railway mania

Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Sixth Edition

by Kindleberger, Charles P. and Robert Z., Aliber  · 9 Aug 2011

the economic upswing endangers financial stability only if it involves at least two or more objects of speculation, a bad harvest, say, along with a railroad mania or an orgy of land speculation, or a bubble in real estate and in stocks at the same time. The monetary dimensions of both manias

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Manias Rationality of markets The word ‘mania’ suggests a loss of a connection with rationality, perhaps mass hysteria. Economic history is replete with canal manias, railroad manias, joint stock company manias, real estate manias and stock price manias – surges in investment in a particular activity. Economic theory assumes that men and women

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combined in 1825; British exports, cotton, land sales in the United States, and the beginning of the railroad mania contributed to the crisis in the mid-1830s. The crisis of 1847 was caused by the railway mania, the potato blight, a wheat crop failure one year and a bumper crop the next, followed by

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. George Hudson, who may have been the greatest figure in British railroad history, practiced nearly all of these at the same time in the 1846 railway mania. At one time he was chairman of four railways, and he mistakenly believed he was above the law that applied to his less powerful competitors

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With the growth of railroads, the discounts of the Bank of England were made on the collateral of railroad debentures. In 1842, as the second railway mania got underway, the Bank voted to make occasional loans to firms in difficulty and to well-tried firms for development.56 The Bank of France

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(1914), and The Stoic (1947). See The Titan (New York: World, 1972), pp. 371–2. 56. Ibid., pp. 515–40. 57. Henry Grote Lewin, The Railway Mania and its Aftermath, 1845–1852 (1936; reprint edn, rev., New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968), pp. 262, 357–64. 58. See Paul W. Gates, Illinois

Blood, Iron, and Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World

by Christian Wolmar  · 1 Mar 2010  · 424pp  · 140,262 words

the first nation to exploit fully the boundless potential of this new technology. It would retain that lead for some time, experiencing a series of railway manias, most notably in the early 1840s, the opening years of Queen Victoria’s reign, that would result in the construction of over 7,000 miles

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of railway within two decades of the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester. While other countries would also undergo such periods of railway mania, the British version was the first and one of the most fruitful. 11 Britain was, too, the first country to experience a railway scandal. George

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, and driven by another Englishman, a Lieutenant Peters. By the time of the full opening of the line, railways across Germany were expanding as a railway mania was taking hold. The German plains were filling up with lines as speculators began to realize that there was enormous potential for making money out

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country with the second most extensive rail network with just under 4,000 miles in 1850, some way behind Britain which after its period of railway mania in the 1840s had 6,000 miles. It would take until the mid-1870s for Germany to overtake Great Britain and become the European country

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. Just as in Germany and before that in Great Britain, once the railways had reached a critical mass and began to prove their worth, a railway mania developed with a rush to build lines. There had already been much speculation in railway shares as schemes began to be promoted in the early

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the forefront of railway development. Not only did it serve a large domestic network which grew rapidly, albeit in fits and starts as the various railway manias flared up and ran their course, but it also had the advantage of a captive market among its expanding colonial empire where it could export

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to the expense of operating the railway. Ireland’s railways developed relatively fast thanks to the combination of state aid and entrepreneurial activity. While the railway mania was less intense than on the mainland, there was a rapid growth in the 1840s and by 1853, the main towns – Dublin, Belfast, Cork and

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railways, having chaired a Parliamentary Committee in 1844–5 which attempted to put some order into the chaotic situation when at the height of the railway mania Parliament had been literally inundated with bills petitioning to build lines. Under pressure from the railway companies, the committee had been abolished within a few

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States was buffeted by a series of railroad fevers which saw the mileage increase in fits and starts, reaching 250,000 miles by 1900. The railroad manias of the UK and other European countries were mirrored in the US, but because the country is so vast and its economic regions so diverse

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to intervene when things started to go wrong. Governments became aware that a healthy and extensive rail network was essential for development. In Britain, the railway mania of the 1840s was short-lived but its impact was long lasting. It reached its peak in 1844 when Parliament was inundated with 240 petitions

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too expensive. However, even with this attempt to reduce their cost, their viability and usefulness was open to question. Just as in similar periods of railway mania elsewhere, the speculators soon piled in, promoting lines that had no economic rationale but which attracted state subsidy from a government that was loath to

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its own dodgy ‘railway king’, Bethel Henry Strousberg, who resembled the notorious and equally corrupt George Hudson, the principal villain to emerge from the British railway mania of the 1840s. 16 Strousberg built up a huge railway empire, including a cluster of tracks around Hanover and the main line between Berlin and

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enterprise. Even remote areas like Patagonia began to get railways and there was considerable duplication. The rate of growth matched what had happened in the railway mania in Britain, but in a country where the population was still a mere 3.4 million at the end of the 1880s. By 1890, there

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value of Brazilian exports, and railway construction went hand in hand throughout the southern provinces around São Paulo, and by the 1870s a full-blown railway mania had developed to serve the needs of the burgeoning coffee plantations. At the same time as the São Paulo Railway was being built, another line

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pace slowed when, briefly, production of the crop stagnated. Then, as output boomed again, so did railway construction, and the country embarked on a veritable railway mania with the mileage reaching a total of just under 800 in 1868 when the rate of growth fell again as a result of economic difficulties

