Modern Legacy and Future Outlook

Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney plus. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. A true epic and completely jawdropping. This is the only pure thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney pllus. It will be an adventure for the whole family and watch the Oscar winning phenomenon at home. This is sick ar Fire and Ash, now stream runun Disney pllus, rated PD thirteen It is the fifteenth of september eighteen thirty, on a gray, rainy day at Crown Street Station Liverpool. High above the railway cutting, hundreds of spectators crowd the tops of the stone walls on the great arch that spans the track Colorful flags hang from the masonry, and from every vantage point, people lean forward to watch the strange procession beginning below Among the crowd down on the platform is a wealthy Liverpool cotton broker who has been fortunate enough to secure a coveted ticket on this the inaugural journey of the brand new Liverpool to Manchester Railway He's traveled between the two cities by road often, spending long hours rattling across rutted turnpikes behind tired horses. That all changes today A fourour years in the making, with engineers carving through mountains and shoring up vast bogs to lay their tracks, the rail line is about to host its first passenger journey Looking along the platform, the merchant sees the small engine, a locomotive, sitting patiently on the lines, breathing steam into the morning air It's one of eight such engines that will form part of this opening ceremony. Far smaller than the industrial steam engines he's seen in the mills, it's little more than a squat boiler balanced above tall wheels. It's narrow chimney pointing to the sky It doesn't look powerful enough to haul nearly one hundred people all the way to Manchester. But the promise is that it will not only make the journey, but will do it at an unimaginable thirty miles per hour Coupled to the engine are several repurposed stagecoach bodies and open wagons, the kind that usually carry travelers and goods between towns by horse Now they have been fitted with benches and mounted on iron wheels instead, to form a train of passenger carriages As coal smoke drifts along the platform, the merchant weaves through the raucous crowd, smiling at a group of children, balanced on crates to get a better view. Officials in tall hats move along the line, directing passengers to their places The merchant climbs the small iron step into one of the open wagons and settles onto the wooden bench. Around him, other passengers sit stiffly. coats buttoned, hats firmly pressed onto their heads. No one quite knows what to expect Suddenly, the engine shrieks as steam escapes from a valve Several passengers startle. A few laugh nervously. The band swells again, and cheers ripple across the platform as clouds of white erupt from beneath the boiler. The locomotive gives another piercing whistle that slices through the morning air, and the wheels begin to turn against the iron rails with a hard metallic cry They're off The procession moves slowly at first, picking up speed as the engine gathers momentum As the platform slides away, the wind rises against the merchant's face soon, the fields are flickering by faster than any horse could carry him He finds he's grinning like an excited child, and as he looks to his neighbors in the carriage, he discovers he's not the only one With the machine continuing to gather speed, it becomes clear to those aboard that everything they ever knew about transport has just changed For most of human history, the speed of travel barely shifted People moved at the pace of muscle, wind, and water The journeys between cities took days. News traveled slowly The distance was a stubborn and tedious barrier But in the early nineteenth century, something remarkable happened Engineers discovered that steam power and iron rails could be combined to move people and goods faster than any horse or ox could carry them Within a few decades, railways spread across every continent. Cities were reorganized around stations, clocks were synchronized, leisure and luxury were redefined, and entire economies began to run according to railway timetables This was the Glden Age of the railways, A period when steam and steel transformed landscapes and fundamentally altered the way the world worked. But how did a strange experimental machine become the backbone of modern life? How did railways reshape everything from holidays to warfare to time itself And why, long after the Steam age ended, does so much of modern life still run on railway logic I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is a short history of the Golden Age of raailways From our earliest migrations, travel has been an essential aspect of human life. People and goods move on foot or by horse, ox, river barge, coastal ship or caravan. Along roads that turn to mud in the rain and dust in the heat or are blocked for months at a time by ice and snow. Mountains, deserts, and oceans act as hard limits to progress, and must either be conquered or circumnavigated at great length, cost and effort. For most families and individuals, even by the late eighteenth century, the place they call home remains practically inescapable Birth, work, marriage, and death all unfold within a short radius with opportunities to find employment or even a spouse limited to one's immediate surroundings. Long distance travel remains expensive, dangerous, and incredibly rare. And even the shortest distances are uncomfortable undertakings Christian Walmar is a writer and broadcaster, specializing in transports and author of several books on the history of the railways Why the railways are so revolutionary and so game changing is precisely because before the railways, people didn't get around very much Look, it took a stage coach three or four days to get between London and New York. The roads were lousy Nobody