavor it they used anything to hand nuts berries even carrots this is our finished product but distilling was a risky business the first alcohol to be produced by a still contained ethanol which causes blindness and even death so the carrot's good for your eyesight yeah the moonshine's bad for it on days like this you can really see the appeal of drinking a very very strong spirit yeah it's just good oh cool that's rocket fuel by 1844 104 separate privately owned companies were operating passenger services with little regulation [Music] the government intervened forcing new companies to abide by strict rules on ticket pricing reliability and safety the converted coal wagons had to be replaced with fully enclosed carriages keithley and worth valley railway have one of the earliest examples of these new state-of-the-art carriages from the 1870s now the early wagons the guard actually even had a little seat up here just like it had on the stagecoaches and on this wagon somebody was meant to come and service the oil lamps they just they just lift out of the they lift out and there's a well it looks like a plug in a chain that just slots them in place to stop there being a draft so we can clean them replace the oil i feel like i'm in a western running along the roof of a railway [Music] this one was built in 1876 right ruth's come to meet carriage engineer chris smith ah oh he's quite sort of basic still isn't it it's basic but at least he got a seat yeah it's starting to feel more like a railway carriage there's no doubt with wooden seats they were actually based on church pews familiar surroundings familiar surroundings which helps you sort of cope with the weirdness of the technology really doesn't it you know yes i mean it's completely a new thing you get a lot of people in here you would get a lot you definitely get six along each of these oh yeah so you're looking at 12 12 person per by the 1870s trains were capable of going over 65 miles per hour this was the first time the victorian working classes had access to high-speed long-distance travel there's there's no corridor in these train at all is there no no no there's no interconnection though so how do you get from one compartment to the next though you don't you don't you stay in the compartment so it's probably a wise move to be friends with the people you're traveling with but the ultimate luxurious experience was reserved for the upper classes now what's the yeah difference definitely gone up market now and noticed the difference oh yes and no more of this trying to get 12 people in here no you've got section 17 look at the space in the compartment you've now got you've got a lot wider space it has got wider it's more legroom plenty of stretch legs yes and a carpet and the carpet it does actually feel warmer in here it's better they traveled in style traveling in style yes it does feel quite stylish wow good [Music] for the railway companies it wasn't all about comfort image was just as important one thing that i really like about so many of these is all this beautiful sign writing yes it's all hand sign written and gilded gold leaf and i suppose you know something that had been exclusively for the super rich you're getting a flavor of it even when you're in third grade even in third there was a lot of competition in it the railways were very each other you know they had to do things that stood out above the next railway and i mean if you're competing for passengers it's about what it's like to be a passenger isn't it i mean it's not just about ticket price it's the whole how you're experience people are happy they'll come back and they'll come back and use your company rather rather than somebody else [Music] every type of craft and skill was required to build the railways and the blacksmith as he had been in the pre-industrial village was at the heart of the navi camp the railway was an engineering entity and you always needed to bend metal so if you had a portable forge you could follow the railway and whatever needed to be made to be shaped to be bent you could do it and this was your passport to earning a living let's take the heat out of the shaft [Music] all right colin and the boys are forging coach screws these are the metal bolts which connected the rails to the sleepers and each railway line needed millions of them gonna try and mushroom over the head and then we'll put the screw on sounds quite easy it's not gonna be in the early days of railway building they were individually made so we're making a hook is that right starting to get dark on our first day as navies and we know that we're gonna need about three quarters of a million sleepers yeah for a single line between london and glasgow now if you need eight of these per sleeper okay and it's a double line we're looking at something in the region of around 12 million of these bolts easy [Music] what colin's doing now is he's just squaring that head off because what it's ultimately gonna have to do is gonna have to take a spanner we'll need that square head so that we can wind that screw down into that oak that's pretty good the last job is to twist the screw to make an even thread right okay you've got the right angle there yeah your square on is that you've got that tight there it goes [Music] perfect and you can see that thread can't you you can that's amazing there it is look keep it going there you go that's the one let's get this good keep going yeah that's brilliant so there we go we've got our thread yeah yeah just a simple twist it's amazing how you've got something that is produced through craft by hand in my eye yeah which is then going on to create the beginnings of the industrial revolution that's what i find so fascinating yeah as the rate of railway construction boomed handcrafted items like coach screws were instead