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-optimistic, obtained huge sums of money for lines that were never completed so that investors lost all their cash. Investors were most vulnerable during the railway manias which raged through different countries at various times and were swept up in the rush simply because everyone else seemed to think it was a

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banking crisis. There’s no shortage of elegantly embellished but completely valueless railway company share certificates still adorning living-room walls, dating from the various railway manias of the nineteenth century. However, it was when governments became involved that unbelievably huge sums could be purloined by corrupt promoters and the world centre

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio

by William J. Bernstein  · 26 Apr 2002  · 407pp  · 114,478 words

’s most brilliant prime minister did everything but shout “irrational exuberance!” at the top of his lungs in Parliament. The United States underwent its own railway mania in the post-Civil War period. But even taking into account the clocklike regularity of railroad bankruptcy and the Credit Mobilier scandal (in which this

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equally catastrophic; a worldwide depression nearly swept away the Bank of England. Only hard money retained its value. The most long-lasting effect of the railway mania is that Britain, to this day, is cursed with a disorganized bramble of a rail network. Even casual visitors cannot help but notice the contrast

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devices serve to make the capital markets more liquid and efficient, and their absence undoubtedly served to make subsequent crises more difficult to manage. The railway mania itself is a case in point; had investors been able to sell short railway shares, the bubble and subsequent collapse would likely have been much

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Bridgewater, Duke of, 141 Bridgeway Group, 216, 250 Brinson, Gary, 107, 225 Britain canal building mania, 141–142, 158 GDP and technological diffusion, 132–134 railroad mania, 143-145, 159–160 South Sea Company, 137–141, 158 Brokers, 191–202 Merrill, betrayal of, 193–194 spreads and commissions, 195–202 Brooks, John

The Great Railroad Revolution

by Christian Wolmar  · 9 Jun 2014  · 523pp  · 159,884 words

the railroads largely stayed within individual state borders. These two railroads were part of a wider spurt of railroad activity, a mini version of the “railroad manias” that characterized future developments not just in the United States but across the world. In addition to the two longer coal railroads in Pennsylvania, New

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existing canals or river routes, and consequently even the steamboats were beginning to feel the pinch. The decade of the 1850s was a period of railroad mania. Whereas New England had benefited from most of the growth in the 1840s, the focus now shifted to the plains of what is now known

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. The author of the standard work on British investment in American railroads, Dorothy Adler, suggests that British capital helped to fuel this succession of American railroad manias: “It is not stretching the facts to draw a parallel between the late 1840s, the late 1860s and the years 1879–81. Each of these

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make money on financial speculation, without regard for the future usefulness of each line.” This was often the case during periods of railroad boom—called railroad manias—both in the United States and, indeed, in other parts of the world. A kind of self-perpetuating madness would engulf potential investors, who would

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–274 Railway company agents, 169, 172 Railway construction, 25–50 costs, 46–48 labor, 38–40 promotion, 33–36, 37, 38 See also Transcontinental railroads Railway manias, 23, 85, 124, 163 Railway travel collective travel, 222–223 connections, 84 experiences, 73–85, 161–162, 167–168, 208–213 luxury and prestige services

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

by William Quinn and John D. Turner  · 5 Aug 2020  · 297pp  · 108,353 words

. . 1 2 1720 and the Invention of the Bubble . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 3 Marketability Revived: The First Emerging Market Bubble . 39 4 Democratising Speculation: The Great Railway Mania . . . . 58 5 Other People’s Money: The Australian Land Boom . . . . . 77 6 Wheeler-Dealers: The British Bicycle Mania 98 . . . . . . . . . 7 The Roaring Twenties

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–20 South Sea Bubble UK 1719–20 Windhandel Bubble First emerging market bubble Railway Mania Australian Land Boom Netherlands UK 1720 1824–6 UK Australia 1844–6 1886

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preventing – the bubble in UK railway shares. 57 CHAPTER 4 Democratising Speculation: The Great Railway Mania ‘Bless railroads everywhere,’ I said, ‘and the world’s advance; Bless every railroad share

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to hundreds of railway companies during what became known as the Railway Mania. The Economist, in 2008, described the Railway Mania as ‘arguably the greatest bubble in history’.3 This is not

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of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, wrote that the Railway Mania was greater than anything that had preceded it.4 Karl Marx, in Das Kapital,

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as the ‘groβen Eisenbahnschwindel’, which literally means the ‘great Railway Mania’.5 58 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA Two decades prior to the Great Railway Mania, a new and revolutionary technology was beginning to transform

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to as the ‘first railway mania’ because it served as a portentous warning of what was to come several years later in the Great Railway Mania.9 The collapse of

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more profitable, railway stock prices skyrocketed, and many more 60 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA 2,200 2,000 All railways 1,800 Non-railways 1,600 1,400

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stage, the investors who had had shares allotted to them 62 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA were issued with share certificates. They were also expected to meet future calls on

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crash, its editorial was scathing: ‘the mania for railway speculation has 64 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA reached that height at which all follies, however absurd in themselves, cease to be

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of the summer of 1845. As with many other bubbles, the bust of the Railway Mania revealed and induced dubious practices. In 1848, a pamphlet was published which alleged that

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report on railway accounting found evidence of fraudulent practices.42 66 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA 7 180 6 140 5 left-hand scale 120 100 4 80 3 60

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) 160 0 Gross capital formation in railways / GDP (%) The bursting of the Railway Mania also resulted in the Dissolution Act being passed in 1846 to enable shareholders to force

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before Parliament’s formal consent had been granted.44 The magnitude of the Great Railway Mania and transformative effect on the industry is illustrated in Figure 4.3, which shows

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paid-up equity capital of UK railways45 67 BOOM AND BUST of the Railway Mania can also be considered in relation to the rest of the stock market.