had travel faster than you could gallop on a horse whileile ancient trade networks already link distant parts of the world painfully slow. Messages take weeks to cross a country and months to cross an ocean By the time news arrives, it's no longer new Empires exist, but they stretch awkwardly and governing the more distant outreaches requires patience and resilience Across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, the economies continue to grow within these confines but they start to feel the straange. populations rise and industry demands more efficient movement of goods One early step towards solving this problem appears in the mining districts of Germany in the sixteenth century and is later adopted and adapted in Britain's coal fields around Newcastle Before what we know is railways, there were wagonways. there was actually quiet a network in the northeast and in several other places. These were basically wagons on rails, which were either pulled by horses or mules or pushed by human beings and moved minerals around By running the wheels along fixed rails, a horse can hold far more weight, far more easily than it could on a road As a result, minds are able to expand their output As the industrial revolution gathers pace and demand for coal soars Industry depends more on these wagonways The system has limits the wagons still rely on horses or human strength to move them along the track So transit remains slow. As engineers and industrialists look for a solution They realize they have many of the moving parts already The railways had many fathers as it were and they were pretty much all men in that there were all sorts of inventions that came together to result in what we know as a railway. So you needed tracks, you needed places to put tracks, so you needed to create reasonably flat roads, spaces, And you put the tracks onto the road, but then you also needed the technology of steam engines and that was developed over the space of the eighteenth century by various people of which the most famous was James Watt, but all sorts of other people contributed to that The probleblem, though, is that the steam engines driving mills and factories through the Iustrial Revolution A huge contraptions boltered to the ground The very opposite of mobile By the late eighteenth century, engineers understand the usefulness of rails and wagons and the power of steam engines But still No one thinks to join them all together The breakthrough comes in the early years of the nineteenth century when Cornish engineer Richard Travithik experiments with a new kind of steam engine Unlike the vast low pressure machines developed by James Watt Travithk's designign uses high pressure steam, allowing the engine to be far smaller. and far more powerful for its size In eighteen oh four, it demonstrates a remarkable new steam engine. mounted on wheels, capable of hauling wagons along iron rails On a short industrial line in South Wales, Travith's locomotive pulls a train of loaded wagons at around five miles an hour Granted, it's barely faster than a brisk horse, and the early machines are unreliable, heavy, and expensive to run. But even so, Travithic has proven that steam could do away with the need for horses altogether. Gradually, other engineers turn their attention to the same possibility Among them is a collerary worker from the North of England named George Stehvenson Little formal education, but years of practical experience maintaining pumping engines in coal mines Stevenson becomes convinced that steam locomotives could transform the wagonways of Britain's coal fields thirty forty years between the first kind of steam engine whizzing around a small track, which was devised by Trovithic in the early nineteenth century You get the idea of a train and a railway, which combines all these inventions Stehvenson's chance to prove the idea comes in eighteen twenty five with the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in Northeast England desesigned to carry coal from inland collieraries to the river tees, It becomes the first public railway to use steam locomotives to hul wagons along iron rails On its opening day, Stevenson himself drives locomotion number one an engine of his own design ull a long train of coal wagons and workers' carriages But even now it's far from obvious that locomotives are the future. Many engineers believe the trains should instead be pulled along by powerful stationary engines haauling wagons up and down the line using cables Others suggest a kind of locomotive powered by a horse on a treadmill instead of steam To settle the question, a public competition is organized in October eighteen twenty nine on the newly built Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The contest becomes known as the Rain Hill Trials Five engines are entered, and thousands of spectators gathered to watch them try to tackle a mile long stretch of track near the village of Rainhill George Stehvenson's son, Robert, who grew up around his father's engines and experiments, enters an engine of his own design, which he calls Stevenson's rocket One by one, his rivals fall short either breaking down, overheating, or failing to complete the short course Rocket alone runs the required distance at speed day after day In doing so, it wins the competition's five hundred pound prize, and more importantly, it settles the debate Proving that a steam locomotive can haul trains quickly, reliably and repeatedly Soon the system expands beyond freight Trains begin carrying passengers too along George Stehvenson's groundbreaking new railway between Liverpool and Manchester It wasn't until all these inventions were put together and that the technology was found to work properly that you then get what I think is a great opening of the railways, which is eighteen thirty, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which is really the breakthrough of this technology. There were precursors to