mass produced in factories the days of the blacksmith on the navi camp were numbered railways drove innovation in practically every area of manufacturing [Music] even textiles carriages needed hard-wearing seats for the ever-increasing passenger traffic the solution was fabric made from a material abundant in victorian britain [Music] horsehair duncan brummel is the production manager at john boyd textiles in castle carey somerset they've been making horse hair fabric for over 150 years what we're doing is pulling out the broken hairs and any weak hairs will break off in this process and also combing it through so when it goes to the loom it's nice and free to weave working horses from the local area had their tails cropped every couple of years the hair was then sorted by color and length before being combed a process known as hackling that is a hair length isn't it it doesn't get any longer than that yeah we're limited or what width cloth we can do so you're going to get a piece of cloth a bit like 26 inch cloth off of that right what are the advantages then of using horse hair it's very strong so it's also uh relatively flame resistant it's smolders rather than bones well i suppose you know it's just like your own hair if you go near a flame your hair will singe but it doesn't burn no no it's used for chairs it polishes where people sit on it so you get more and more shine the older it is and i suppose the other thing is that hair doesn't stain does it you know it is going to make the perfect fabric for a railway carriage isn't it yeah something that's in constant use people coming and going i can see the appeal of horse hair the sordid horse tails are then died a process which can take up to a week so this is the natural black hair that we're gonna dye like and these are sort of colors you can achieve yeah we can achieve yep many colors oh my god oh my goodness look at the blue on that really vivid aren't they yeah next the dyed horse hair is woven into cloth anna smith is director of the mill i really like this one it's an old design from about 1900 collar into the original collar from that time bloom's date back to 1870 really 1870 and it's still functioning in a commercial business yeah still the original looms the green cotton runs the length of the loom known as the warp and the black horsehair runs across known as the weft and their children sat in the loom scenting one hair at a time to the weaver so you've got a man sat here who would be doing the actual yeah actually the education act of 1870 ruled that every child had to attend school taking away the main source of cheap labor it was too expensive to have two adults so that's why they've developed a mechanical loom so we still use [Music] this is very beautiful with fabric that's coming off it's something made out of horse's tail yes because it's mainly an upholstery fabric um in fact chippendale said he'd only ever [Music] to keep up with the increasing demand for passenger services industries across the country began to replace manpower with machine power building this rapidly expanding passenger network demanded huge resources of raw materials the foundation of any railway line was the ballast and millions of tons of it were needed [Music] the ideal material was a very hard stone called basalt i think you've proved the point that that is solid for ballast it's ideal because with the the weight and the the constant vibration of trains going over them it's not going to compact once it's settled in position yeah then these angular pieces are going to lock together and form a very strong platform for the heavy engines and rolling stock 3000 tons of crushed stone was needed for every mile of track and by the 1870s over 13 000 miles have been laid stewart i'm alex nice to meet you traditionally stone crushing would have been done by hand but using steam power a task which had required hundreds of navis could now be done using a single machine as soon as you've got a steam engine you've got power and then you can do things like this that's right we've got a steam winch to pull it up there for us right okay don't worry you're not pushing it here making changes stuart tomlins and his team have set up a mobile stone crusher powered by a steam tractor [Music] we're turning this into this using that machine how does it work it's a jaw crusher and basically there's one fixed plate and the other plate's going backwards and forwards and it crushes it as it goes down it's the lowest point and gives you the size and then uh to make this bigger or smaller uterus you just adjust the um adjust the one jaw and it'll give you a lot bigger material to go through fantastic feel the power you can feel the power of that steam engine you can feel the power of this kit and as those railways got bigger they got more infrastructure and small navi gangs like ours would have been absorbed into a much bigger organizations [Music] all right we just put it out yeah and there we have it all the ballast wow and this is i mean it's quite angular isn't it it's going to lock it together it's going to allow for drainage we're going to bed the sleepers in it's going to keep those in place keep them dry and this is essential stuff to build in the railways and that machine makes it relatively pretty easy makes it a lot easier than it used to be it's not easy to break it by hand anyway in 1825 just a few hundred people had traveled by rail but by the 1880s it was millions and demand for new railways was still growing in 1882 the lewis and east grinstead railway opened linking the southeast coast to the nation's capital for passenger lines the public face of the railway company was the station buildings in cities they were built without regard for cost or consequence such was the scale of london pancreas station four thousand houses