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quoted stocks and 71 per cent of total stock market value.46 CAUSES During the Railway Mania, marketability increased in several ways. Parliament became much more liberal in granting corporate

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most other company shares, the shares of railway companies traded daily during the Railway Mania.47 Indeed, the marketability of railway equity was such that 15 new stock

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franchise.48 Seven of these new provincial stock exchanges shut down when the Railway Mania came to an end.49 The next side of the bubble triangle is

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which there is no fuel to feed a bubble. In the case of the Railway Mania, the Bank of England’s discount rate was reduced in September 1844 to

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, Parliament lowered the required deposit to 5 per cent in 68 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA February 1844, thus increasing the leveraged nature of railway shares.53 This decision was

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is the final side of our bubble triangle. The share price rises during the Railway Mania attracted much in the way of speculative money. Investing in the bubbles of 1720

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could, in some sense, afford to lose their investment stakes. However, during the Railway Mania, thanks to low share denominations and partly paid shares, many members of the middle

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meant that part-paid shares played a major role in democratising speculation during the Railway Mania. The appearance of popular investment guides, such as the Short and Sure Guide

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points to naive, amateurish and impecunious individuals 69 BOOM AND BUST investing during the Railway Mania. Contemporaries even went as far as suggesting that these amateurish investors in their clamour

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insiders had cornered the market for shares. The same was likely true during the Railway Mania. The presence of cornering is difficult to prove – it can usually only be

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the members of their provisional board – a prosperous Presbyterian coffin maker 70 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA called Samuel Sawley – started to bear the shares by short selling. Getting wind of

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explains why continental Europe did not experience its own railway mania. In the case of the US railroads, 72 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA which were wholly private enterprises, state governments effectively

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towards national rather than local interests, which is possibly why they avoided having railway manias of their own. An alternative explanation for Parliament’s failure is that, since

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how they complain’.76 Previous bubbles had investors who lost fortunes, but the Railway Mania involved many middle-class speculators who had very little to lose. Although many

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railway share prices collapsed, the question remains as to what the consequences of the Railway Mania were for the overall economy. In October 1847, exactly 2 years after railway shares

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resulting in the week of terror in October 1847. 74 THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA Although the Railway Mania does not appear to have been responsible for the financial crisis of 1847,

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deal of pressure on the money markets.79 Lord John Eatwell suggests that the Railway Mania is a prima facie example of a useful bubble, in that after the

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no doubt that the national rail network which emerged as a result of the Railway Mania was transformative. The huge reduction in the time and money costs of travelling made

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investment.84 The inefficiencies in the rail system that were locked in during the Railway Mania contributed to the subsequent poor performance of the railway companies and widespread inefficiencies

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competition and duplicate lines. With such an approach, the Railway Mania would never have happened. The Railway Mania democratised speculation. The financial press, which was meant to protect investors

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and warn them of bubbles, called the Railway Mania far too late to be of any use to the

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because no one else would. Within a decade of the end of the Railway Mania, any semblance of government regulation of joint-stock companies in the UK was

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. Marketability was unconstrained and speculation was democratised. However, the only leverage during the Railway Mania was part-paid shares; the bubble was overwhelmingly fuelled by money rather than credit

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invested in land-boom companies.25 The democratisation of speculation which we witnessed in the Railway Mania was alive and well 43 years later and over 10,000 miles away. Such

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them everything 87 BOOM AND BUST they needed to know.53 As with the Railway Mania, the substantial advertising money that newspapers received from bubble companies gave them a

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not need to be paid to publish propaganda about cycle promotions. As during the Railway Mania, periodicals for enthusiasts were a persistent cheerleader for the bubble. Cycling ran a

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to survive the recession. In contrast with the unnecessary and wasteful competition of the Railway Mania, the Bicycle Mania is perhaps an illustration of Schumpeter’s principle of creative destruction

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and leverage Political spark China (2007) First emerging market bubble South Sea Bubble Railway Mania China (2015) Technological spark Bicycle Mania Dot-Com Bubble Wall Street Bubble Low

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Taylor, ‘Financial crises and the birth of the financial press’. CHAPTER 4: DEMOCRATISING SPECULATION: THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA 1. William Makepeace Thackeray, The Speculators. 2. Letter written by Charles Dickens in 1845 – see Dickens

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being the great chronicler and student of manias and bubbles, was not so perceptive during the Railway Mania – he did not think that there had been a bubble until well after it burst

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railway swindle’ (Marx, Capital, p. 538). However, this is inaccurate (McCartney and Arnold, ‘The railway mania’, 836). 6. Jackman, The Development of Transportation, p. 522; Kostal, Law and English Railway Capitalism,

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Stevens, English Railways, p. 155. 13. Junner, The Practice before the Railway Commissioners, p. xix; Lewin, Railway Mania, p. 18; Casson, The World’s First Railway System, p. 277. 14. The Economist, 6 July