that, nototably the Stockton and Darlington raailway in eighteen twenty five. But that was more like the last of the wagonways rather than the first modern railway, which was definitely the Liverpool of Manchester, which was double tracked and steam hauled all the way through. That was the breakthrough point This is a paid advertisement from Indeed. If you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break. Hoping the right people see your job posting isn't the best growth strategy. When the pressure iss on and you need the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed, sponsored jobs gets you quality candidates when you need the most Sponsored jobs boosts your job post in search results, so you can reach the people that help your business thrive. Plus, with indeed sponsored jobs, you only pay for results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. less stress, less time More results. 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And if people haven't heard about your brand, you can get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. with easy to run email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they're scrolling or scrolling Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing Sign up for your one dollar per month trial today at shhopify d. com slash realM. Go to shhopify. com slash realm That's shhopify dot com slash Rem Even though the technology has proved itself Engineers still have a long way to go to make it safe and reliable There were all sorts of technologies that needed to be honed out Probably most difficult was creating the power out of steam burning coal to create steam which then powered pistons. And then another problem was getting the weights down. So the static steam engines that had existed to pump out water in mines has been one major thing they did were huge, great big things. And then you had to build a track Gradually, engineers solve those problems, refining the engines, strengthening the track, and learning how to build railways through landscapes in the straightest possible lines And once the hurdles are overcome, technology spreads quickly Across the Atlantic, early American railroads begin linking ports to inland markets And on the European continent, Belgium and Prussia adopt railways as tools of national development, almost from the outset everywhere it seems, wantce in on the action By the eighteen forties, enthusiasm for railways has become a thiever. Britain, Europe, North America and beyond, proposed lines multiply at astonishing speed Newspapers trumpet a coming age of motion pololiticians lobby fiercely for tracks to pass through their towns. Already imagining the prosperity they might bring For an emergent middle class with new foundound capital to invest The railways are an attractive prospect There was at the time quite a lot of capital which arose from the fact that slavery had been abolished and a lot of the aristocrats who owned slaves were paid compensation. and again, so they had some money to invest in the rail There was also a burdoning middle class were beginning to get savings and money that they wanted to invest in something profitable. Their rate of return looked very attractive in some of these railways. Even though many of the proposed routes exist only as ink on maps The railway boom quickly becomes a speculative frenzy with investors clamoring to get in on the action In eighteen forty six alone, the British Parliament approves railway schemes worth one hundred thirty two million pounds a staggering sum at the time. Within a decade from the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, More than a thousand miles of track have already been laid. That created a real rush to invest in lines, which was the railway mania Some of which was successful and resulted in large, some of which the investors were fleeced and they never got their money back. And still, engineers and visionaries push the idea further Among them is the brilliant and ambitious British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. whose great western railway is soon slicing across the countryside on a massive scale. carried over valleys on vast viaducts and driven through hills in mile long tunnels Within a few years, it has revolutionized travel along the hundred mile stretch between London and Bristol This transformation also provokes unease Early rail travel is loud violent and unpredictable Though accidents aren't frequent Boilers can explode cararriages sometimes derail Speeds, once thought impossible, provoke genuine anxiety too as doctors warn that rapid motion might damage the human body or unsettle the mind. when accidents do happen Newspapers report them in lurid detail. stoking the public's fears and shadowing the system's success with the same uneasy question Should human beings really be moving this fast But accidents are also often learned from driving changes that make travel safer and railway mania gathers pace The the fever isn't confined to Britain The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway prompts other countries to jump on board By eighteen forties there was maybe eight or ten countries with railways. By the eighteen fifties that had probably doubled again and really every country with a good economy had begun to start building railways The point is that it was such a game changer, such an obvious asset to a country that of course there were some downsides. People sometimes objected to the dirt, the noise, they curursed on the countryside and so on, But those downsides were very small compared to the upside Qicker travel for people. Qicker transfer of freight. A huge boost for technology, so the railways themselllves were an important catalyst for the development of technology and so on It was really quite an unstoppable force countountryside is reshaped everywhere with networks of lines, bridges, and tunnels driven through hills and mountains by hand and high