A golden age
It is hard to imagine a time when it took three days to get from London to Manchester by road and when the height of express travel was an 8mph ‘Flying’ coach.
Such was the case in the mid-18th century. Even 80 years later, with stagecoach travel at the peak of its development and with relays of horses available at coaching inns the length and breadth of the country, the average speed of passenger travel had accelerated merely to a giddy 12mph. But lurking in the wings was a fire-breathing, spark-spitting monster that was to drive the stagecoach out of business: the railway locomotive.
During the 1840s, the building of railways proceeded at breakneck speed and by the end of the decade most towns and cities across lowland Britain were interconnected.