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, 9 November 1844, p. 1,309. 16. Sources: Campbell, ‘Myopic rationality’; Campbell, ‘Deriving the railway mania’; Campbell and Turner, ‘Dispelling the myth’; Railway Times (1843–50) and Wetenhall’s Course of the Exchange

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Sure Guide, p. 10; Kostal, Law and English Railway Capitalism, pp. 76–7. 20. Lewin, The Railway Mania, p. 17; Railway Times, 19 July 1845, p. 1,208. 21. Casson, The World’s

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April 1844, p. 674. 51. Railway Times, 4 May 1884, p. 510. 52. Campbell, ‘Deriving the railway mania’. 53. Anon., ‘History of Bank of England’, 515; Campbell and Turner, ‘Dispelling the myth’. 234 NOTES

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. 1846, XXXVIII). 60. Casson, The World’s First Railway System, p. 278. 61. Lewin, The Railway Mania, p. 18. 62. Gale, A Letter to the Right Hon. the Earl of Dalhousie, p. 5.

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Prescott, q. 2674. See also The Times, 1 October 1847, p. 6. 78. Campbell, ‘Deriving the railway mania’, p. 22. 79. The Economist, 20 November 1847, p. 1,334. 80. Eatwell, ‘Useful bubbles’.

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bank distress during the Great Depression’, American Economic Review, 93, 937–47, 2003. Campbell, G. ‘Deriving the railway mania’, Financial History Review, 20, 1–27, 2013. Campbell, G. ‘Myopic rationality in a mania’, Explorations in

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Campbell, G. and Turner, J. D. ‘Dispelling the myth of the naive investor during the British Railway Mania, 1845–46’, Business History Review, 86, 3–41, 2012. 263 BIBLIOGRAPHY Campbell, G. and Turner

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Esteves, R. and Mesevage, G. G. ‘The rise of new corruption: British MPs during the Railway Mania of 1845’, University of Oxford mimeo. Fabbri, F. and Marin, D. ‘What explains the rise

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from Victorian British railways’, Journal of Economic History, 66, 635–73, 2006. Lewin, H. G. The Railway Mania and its Aftermath. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1968 [1936]. Lewis, M. The Big Short:

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profitable investment, confidence has become eager and may shortly become blind: George Hudson and the railway mania extensions of the York and North Midland Railway’, Journal of Industrial History, 4, 94–116, 2001.

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McCartney, S. and Arnold, A. J. ‘The railway mania of 1845–1847: market irrationality or collusive swindle based on accounting distortions?’, Accounting, Auditing and

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‘Charles Mackay’s own extraordinary popular delusions and the Railway Mania’, University of Minnesota manuscript, 2012. Odlyzko, A. ‘Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: the British Railway Mania of the 1840s’, University of Minnesota manuscript, 2010.

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in relation to the first emerging market bubble, 52–3 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 65–6, 68 in relation to the Subprime Bubble, 178, 179 role in

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32 in relation to the first emerging market bubble, 51 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 70–1 credit default swaps, 179 credit-rating agencies, 176, 189 cyclically adjusted price

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Mississippi Bubble, 35 Defoe, Daniel, 26 democratisation of investment in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 69 in the United.States, 115–17 derivatives in relation to the Dot-Com Bubble

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Mania, 103 in relation to the Dot-Com Bubble, 159 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 58, 64, 65, 72 eigyo tokkin funds, 143–4 Eldon, Lord, 45–6

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female investors in relation to the British Bicycle Mania, 107–8 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 70 in relation to the South Sea Bubble, 36 financial crisis connection to bubbles,

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to the Chinese bubbles, 196–8, 199–200, 205–6 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 68 in relation to the Japanese bubbles, 137, 139–41, 143–4 283 INDEX

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101, 105–6, 112 in relation to the Dot-Com Bubble, 159, 164 first railway mania, 59 flipping. See speculation Florida land boom. See US housing boom of the 1920s Ford

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relation to the first emerging market bubble, 40–1 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 66 in relation to the Japanese bubbles, 149–50 in relation to the US

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5 government-sponsored entities. See Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Great Depression, the, 130–2 Great Railway Mania, the magnitude of, 63–4, 67–8 Greenspan, Alan, 152, 157, 162 Hassett,

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Dot-Com Bubble, 158, 161–2, 163 284 INDEX in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 69–70, 74 in relation to the Subprime Bubble, 176–7, 184 initial public

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32 in relation to the first emerging market bubble, 51 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 68 Liberty bonds, 116–17, 127 LIBOR, 178 liquidity assistance in relation to the

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94–5 Liverpool and Manchester railway, the, 59 logrolling in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 72 Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, 148 loose credit as of 2016, 210

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108–9 in relation to the Dot-Com Bubble, 162 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 68–9 in relation to the Japanese bubbles, 137–8, 143 in relation

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in relation to the first emerging market bubble, 52, 54 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 68 in relation to the Japanese bubbles, 143–4 in relation to the Subprime Bubble

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in relation to the first emerging market bubble, 49–50 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 63–5 in relation to the Mississippi Bubble, 20 in relation to the South

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in relation to the first emerging market bubble, 41–5 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 63 of 1807–8, 40 of railways in 1836–7, 59 286 INDEX quantitative

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Railway Act 1844, 59–61, 71–2 railway authorisation process in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 62–3 Railway Board, 62–3, 71–2 railway booms in the United States,

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68, 72 Raleigh Company, The, 106 reaching for yield definition of, 6 during the Great Railway Mania, 68 in relation to the Subprime Bubble, 162 recession after the 1920s stock market bubble.

