This article describes the Caledonian Railway from its conception down to the year 1850.
In the 1830s and 1840s much thought was given to building a railway from central Scotland to join the growing English railway network. The hilly terrain and sparse population of the Southern Uplands made the choice of route contentious.
The Caledonian Railway succeeded in opening its line by way of a summit at Beattock in 1847 and 1848. It connected Glasgow and Edinburgh with Carlisle, and there was a branch to connect with another railway to Perth. The approaches to Glasgow were over existing mineral lines, but a superior route was later built.
The original route is a principal main line today, subject to the modifications approaching Glasgow, and later improved terminals there and in Edinburgh. The route is electrified and forms the northern section of the West Coast Main Line railway.
The general history of the company is described in the article Caledonian Railway and detail of the development of the route is at Caledonian Main Line.
History Coal railways Primitive railways had been used in connection with mineral extraction from the sixteenth century in Central Europe, but these were not railways as we know them now: they simply allowed the manoeuvring of single wagons loaded with heavy materials within mines or from mines and quarries to another transport medium.
For some time the choice was between transport on the back of a pack animal—early roads were rarely stable enough for heavy wheeled vehicles—or on water, either a river or increasingly from the eighteenth century a canal.
In the nineteenth century the technology of railways developed rapidly to satisfy the demands of growing cities, such a Glasgow, and industry, particularly the iron industry.
In 1812 the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway opened to convey coal from pits in the Kilmarnock area to a harbour at Troon. It was a plateway in which the "rails" were L-shaped plates; the upstand of the profile guided the wagon wheels, which did not have flanges.
In 1826 the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway opened; this was an edge railway in which the wagon wheels had flanges for guidance, and the rails were deeper and stronger: strong enough to support heavy steam locomotives. The engineer for the scheme was Thomas Grainger, assisted by John Miller. The success of the Monkland and Kirkintilloch line, and the discovery of good quality coal and iron deposits, and of a new method of smelting iron ore, encouraged other lines in the west of Scotland, also engineered by Grainger and Miller.
The permanent way was cast iron fish-bellied rails on stone block "sleepers", and the track gauge was 4 ft 6 in (1,372 mm).
A number of other railways, particularly in the west of Scotland, followed, notably the Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway of 1831, which extended and reconstituted itself as The Glasgow, Garnkirk and Coatbridge Railway in 1845, and the Wishaw and Coltness Railway in 1844. Collectively these lines were known as the coal railways.
Linking with English railways In 1825 the Stockton and Darlington Railway in north-east England had started operating, with enormous success. It now became clear that locomotive railways had potential, and in 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, the first inter-city railway in the world. Definite plans were being made for what became the London and Birmingham Railway (opened in 1837 - 1838) and the Grand Junction Railway (which progressively opened from 1837). Grainger and Miller were commissioned in 1835 to assess the route of a line linking Glasgow and Kilmarnock and Ayr; this became the Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway, and the promoters had the definite intention of somehow linking Carlisle and the English railways.
The critical issue was finding a route crossing, or going round, the high ground of the Southern Uplands and the Cheviot Hills and the Pennines. The locomotives of the time were considered unable to ascend steep and lengthy gradients. Grainger and Miller designed a route via Kilmarnock, Mauchline, Sanquhar and Dumfries; its gradients were moderate but it was circuitous; it became known as the Nithsdale route.
Lancashire businessmen had been the driving force in many of the English railways, and as their plans already encompassed a network from London to Preston, their thoughts turned to reaching central Scotland. In 1835 the Grand Junction Railway commissioned the young engineer Joseph Locke to propose routes from Glasgow to Carlisle. His report examined two routes: a route following the Annan Water with a summit near Elvanfoot. This became known as the Annandale route. However it involved gradients of 1 in 75 over ten miles—at the time considered impossible—and did not pass near any major population centre. The alternative was a longer route similar to Grainger and Miller's Nithsdale route, with gentler gradients and passing through more populous areas. Locke recommended this, and his opinion was taken as authoritative for the time being.C J A Robertson, The Origins of the Scottish Railway System, 1722 - 1844, John Donald Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh, 1983,
Landowners on the Annandale route were disappointed, aware of the prosperity that a railway could bring. The Grand Junction did not immediately act on the report they had asked for: there were difficulties further south in reaching Carlisle.
Locke produced a second report, in 1837; he now found that the worst gradient could be moderated, to 1 in 93. Moreover, technical improvements in locomotives meant that the gradient was not such a daunting challenge. The Annandale route had the advantage that Edinburgh could easily be served from it.
Others were putting several other routes forward; chief among these was a route following the east coast; it was taken for granted at the time that only one trunk line between central Scotland and England was sustainable, so all the proposals were presumed to be mutually exclusive.