were demolished to build it [Music] even small rural stations were lavishly decorated they boasted the most up-to-date facilities and to run them they required an army of staff by 1901 over 600 000 people were employed by the railways five percent of the working population companies in the beginning called their staff servants you were a servant of a railway company and they insisted upon uniforms they insisted upon certain manners of speech they insisted on certain behavior and they insisted on absolute loyalty to the company much like a great stately home would have expected of their servants the station master was at the head of this new workforce ticket clerks porters refreshment room staff signalmen wheel tappers engineers carpenters and boilermakers were all needed to run a station then there were the train staff engine drivers and firemen and responsible for passenger safety was the guard there were guards on trains right from the first passengers however added an extra layer of complexity and importance to the guard's job i mean if there was an accident with a goods train well very sad and all that but mostly what got hurt were the goods not so many people but a passenger train the the potential for disaster for bad publicity was that much greater so guards were given more and more responsibility and they became a more important person on the railway guaranteeing the safety of all those traveling [Music] the guard in charge of this train is graeme 8k it's in my job as the guard to check that what he has done has been done correctly happy with that lot i've checked it a couple's there but if the engine moves we're going to go with it this stage i'm happy all good famous guards van your very own little home on rails in wigal my compartment my domain originally one of the main roles of the guard was to operate the brakes located in his van at the back of the train as carriages in the 1880s had no corridors once the train had left the station the guard was cut off from his passengers i mean even if you say well you can try and get in touch with the the driver i mean he's got to be looking out if you're waving flags and blowing whistles that's exactly right the way you attract his attention is by partially putting on the brake not enough to stop it unless you mean to stop in an emergency but he will notice that the guard's trying to get his attention and then he'll then look out either him or the farm and probably both of them to look back and then the guard would be there displaying either a red flag a red light or whatever one two to two [Music] the guard was also responsible for everyone's safety so he had to be constantly on the lookout for dangers such as landslides or fires and of course passengers in distress it's one of the reasons why there's no nice comfy seats in a guard span the idea is that the guard has to stay alert stay on his feet always checking most drivers and firemen will tell you they've got the difficult job all the guard doesn't sit down enjoys the ride not quite like he's actually there for a very real purpose um and yes he's got a stale lap and he's got to check the train because he's responsible for the train not the driver of the farm if the train had to stop in an emergency miles from any station or signal box it was the guard's job to alert the following train crew of the obstruction ahead he needed something to grab their attention so detonators marvelous invented in 1841 railway detonators were used as a last resort to alert the next train so that it could make an emergency stop they were placed on the rails at intervals three-quarters of a mile back from the stranded train nine about here i reckon it doesn't have to be precise doesn't it i mean the train from here now is just over half a mile away yeah and that gives plenty for the driver to stop [Music] the weight of the train triggers the detonator alerting the driver over the sound of the engine [Music] detonators did everything they were supposed to they did didn't they i mean you would notice that that engine was making quite a noise the bangs went off and the driver had it instantly and with the three of them there there's no mistaking them so immediately did the right thing sort of thing shut off steam applied the brakes and the train stopped this simple safety measure proved so effective they're still used today if all other communication fails by 1899 the frenzy of construction was over 20 000 miles of railway had been built spanning the length and breadth of the nation [Music] but the work didn't stop there a new band of workers were needed to maintain the colossal infrastructure of track tunnels and bridges known as the permanent way strong enough under constant traffic sleepers rails and ballast would all eventually need replacing to do this railway companies employed specially designed steam-powered cranes what a beast it is it's lovely intake it was built for the illinois cabinet where crane and uh it's still doing today what it was built to do back in those days keith and margaret bonner are responsible for maintaining and operating this steam-powered crane at the keithley and worth valley railway in fact before we go any further i will give you the obligatory right rag oh we're going to have a holy ghost it becomes attached to you does this piece right for the full day fantastic do you need a loco to move this thing there's a set of gears we can engage underneath the carriage here which allows a crane to travel under its own power crucially that power is steam powered power is steam powered we're ready to go when it's new [Music] there we go keith you're gonna you want to raise up the derrick give it out it's a very proud moment taking our sleepers putting them down by the railway operating the steam crane is a two-person job a banksman on the ground