explosives Vast workforces endure dangerous conditions to lay tracks that promise speed and fortune. The initial momentum, however doesn't last forever Some companies thrive others collapse under debt, corruption pure fantasy Fortunes are made and lost almost overnight But when the financial bubble bursts, the rails remain binding towns and cities together. The landscape has been remade with a new backbone of steel By the middle of the nineteenth century, the railway is already becoming part of the fabric of everyday life. At this point, railways are widespread enough to force significant and fundamental changes to old norms Even concept of time itself To run safely and efficiently, trains need precise schedules precise schedules require something the world has never truly had before shhared time For centuries, each town has kept its own local hour, set by the position of the sun. Noon arrives slightly earlier in the east, slightly later in the west In the slow moving world of the horse and cart, this difference hardly mattered But once trains begin running between cities The system quickly breaks down Because somewhere like Exeter in the West, the sun would rise fifteen or twenty minutes later than in London and therefore when you got to Exeter by train, you'd find you have to put your watch back by fifteen or twenty minutes because that's what the local church clock said And that was obviously really inconvenient for railways because what do you put in the timetable? Whse time are you using? And very quickly it was realized that you needed standardized time, which had never been done before Railway companies begin imposing a single time across their network Stations synchronize their clocks, with many even introducing a second minute hand differentiate between local time and railway time The time was stestablilized in London Greenwich, meantime became Naght. and that was established around the world From the eighteen fifties, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich sends daily telegraph signals across the railway network allowing station clocks around the country be synchronized to the same minute The change quickly catches on Cities reset their clocks to match the station clocks, with businesses, schools, factories and governments all adapting Elsewhere, however An even more radical approach is required. In America, they standardized the time into four different time zones, but they did that again because of the railways and because the inconvenience of not being able to work out precisely what time the railways is operating For many in the United States, that change arrives dramatically On the eighteenth of november, eighteen eighty three Railroads across the country reset their clocks to the new system of four time zones In some towns, the clocks jump forward In others, it moves back. in some places. Day is struck twice. and the day becomes immortalized as Day of two noons Once the changes have been implemented though For the first time in history Millions of strangers are bound to the same invisible schedule. And with journeys now planned to the minute The movement of people really begins to change Railways also reshape cities as hotels, offices, warehouses, and entertainment venues spring up around the stations they serve Entire suburbs grow along commuter lines separating home from work on a mass scale. Uurban life reorganizes itself around arrival and departure. proximity to the platform, becoming a new measure of opportunity. It worked for everybody. you'd go up to the local market town more easily, bring your agricultural produce if you were a farmer. it worked for mail order goods so you could order things from department stores in London and they would get sent to you by train And it made it easier for people to travel. The big example of that was the great exhibition in the early eighteen fifties where special trains organized from all around Britain to bring literally thousands of people into London to see these wonders of the modern world. And that would not have been possible without the railways. You wouldn't have got that number of people in there Across the world, the same story unfolds. From Europe to the United States to Japan Railways open access to distant landscapes, linking growing cities Coastal resorts and national parks the first time in history. Travel stops being the preserve of elites and become something for ordinary working people too So holidays were really enabled by the railways, both because they could travel to the seaside in particular in huge lengthy chartered trains which had fifteen, twenty carriages hauled with two or three locomotives to take people off But also because of industrialization and the demands it put on people They began to require holidays and they were given a week off, the factory would close and everybody would go off to the seaside by rail with their places of employment closed. Thousands of workers and their families board excursion trains bound for seaside resorts like Blackpool or Brighton. Erepreneurs like Thomas Cook begin organizing group tours with fixed itineraries Turning a holiday into something that can be sold as a package and launching a new industry and that industry It reshapes everyday culture in Britain in unexpected ways They actually even enable the spread of fish and chips because originally fresh fish would only have been available in seaside towns because you couldn't take fresh fish inland very fast. When the railways arrive you can take fresh fish into lots of towns. so fish and chips shops going open up and people got the taste for the fish and chips by going to the seaside towns and seeing fresh fish and chips. Isn't that wonderful? We'd love to have that in our town Even spport gets the railway treatment with teams now traveling quickly between towns, allowing regular fixtures Over time, these journeys help create leagues, competitions, and eventually the possibility of