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in relation to the first emerging market bubble, 44–5 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 61–3, 69–70 Scandinavian housing boom, 14 scrip certificates, 62 Securities Act of

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in relation to the first emerging market bubble, 51–2 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 70–1 in relation to the Subprime Bubble, 185–6 Smoot-Hawley tariff, the

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Bubble, 152–3, 163 for the first emerging market bubble, 53 for the Great Railway Mania, 71 for the Japanese bubbles, 145–6 predicting a, 213–14 speculation definition of

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–8 in relation to the Dot-Com Bubble, 163 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 69 in relation to the Japanese bubbles, 144–5 in relation to the Subprime

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first emerging market bubble, 40, 46, 48, 49–50, 51 in relation to the Great Railway Mania, 63, 64–5 tokkin funds, 140, 143–4 Tokyo City Bank, 148 TOPIX index, the

The World's First Railway System: Enterprise, Competition, and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain

by Mark Casson  · 14 Jul 2009  · 556pp  · 46,885 words

August 1850 11. Office of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade at the time of the Railway Mania, ILN, 6 December 1845 12. Gloucester: Artist’s impression of the inconvenience caused by the Break

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of dissatisWed towns led to a large number of such proposals, and that is how the Railway Mania of 1844 got underway. 18 The World’s First Railway System At the time of the

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that the concept of network externalities was well understood by early railway promoters. During the Railway Mania a number of very ambitious schemes were promoted—such as the Welsh Midland Railway from Swansea

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railway that is about to be built. This was quite common at the time of the Railway Mania: many Mania schemes were predicated on connecting up to other Mania schemes. Furthermore, it is

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lines. It has already been noted that many branches were built in the aftermath of the Railway Mania to salvage something from more ambitious schemes. The branch was built to the nearest trunk line

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of income from naı̈ve investors to street-wise lawyers, which occurred at the time of the Railway Mania, would have been avoided. Another objection to state planning is that the conWguration of the railway

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account of a whole range of potential interdependencies between alternative schemes by considering them simultaneously. The Railway Mania provided a wonderful opportunity to do this, since almost every plausible scheme was 28 The World

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local ones. 1 . 1 7 . C O N C LU S I O N The Railway Mania was a time of missed opportunities. Almost every railway built in the UK between 1844 and 1914

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be resolved by persuasion, involving public debate conducted through hired legal advocates. After the collapse of the Railway Mania in 1846, commentators highlighted the capital losses sustained by shareholders, and the enormous expenditure on legal

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were foolish and that investors were stupid. This study suggests that the failings of the Railway Mania were political and cultural rather than purely psychological. It was bad decision-making, rather than Wnancial

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speculation, that was the most serious problem. The Railway Mania represented a turning point in the history of the UK railway system. It provided an

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in particular alternative routes between major towns, in terms of national interest. The collapse of the Railway Mania caused private misery for many private investors, and Wnancial ruin for some, but the real tragedy

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for example, was developed along lines designed to avoid the problems created in Britain by the Railway Mania, and the defective system of government regulation at that time. Table 2.1 reports the number

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Railway projects ‘took off ’ in the 1830s, with a peak in the 1860s. The first Railway Mania year occurred in the period 1844–46. The railways promoted during this period were authorized with a

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1866—an apparently respectable firm that had been heavily involved in railway finance. During the Second Railway Mania, many of the schemes that had failed in the first Mania were re-launched under new

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specifically, it is a counterfactual that could well have been implemented at the time of the Railway Mania in 1845, and that might have been championed by the Board of Trade, had Parliament given

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most recent census that was available to promoters and government officials at the time of the Railway Mania. For the purposes of this analysis a town or village is defined as a place with

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the Board of Trade Railway Committee, or some other enlightened body, at the time of the Railway Mania. This was a propitious time to devise a 104 The World’s First Railway System national

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represents an integrated system which could, in principle, have been designed at the time of the Railway Mania. Furthermore, because it is smaller than the actual network, it could have been completed more quickly

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is that the whole network has to use technology that was available at the time of the Railway Mania, or shortly afterwards, and this does not include tunnelling under a major river. The penalty to

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of intermediate traYc. This was the philosophy of the GNR promoters who, at the time of the Railway Mania, argued that Lincolnshire could be served by an East Coast main line from London to Scotland.

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descended from the Moors to the banks of the River Esk. At the time of the Railway Mania Robert Stephenson produced a number of plans for integrated regional railway systems, one of which related

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scheme. Another problem was that his schemes were very expensive, and in the aftermath of the Railway Mania, with capital very scarce, most of the bigger schemes had to be scaled down or abandoned

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to Brecon and its continuation—the Neath and Brecon Railway. The closest analogue is actually a Railway Mania scheme that was never built, the Welsh Midland Railway which, as it name suggests, set

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Midlands via Mid-Wales. Like the Manchester and Milford, optimism collapsed at the end of the Railway Mania. Although the scheme was never revived, some portions of the line were subsequently built by other

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the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway scheme promoted by the GWR at the time of the Railway Mania, as a successful attempt to delay the extension of the LSWR to the west. Once this

