The Transport Revolution

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What we will learn today

What we will learn today:
1. Why the transport revolution was important.

2.
3. 4.

How the roads developed.

How the canal system developed. How steam played an important part in the transport revolution.

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Why was the transport revolution important?

The revolution in industry and the revolution in transport go hand in hand. Neither could have happened without the other. As industry changed and expanded, it needed better forms of transport to bring raw materials to the factories and to take the manufactured goods to markets nationally and worldwide.

Think! What changes in industry helped transport to develop?

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What was transport like in 1750?

There had been little need to travel far before the 18th century, and few people went outside their village or town. Everything they needed they produced themselves or bought from a local craftsman. As a result, roads were very poor and it was often quicker to travel a longer distance by river or sea than to try to go across land. Sea transport was greatly used for heavy goods such as coal or corn. When the industry began to grow, the roads became busier. Cartwheels churned up the unmade roads which often became impassable in winter.
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Horse and carts were the only way to transport goods or people on land.

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How did the roads develop?

Roads that began to be used a lot were taken over by Turnpike Trusts. These were groups of businessmen who, with parliaments permission, bought the right to control a section of road. In return for improving the road and keeping it in good repair, they set up toll gates where travellers would have to stop and pay a toll or fee to continue their journey. Think! Do you think all the travellers welcomed the toll roads? There were 1,000 or so Turnpike Trusts by 1830, covering more than 22,000 miles of road. Along these roads horses, wagons and stagecoaches travelled three times faster than on ordinary roads.
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Some trusts built completely new roads, using the skills of engineers such as Thomas Telford. Surveyor John McAdam came up with a new way of building roads by using small, tightly packed stones, higher in the centre and with drainage ditches at each side. He never used tar on his roads, but that came later and we still use the term tarmacadam or tarmac roads today. very fine stones

medium stones

ditch
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How did canals develop?

Although Turnpike Trusts made great improvements, most roads were still outside of their control and in a very poor state of repair. Packhorses or wagons could also only carry limited quantities of goods.

One way to overcome this was to build canals. A canal is like a manmade river but with much greater advantages for transport:
They could be built almost anywhere, joining major industrial centres or ports. By using a system of locks, canals could go up and down, unlike natural rivers.

Canal barges could carry large, heavy loads.

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Canal barges could transport large, heavy loads to and from industrial centres.

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The Five Rise flight of locks on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Bingley, West Yorkshire, which opened in 1774. These locks lifted boats 20 metres uphill.

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How does the boat get to the higher section of the canal?

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The first canals

The first canal was built in 1757, and by 1776 the Bridgewater Canal linked Manchester to the docks at Liverpool. Large quantities of materials could now be floated in barges on canals much cheaper than many wagon loads on the roads: the Bridgewater canal halved the cost of delivering coal to Manchester.

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The canal system in England in 1830

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Salts Mill, built by the side of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Raw materials could be transported right up to the mill and the finished goods could be loaded onto barges to be taken to the docks at Liverpool for export.

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How did steam develop?

In time, the canals were becoming very busy and barges often had to queue up at locks to get through. A solution to this was the railway. The first passenger railway consisted of horse-drawn wagons on iron rails, and opened in 1807 in South Wales. In 1803 Richard Trevithick, a mine engineer in Cornwall, developed the first steam locomotive capable of hauling cargo and passengers, with a speed of 5 miles an hour.

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The first railway locomotive designed by Trevithick in 1803.

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The first steam-powered passenger railway was opened in 1825 by its inventor George Stephenson and ran between Stockton and Darlington. Further developments led to the building of the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830, the first major line.

Stephensons Rocket

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The success of this new transport system spiralled in the 1830s and 1840s, with several intercity routes built. By 1870 the mainline system was complete, with over 13,000 miles of track open to traffic.
20000 15000 10000 5000 0
1830 1850 1870 1890

Miles of track open

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By the late 19th century large, powerful railway locomotives could haul huge loads at very fast speeds. These continued to be used to carry freight and passengers as late as the 1960s.

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What were the effects of the railways?

Horse-drawn transport and canals continued to be used for a while, but they had to reduce their prices to be competitive, and began to go into decline from the 1840s. Freight could be transported more quickly and cheaply than ever before.

Fresh food could be delivered all over the country. In the late 19th century milk trains took milk from distant rural areas into London and other major cities.
Steam coal to fuel the new steam railways was now mined in huge quantities, providing thousands of jobs in the coalfields of South Wales and the Midlands.
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What were the effects of the railways?

Journey times were greatly reduced. In 1811 it took six hours to get from London to Brighton and cost 1. Thirty years later the train took just two hours and cost 4 shillings (20p today).

Railways enabled large numbers of people to move to other parts of the country to find work. Ordinary people could now afford to live further from their place of work or go on day trips or holidays to the seaside.

Think!
Do you think that the steam engines had any negative effects in the transport revolution?
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Steamships
Travelling along the coast by sail-power was an important method of transport until the mid-19th century. With the development of the much faster steamship, however, coastal shipping increased both in the number of passengers carried and the amount of freight transported. Britain already had a thriving shipping trade with the rest of the world, but the steamship reduced both time and costs and helped Britain to keep ahead of the rest of Europe in its industrial ability. The use of coal to fuel the steamships helped expand the coal industry.
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Conclusion
As you can see, transport underwent a significant change. From roads to rail, from the canals to the steamships, all these changes produced a more effective system of transport for the Industrial Revolution.

One question to think about is whether the transport revolution was a separate revolution in itself or whether it was part of the greater revolution in the factories what do you think?

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Activities
1) Which new form of transport do you think had the most effect on British industry? Explain your answer.

2) Design a brochure to encourage people to invest in your new transport company, using the transport system you chose in question 1. You need a lot of money to be able to build your new roads/canals/railways, and there are many new transport companies and people will only invest in your company if they think you have the best ideas. Include where you are going to build, the advantages for industry and/or passengers, the shorter journey times, comfort, safety, and the profits you hope to make. Think up a snappy name for your company and illustrate your brochure to make it as colourful as possible.
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