and a driver controlling the crane the banksman communicates with the driver using a series of hand signals up they come the critical thing when you're banking your crane is that your banksman in this case it's margaret maintains eye contact all the time with the crane operator there's other obstacles as well there's people that might step in the way because obviously he's just he's just asking you to do what he wants you to do but he's not also not aware of what's going on around so you've got to have like three or four sets of eyes you know well you have to have your bits about you basically yeah wooden sleepers were used right up until the 1940s when reinforced concrete began to take over [Music] here are our sleepers in place dropped here by the crane the gang would work with this crane all the way along the permanent way to lay down not just sleepers but of course they'll be bringing ballast in as well and then the cleats and the coach bolts will all be put in place to hold these rails and this is the means by which you both built and maintained the permanent way the railways of britain by the 1880s for many rail travel had become a way of life [Music] to experience it firsthand alex and peter are traveling on the lewiston east grinstead railway in preparation for the journey peter's getting to grips with the latest fashion of the day homa casa oil is one of the first mass advertised products comes about in the 19th century it's a blend of coconut oil palm oil it should give you added variety not that you need it and should help regenerate hair growth it does give your hair a certain sheen doesn't it this hair oil stained even tough horse hair fabric to protect the seats anti-macasas were fitted if particularly on a business commuter line you you did nothing you'd soon get nasty greasy patches where people rested their heads so the answer just like it was in the domestic home was an anti-maccaster which are small easy to launder cloths but they do have to be laundered ah petey's dirty footprints everything's going in [Music] hi ruth oh yeah i haven't done anything to my hair yeah sure i haven't had a chance to start it this morning we better get a ticket right okay oh good afternoon sir um when the very first trains began to carry passengers the tickets were sort of handwritten affairs and included information like the name and address of the passenger as you can imagine it took ages to make out the tickets for a train with commuter numbers rising the laborious process of handwriting tickets was not only inefficient but open to forgery [Music] what was needed was a quick and efficient fraud proof device it was a station master thomas edmondson who devised a solution printed tickets each with a unique serial number thank you very much right okay ruth have you got any money in the 1880s for many people traveling by train was still a daunting experience to help them on their way a manual was published leading them through their journey step by step [Music] afternoon good afternoon are you in there check this out the railway traveler's handy book hints suggestions are the voice for the anxious victorian traveler and that's us at the moment anxious you know this is this can be a dangerous place [Music] for some travelers it might be the first time they'd encountered so many strangers [Music] the manual gave strict instructions on how to deal with such situations the card playing although somewhat difficult of accomplishment is a pleasant past time among friends that's great friends there okay but beware of entering into this amusement with strangers yeah but we haven't really strangers in here haven't we um it is well known that the class of swindlers known as card sharpers exist who live by traveling in railway carriages and taking in the unwary the boys are joined by an expert in victorian con artistry who goes by the name pete heat typically they'd pretend to be drunk and quite offensive like i would have been making fun of your accents what you're wearing oh city boys are you yeah and so you you get a real you build up a real irritation and you want to get one over on me and maybe i'd even flash the cards accidentally on purpose so you know you know for a fact which one's which and then of course at the end but get you don't you worry you've got to get up early in the morning to catch on me and peter that's what i thought yeah pete has studied the sorts of tricks played on victorian rail passengers this is a little game it's based on the old three card uh three card game find the ladies three card monster you know the kind of thing you've seen on street corners no doubt yeah but to make it a bit easier for you guys you're probably just going to use two cards because the card number one is the queen of hearts i'm going to get you to hold on to that for me at this point you two gentlemen are unlikely to trust me we've just met so maybe check that it is still there that's still the queen of hearts right you know it it's all about all is like i however have got the queen of diamonds over here and if i do that without looking at yours what would you better i'm gonna say it's the queen of hearts okay so these are kind of hearts on the bottom of diamonds on top there yes once lulled into a full sense of security passengers were asked to gamble with something of value just to recap what would you say no are we going hearts on top diamonds on the bottom yeah i think so tell you what guys turn your hand over right okay wow that was truly amazing now as a real victorian con man i definitely wouldn't have changed both cars at the end into different cars because that is very clearly a magic trick at that point the thing is these kit these carriages must have been perfect for con men of the period because we're a captive audience we can't actually get away