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of the Brighton line. When Parliament abandoned its attempt at rationalization at the time of the Railway Mania, proliferation quickly developed—Wrst of trunk lines and then suburban ones. The counterfactual addresses these problems

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Guildford and the LNWR line from Oxford to Cambridge via Bletchley. At the time of the Railway Mania there were numerous schemes for orbital lines, but they faced enormous opposition. The companies that had

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lies the English county of Northumberland, with its ancient towns of Morpeth and Alnwick. Until the Railway Mania got underway it was widely assumed that there would be just one railway route between London

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the Wnal portions were not completed until 1867. The GNR was the most ambitious of the Railway Mania schemes. It was one of many to be authorized, and one of relatively few to be

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while from Nuneaton a branch ran east towards Leicester. In the mid-1860s, during the Second Railway Mania, both the MR and LNWR promoted lines towards Ashby from Nuneaton. They were just two of

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going east, and also allow the NER to invade MR territory going west. During the Second Railway Mania in the 1860s, the MR and NER were both Wghting battles on many fronts—usually with

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Liverpool by the ferry from Birkenhead); it was opened in 1841. At the time of the Railway Mania the LBSCR proposed to build a line along the South Coast from Brighton through Chichester to Portsmouth

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6.7. Tooting, Merton, and Wimbledon Line (LSWR and LBSCR) Between 1860 and 1866 the Second Railway Mania, though less intense than the Wrst, had a profound eVect on the shape of the national railway

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also obtained powers to extend its own line to Kilmarnock. The dramatic end of the Second Railway Mania in 1866 caused both companies to rethink this wasteful duplication of lines, and it was agreed

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Aberdeen via Dundee and Arbroath, but this came to nothing. Integration Wnally occurred during the Second Railway Mania; the line was taken over by the Scottish North Eastern Railway in 1863, and this was

…

then two railways arrived at once. Both railways had been authorized at the time of the Railway Mania and had taken an inordinate time to complete. Weymouth was at the extremity of both, and

…

System One of the LNWR’s constituent companies—the London and Birmingham— had been involved in a Railway Mania scheme—the Welsh Midland—to link Birmingham with Swansea via Worcester, Hereford, and Brecon. The

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1850 Illustration 11. Office of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade at the time of the Railway Mania, ILN, 6 December 1845 Illustration 12. Gloucester: Artist’s impression of the inconvenience caused by the

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issues in their historical context, with particular reference to the crucial period leading up to the Railway Mania. Sections 6.2 and 6.3 examine the basic principles of railway regulation and summarize the

…

of Trade in the crucial 222 The World’s First Railway System Parliamentary session before the Railway Mania reached its peak. They examine the forces that led to its extinction—in particular the unpopularity

…

R A D E The major failure of the railway regulation occurred at the time of the Railway Mania, when, after a short experiment, Parliament refused to accept advice on new railway schemes from

…

lasted for only one session of Parliament, however: namely the session 1844–45, during which the Railway Mania was approaching its height. The Mania peaked at the end of November 1845, when there was

…

congestion on certain parts of the railway system, and this encouraged the development of the ‘Second Railway Mania’ in 1861–6. The agenda was to build the lines that had not been built

…

LWAYS The government of Sir Robert Peel, in which Gladstone served at the time of the Railway Mania, was a radical and reforming government that was committed very Regulation 241 Table 6.3.

…

of Trade had determined the routes using the principles they developed at the time of the Railway Mania then the system would have generated greater network externalities than did the actual system. Additional social

…

system, full and immediate nationalization was not a politically feasible option at the time of the Railway Mania. By the time the issue was revisited in 1865, it was really too late to materially

…

inXuence the structure of the railway system. The Wrst Railway Mania had come and gone, leaving a legacy that was diYcult to change, Regulation 275 Table

…

equipment. Where appropriate, standardize equipment design internationally in order to reduce produrement costs and the Second Railway Mania of 1861–66 was already underway. Railway proWts were high, and this increased the cost to

…

railwaymen returning from the war. Fragmentation would also have been politically impossible at the time of the Railway Mania. In a modern context fragmentation appears as a pure ‘free market’ solution to the railway

…

practical alternative to the actual system. Had this system been introduced at the time of the Railway Mania, it would have been possible to realize many of the potential beneWts aVorded by the counterfactual

…

to develop, and many of the grand cross-country schemes proposed at the time of the Railway Mania failed. This led to a narrowing of vision, in which the ambition of towns in

…

themselves connected to the nearest trunk line. Rural ambitions revived at the time of the Second Railway Mania of 1861–66, when a number of new cross-country lines were built. In the

…

so the standing orders were tightened up and extended, so that by the time of the Railway Mania compliance had become quite onerous. One of the most important requirements was that half the shares

…

), and the promises were made in such a way that they were legally binding. (After the Railway Mania had collapsed, however, controversy arose as to the meaning of these promises, and the courts ruled

…

Wxed price by paying the balance of its nominal value. In boom conditions, such as the Railway Mania, shares would trade at above their nominal value, and so once an Act was passed scrip

…

whole of the South and East Midlands. A few years later, at the time of the Railway Mania, the Midland Railway built a similar line further north, from Leicester to Peterborough, in an unsuccessful

…

and also 298 The World’s First Railway System privately proWtable. At the time of the Railway Mania, however, contemporary commentators were convinced that many schemes were not promoted with the intention of ever

…

must be remembered, however, that these allegations were made mostly in the immediate aftermath of the Railway Mania when many families had been ruined by speculation, and where scapegoats were actively being sought out.