Locke revised his survey the following year, finding that the worst gradients could be eased a little, but now money was suddenly hard to come by, and a proposed trunk railway was inopportune. David Ross, The Caledonian—Scotland's Imperial Railway—A History, Stenlake Publishing Ltd, Catrine, 2013,
The Smith-Barlow Commission There was considerable public interest in the formation of a railway to England. Many schemes had been put forward in the press; not all of them were practicable and many were driven by sectional interest; for example the Borders towns were pressing for a route through their area; interests supporting the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway favoured a route that connected with that line, bringing it traffic; promoters in Newcastle wanted a route from Tyneside.
In 1839 a public meeting chaired by the Lord Provost of Glasgow decided to review the alternatives; but before the engineers' report could be assessed the Government decided to appoint its own commission, and Professor Peter Barlow of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and Colonel Sir Frederick Smith, Inspector General of Railways at the Board of Trade, were appointed to "make recommendations on the most effective means of railway communication from London to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin".
They considered 16 schemes, although several were simply variations of one another; they were surprised that most of the promoters were unable to provide more than the most basic details of their proposals, and they found wild and inexplicable variations in unit costs assumed.
Their report was published on 15 March 1841: they repeated the assumption that only one line was required linking Scotland and England. The Annandale route was favoured, but it was qualified: anyone could build such a line provided they gave an undertaking to reach Lancaster, at that time the northern extremity of planned English railways. If this undertaking were not given, an east coast route would have preference. The uncertain conclusion, and the absence of Government money (which some had supposed the Commission would disburse), and a severe renewed tightness of the money market, stalled the whole thing for more than two years.
The East Coast route first In fact in the following years, the insistence on a single route to England became an irrelevance, and the North British Railway issued a prospectus in August 1843 for a line from Edinburgh to meet the Newcastle and Berwick Railway.
Definite moves at last On 19 February 1844, a preliminary committee, meeting in London, determined to issue a prospectus for a line from Carlisle to Glasgow to Edinburgh; the line would be called the Caledonian Railway Company.The name had been considered before, in the sense of a railway from Lancaster into Scotland.
In 1844 the Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway had extended to Whifflat (later spelt Whifflet), renaming itself to the Glasgow, Garnkirk and Coatbridge Railway. At Whifflat it joined the Wishaw and Coltness Railway, and the committee discussed the possibility of running over these lines to get access to Glasgow, and agreement with them was secured. They agreed to change the gauge of their lines to suit the standard gauge of the future Caledonian Railway.
By now many other railway schemes in Scotland were under construction. The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway had started operating in 1842, and the Scottish Central Railway was being actively promoted, as a branch from the E&GR Perth. The North British Railway, connecting Edinburgh with Berwick-on-Tweed and therefore English east coast locations, was under construction. If the Caledonian did nothing, all the traffic from north of the central belt would go to other railways. Strenuous efforts resulted in agreement with the Scottish Central to form a junction with them near Castlecary (west of Falkirk), and a branch to that point was added to the Caledonian proposals.
In fact the branch was complicated: the Caledonian already proposed to run over the Glasgow, Garnkirk and Coatbridge Railway (GG&CR) from Whifflat. Another coal railway, the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway (M&KR) ran alongside the GG&CR at Gartsherrie, continuing north to the canal basin at Kirkintilloch. Agreement was secured to run over 1,170 yards (1,070 m) of that line, then diverging at Garnqueen to run north-east to Castlecary. The M&KR was still using the old track gauge, but, now feeling its track to be outdated, it too agreed to convert the gauge to suit the Caledonian.
Finally, the Caledonian promoters saw that the Clydesdale Junction Railway was being put forward. It was to connect the Wishaw and Coltness Motherwell and the south side of Glasgow, incorporating and upgrading an earlier horse-operated mineral line, the Polloc and Govan Railway. The CJR would provide a more direct entry into Glasgow than the Garnkirk line, (and it was not certain that the former coal railways would give adequate precedence to express passenger trains over their mineral movements) so this was a useful ally to have. O S Nock, The Caledonian Railway, Ian Allan Limited, London, 1961
Lord Dalhousie's report In 1841, Professor Peter Barlow and Sir Frederick Smith had reported on a preferred route for a railway connecting with England; this report had not commanded much compliance. Now in 1844 the Government appointed a commission to recommend a route; once again the presumption was that only one trunk route into England could be supported. The investigation was led by Lord Dalhousie, President of the Board of Trade. It supported the Annandale route, and therefore the Caledonian scheme, and recommended that other lines under consideration should be restricted to local traffic only: the Nithsdale route should terminate at Cumnock, and a proposed Edinburgh to Carlisle scheme (an offshoot of the North British Railway, should stop at Hawick.
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