essentially in the mid victorian period you're going to have lots of very really quite naive travelers aren't you you're in a position to actually stalk your prey and and pick off people who you think you'd be able to win money yeah definitely take my eye off you for a millisecond and you you've cost me my pocket watch railway crime went beyond the occasional calm the first reported murder on a train occurred only two years after the publication of the traveler's handy book um caution in passing through tunnels now this is interesting male passengers have sometimes been assaulted and robbed and females insulted in passing through tunnels in going through a tunnel therefore it is always as well to have the hands and arms ready disposed for defense unaccompanied women were advised to travel with concealed truncheons even the innocent looking hat pin could be put to good use you read quite often of women who are sexually assaulted in tunnels because you know it's dark there's a room for a man that's right and these and these are examples of what did happen the introduction of electricity on trains allowed the guard to have full control of the carriage lighting [Music] there we are lights this made passing through tunnels and traveling at night much safer [Music] the lights are on though oh i didn't know it i'm doing my hat man victorian trains had no buffet cars or on-board toilets so scheduled stops for refreshments were vital we're only here for 12 minutes you use the toilets station stops were usually brief often between 10 and 15 minutes just enough time to use the station's facilities hello have you got any hot food just soon just soup we'd better have one of those then please with time short the handy book had advice on how to make the most of your refreshment stop the handy book does say basically dispenser pleasantries if you desire a basin of soup never mind the words are basing off but simply utter the monosyllable same applies for anything else so i got this completely wrong then i should have just just walked out no hello nothing just soup cake cake go [Laughter] stations would compete with rival companies in creating the most lavish refreshment room some also had licenses to serve alcohol and tobacco putting them in direct competition with local pubs and hotels okay i see you've got cake there peter very nice they don't do soup spoons here then no they do not stand they'll be happy with you i suppose nobody's got any option there's no catering on the train and you're a captive audience so you can be exploited and famously the standard of food at this time is appalling oh dear goodness me how's that food cake pizza it dried before the railways existed travelers by stagecoach would have had the opportunity to eat at coaching inns and could even break their journey by staying the night now if you were accustomed to eating out which not many people were but the wealthy who were accustomed to eating out were expecting the full slow served at table silver service sort of thing and then they're faced with just having to essentially ordering food in the rugby scrum um shawn manners shortened service it's all quick fire isn't it yeah it's really interesting isn't it that the handy book actually has to tell you how to do it yeah it's quick get in there get your food although the railway traveler's handybook proved useful when guiding the bewildered passenger through their journey it didn't hide the fact that the experience may not be for everyone it says here in the handy book a person in a railway carriage may be likened to a prisoner of state who is permitted to indulge in any relaxation and amusement to while away the time but is denied that essential ingredient to human happiness personal liberty we are essentially prisoners in a small box [Music] for those who didn't make full use of their stop victorian entrepreneurs had a novel solution well it is this is the harrods catalogue look at this attachable external bladders for ladies and gentlemen oh my gideons these are they're pretty good aren't they so now well there are other ways you know for a lady to manage these problems look female passengers sometimes resorted to carrying an innocent looking basket containing a chamber pot it wasn't until the 1920s that carriages with corridors became commonplace enabling trains to be equipped with dining cars and toilets station stops could be shorter speeding up journey times over the carriage we're in we've effectively reached that style of traveling which we enjoy today don't we it's a bit nostalgic but nonetheless it's recognizable as a modern carriage it's comfortable and certainly when you look back at uh beamish when you were in those open wagons i mean it was a beautiful day so it didn't really matter but if it had been pouring with rain and the wind had been howling you'd be whistling along at 20 miles an hour i mean we've reached this level of sophistication haven't we lovely comfy seats ventilation it's weatherproof but we've still got to go that extra hurdle we still need toilets on trains and restaurant cars as well don't we we do i mean you could bring a picnic and i was thinking that's what that was i think you get a bit of a surprise put your next time we see how the railways revolutionized the way the country fed itself and there we have it sheep moving by the power of steam for the first time in at least a generation transforming people's diets a railway industry who'd have thought rhubarb and turning britain into a nation of fast food lovers i think if i eat anymore this fish and chips can have a heart attack

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 403,537

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, absolute history

Id: PikURl7i7ak

Length: 58min 16sec (3496 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020