…

these new developments merely intensiWed existing attitudes. It was noted earlier that at the time of the Railway Mania many companies chose grandiose names. This reXected, in part, the ambitious scope of their projects,

…

cross-country schemes appeared at the time of the Railway Mania, and met with little success, but some of the later schemes promoted during the Second Railway Mania of 1861–6 were actually built. Even so,

…

used by just a single company. A missed opportunity occurred at the time of the Railway Mania, 1844–5. The Railway Mania is often blamed for some of the subsequent problems of the railway system, but usually

…

It is certainly true that a lot of people lost a lot of money in the Railway Mania. It is also true that many schemes failed and that when they failed the engineers and

…

of railways were promoted merely to give the stock-jobbers some shares to sell remains unproven. Railway Mania schemes did not fail because Parliament refused to approve them. Quite the contrary, in fact:

…

tube connections that make the inconvenience tolerable. Such waste was clearly foreseen at the time of the Railway Mania, but Parliament lacked the will to address the issue; as a result, short-term local interest

…

savings from Victorian British railways, Journal of Economic History, 66(3), 635–73. Lewin, Henry G. (1936) The Railway Mania and its Aftermath, 1845–52 (ed. C.R. Clinker), Newton Abbot: David & Charles. Lewis, M.J.T

…

Company. Goode, C.T. (1998) The Birmingham & Gloucester Loop, Anlaby: The author. Harris, Peter (1986) Bristol’s ‘Railway Mania’, Bristol: Historical Association, Bristol Branch. Jenkins, Stanley C. (1985) The Fairford Branch, Oxford: Oakwood. —— and R.S.

…

newspapers. Two Select Committees on private Bill procedure reported in 1837, in response to the Wrst Railway Mania, which occurred that year (for more details see CliVord 1885–7 and Williams 1949). The

…

The second project (described in Table A1.7) relates to a typical scheme of the Second Railway Mania of 1863–6: the Bedford Northampton and Leamington Railway. It involves an east–west cross-country

…

of behaviour may have emerged at diVerent times because of diVerent structures of cost. Prior to the Railway Mania, it may be argued that access costs were considered just as important, if not more important,

…

a signiWcant amount of investment. The failure to complete many of the lines projected during the Railway Mania meant that it took a considerable time to meet these initial traYc requirements. As the density

…

submitted for Private Bill 291 procedure for Private Bills 377 Railway Committees 120, 294, 299, 322 Railway Mania and Parliamentary session 1845–46 257–8 regulation 277–9 relations with Board of Trade 27–8

…

controlling overseas operations 51 Tab 2.3 railway entrepreneurship 52–6 railway grouping (1923) 1 railway investment, commercial drivers 136 Railway Mania (first) 17–19, 24–5, 27–8, 28–9, 44, 56, 58, 62, 103, 113, 114

…

277, 284, 289, 294, 298, 302, 309, 318, 320–1, 327 and Parliamentary session 1845–46: 257–8 Railway Mania (second) 44–7 187, 188, 192, 195, 200, 258, 276, 284, 318 railways and canals compared 314–15

The Long Good Buy: Analysing Cycles in Markets

by Peter Oppenheimer  · 3 May 2020  · 333pp  · 76,990 words

evidence on the first financial bubble. Journal of Financial Economics, 108(3), 585–607. 14 Odlyzko, A. (2010). Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British railway mania of the 1840s. SSRN [online]. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=1537338 15 Evans, How (not) to invest like Sir Isaac Newton. 16 Lucibello, A

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; A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries. The Journal of Economic History, 69(2), 409–445. 3 George Hudson and the 1840s railway mania. (2012). Yale School of Management Case Studies [online]. Available at https://som.yale.edu/our-approach/teaching-method/case-research-and-development/cases-directory/george

…

better than electricity? Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 49. 5 For discussion, see, see Odlyzko, A. (2010). Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British railway mania of the 1840s. SSRN [online]. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=1537338 6 https://www.fhs.swiss/eng/statistics.html 7 McNary, D. (2019, Jan

…

Journal of Central Banking, 7(1), 3–43. Galbraith, J. K. (1955). The great crash, 1929. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. George Hudson and the 1840s railway mania. (2012). Yale School of Management Case Studies [online]. Available at https://som.yale.edu/our-approach/teaching-method/case-research-and-development/cases-directory/george

…

: A try at linear trade negotiations. Journal of Law and Economics, 12(2), 297–319. Odlyzko, A. (2010). Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British railway mania of the 1840s. SSRN [online]. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=1537338 Okina, K., Shirakawa, M., and Shiratsuka, S. (2001). The asset price bubble and

…

Musson, A. E. (1959). The Great Depression in Britain, 1873–1896: A reappraisal. Journal of Economic History, 19(2), 199–228. Odlyzko, A. (2012). The railway mania: Fraud, disappointed expectations, and the modern economy. Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society, 215, 2–12. Oppenheimer, P. (2004). Adventures in Wonderland: Through the

Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations

by Simon Jenkins  · 28 Jul 2017  · 253pp  · 69,529 words

railway journals. They saw the whole world railway mad.’ The period became known as the Mania, by which I refer to it throughout this book. Railway mania: John Bull drunkenly accepts proposals for investing in railways, cartoon, 1836 In November 1845, The Times calculated that parliament had that year projected 1,200

