The Railways: Nation, Network and People

by Simon Bradley

More serious was the danger that cylinders of compressed gas presented in case of accident. Oil- or gas-lit, a Victorian railway carriage was effectively a mobile bonfire awaiting ignition. The various materials that provided this potential fuel were noted in their raw state, ‘stacked in vast piles’ at the Midland Railway’s Derby carriage works, in F. S. Williams’s Our Iron Roads (1883): ‘logs of ash, elm, East Indian teak, Honduras mahogany – worth from £15 to £20 a log – red, white and yellow deals from Quebec and Stettin … and satinwood from Kauri, in New Zealand’. Sawn, planed, mitred, moulded, nailed and glued together, these timbers became the carriage bodies. The process was essentially one of craft manufacture. Oak or teak were the usual materials for the framing, deal (softwood) for the floors, deal or ash for the long, close-fitting planks that made up the roof. The Midland then required twenty-five separate stages of undercoating, painting, rubbing down and varnishing the body, to say nothing of lining-out and lettering. Further painting and varnishing was done within, as well as trimming, lining and upholstery in horsehair, woollen cloth, waxed cloth and linoleum. Taut, waterproofed canvas covered the roof; thick felt layers were used for insulation below the floorboards. When smashed apart and suffused with escaping hydrocarbons, it did not take much input from an unextinguished lamp flame or the coals of a derailed steam locomotive to set these ingredients in...