…

we have seen, few designers of these stations were noted architects. They were engineers who had emerged from the chaos and opportunities of the early railway Mania. Their imagination was derivative and vernacular. We can almost imagine that, in matters of design, the rail industry, especially in its early years, felt constrained

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages

by Carlota Pérez  · 1 Jan 2002

Manchester rail line inaugurated the Age of Steam and Railroads, there was an amazing investment boom in the stock of companies constructing railways, a veritable ‘railway mania’ which ended in panic and collapse in 1847. After Andrew Carnegie’s Bessemer steel mill in 1875 gave the big-bang for the Age of

…

greater than can be absorbed by real investment. Much of this excess money is poured into furthering the technological revolution, especially its infrastructure (canal mania, railway mania, Internet mania), often leading to overinvestment that might not fulfill expectations. So at this time there tends to be a sort of gambling economy with

…

timing, it is interesting to note that these particular bubbles have tended to bear the name of the infrastructure of the corresponding revolution: canal mania, railway mania and now the Internet bubble, so that in these cases the ‘main objects of speculation,’ as defined in the Kindleberger model,93 happen to be

…

-Frenzy that the expression mania or bubble is properly applied in the present model.152 The canal mania leading to the panic of 1798, the railway mania panic of 1847 and the real estate153 and stock market mania before the crash of 1929 were all such types of phenomena. ‘Internet mania’ was

Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain

by Christian Wolmar  · 1 Mar 2009  · 493pp  · 145,326 words

grander in scale and conception than any of its predecessors. While work had progressed on the Stockton & Darlington, there had been something of a mini railway mania, the first of several over the next few decades, as various enterprising promoters put forward ideas for schemes to criss-cross Britain. Lines worth a

…

year was a notable one because it marked the end of the first phase of construction and the start of a brief hiatus before the railway mania of the second half of the decade began. There was, too, a lull in activity by the promoters. Once again, times were bad, both economically

…

periods of booms in railway promotion, the years 1845–7 are rightly known as the period of the ‘railway mania’ because of their widespread impact and lasting effect. FIVE RAILWAYS EVERYWHERE Like all booms, the railway mania started imperceptibly. By the mid-1840s, investing in the railways had become an attractive proposition once again

…

own unsustainability but also as a result of a downturn in the economic climate. Overall, the total mileage authorized for the four years of the railway mania from 1844 to 1847 reached 9,500,2 which would have needed £250m of capital to build. It represents nearly 90 per cent of today

…

opposed as a latecoming upstart by the existing railways, notably the Midland, which were enjoying a monopoly of traffic. Even before the start of the railway mania, the larger companies had become significant players who controlled much of the existing railway and were often able to dominate their smaller neighbours. In 1844

…

at every stage in the Parliamentary procedure – and afterwards.’24 It is no exaggeration to say that these power battles at the height of the railway mania determined the shape of the nation’s railways for ever. The Great Northern’s route to York, Hudson’s home base, was thirty miles shorter

…

have lasting worldwide influence when in 1884, at an international conference in Washington DC, it was agreed that Greenwich should be the zero meridian. The railway mania bubble burst because ultimately it was based on little more than optimism feeding on itself. When investors realized that the future was not necessarily paved

…

in the railway industry cannot be blamed for the economic downturn of the late 1840s. It was not so much the internal contradictions of the railway mania which brought about its end, but rather the deterioration in the rest of the economy. The railways had not been the only beneficiaries of unwise

…

new schemes ground to a halt by 1850, there were still a lot of lines under construction well into the 1850s. The scale of the railway mania can be illustrated by a simple statistic: by 1847 investment in the railways represented 6.7 per cent of all national income. As a result

…

sometimes previously approved schemes were incorporated into new ones and the precise relationship between the two is not always clear. 3 Henry Grote Lewin, The Railway Mania and its Aftermath, 1936, reprinted by David & Charles, 1968, p. 18. 4 Ibid. 5 Christian Wolmar, The Subterranean Railway: how the London Underground was built

…

2004. 16 Terry Gourvish, Mark Huish and the London & North Western Railway, Leicester University Press, 1972, p. 23. 17 Details are contained in Lewin, The Railway Mania and its Aftermath, p. 86. 18 The tunnel which had been hewn through the chalk for the canal in 1824 caused trouble to the railway

…

This, rather confusingly, was a separate railway to the North Midland, one of the three railways which merged to create the Midland. 26 Lewin, The Railway Mania and its Aftermath, p. 357. 27 Quoted in Frank Ferneyhough, The History of Railways in Britain, Osprey Publishing, 1975, p. 88. 28 Jack Simmons, The

…

, ref26; joint stock and limited liability, ref27; competition among, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38, ref39, ref40, ref41; expansion of (railway mania), ref42, ref43; capital requirements, ref44; share certificates, ref45; advertising, ref46, ref47, ref48, ref49; investors, ref50, ref51, ref52; and MPs, ref53, ref54; average costs, ref55; dominance

…

nationalization, ref85 Railway Development Association, ref1 Railway Executive Committee, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 railway inspectorate, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 railway journals, ref1 railway mania, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Railway Passenger Duty, ref1 railway races, ref1, ref2, ref3 Railway Regulation Acts, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Railway Ribaldry, ref1

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