professional athletes But there are also downsides to all this freedom of movement Trains are usually crowded, noisy, and socially unsettling First, second and third class carriages reinforce social divisions. even as they force strangers to travel together in confined spaces. And while women have traveled unaccompanied before, on stage coaches and in private carriages Railway travel is different Women are no longer moving within small, supervised groups through a massive system of strangers in an attempt to avert any moral panic Railway companies introduce ladies compartments. while etiquette guides set out rules of behavior, regulating anything from conduct to dress to luggage At the same time, women begin working on the railways themselves as clerks, telegraph operators, cleaners, and service staff occupying new roles within the machinery of modern life The railway doesn't erase gender boundaries or social norms But it does stretch their definitions people move more easily across their countries A stronger sense of national connection emerges railways were very important in really establishing the idea of nationhood let alone empire. So countries such as Germany and Italy were linked within each other by railways. and really the nations were created by the fact that now people could travel all the way around the country without any difficulties where they could not do that before Wh citizens might enjoy a greater sense of national identity Governments start recognizing the potential for moving troops, administrators and supplies across vast distances with unprecedented speed in a world of expanding empires. regions that once felt remote are suddenly drawn tightly into the orbits of central authority Britain was building up its empire in Africa in the last quarter of the nineteenth century There was very much the idea that if we want to hold on to this particular territory, we need to build a railway. so wherever they went, they essentially tried sometimes not entirely successfully because it's not easy territory to build railways, to hold on to the parts of Africa they wanted to have control So railways and imperialism go hand in hand rather than connecting communities These railways facilitate the extraction of vast wealth Tracks run from mines and plantations straight to coastal ports carrying raw materials out to the wider imperial economy In Southern Africa, the British imperialist and mining magnate, Cecil Rhodes, dreams of a railway running the entire length of the continent fromr Cape Town to Cairo Binding Britain's African territories together But this venture comes at a profound human cost Some of the railways that Ascessor Roads built in Africa were at the expense of vast numbers of people who died of disease or accidents True Al in India, true, the worst railway the world for that was probably the Panama raailway which was built by largely American interests in order to create a quicker route from one side of America to the other without having to go down to the cpe There was little concern for the lives that were lost in this rush to build railways across empires, railways are built by vast labor forces working in dangerous conditions. In India, Africa and Southeast Asia, Tens of thousands die from accidents, disease and exhaustion. but their lives are treated as expendable. in the pursuit of modernity and fortune Elsewhere, governments launch railway projects on an almost unimaginable scale in Russia The transr Siberian railway begun in eighteen ninety one, attempts the staggeringly ambitious task of building a single railway stretching almost nine thousand three hundred kilometers from Moscow Pacific after the heir to the Russian throne The future Zar Nicholas II ceremonially dumps the first wheelbarrow of Earth at Vladivostok the engineers and workers are left to face some of the most challenging feats of engineering raailway history Heat up your fourth of July at the Home Depot with our wide variety of grills under three hundred dollars and make every gathering one to remember. Give your outdoor space a glow up. whatever your budget is, with savings on seasonal plants starting at five dollars. 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It is the winter of nineteen oh three on the southern shore of Lake Baical, Siberia A laborer, originally from Georgia, steps out from a canvas worker' tent and into the icy Siberian wind, a cold sitting deep in his bones He stamps his boots against the frozen ground and flexes his hands inside stiff wool gloves, trying to bring feeling back to his fingers. The air is bitter Every breath turning into white vapor in front of his face He stands on a narrow ledge cut into the mountainside. Below him, to the right, Lake Biel stretches out into the pale morning. A vast sheet of ice fading into the gray horizon On his left, a sheer cliff face rises from the water's edge. There is no natural path here The ledge she stands on has been hacked from the rock, and to push the railway forward, they must carve it wider before forging ahead, blasting their way along the lake's edge Setting to work, he grips his heavy hammer and waits for his partner to heat their steel rod or drill in the fire When it's glowing, his colleague brings it up to the rock face, and the Georgian brings his hammer clattering against the rod's head. The steel bites into the rock face by fractions, boring a hole into which charges of dynamite can be laid Each strike sends a shudder through his arms. The foreman said the charge needs to be deep, or the blast won't break the ice hardened stone Andr around him, the entire mountainside is alive for the same rhythm. Everywhere, for miles along this track bed, there are men drilling or hauling sledges of timber and iron along carved ledges, while others clear rubble from yesterday's blasts For years now, the railway has been advancing across Siberia. Thousands of kilometers of track have been laid through forests, over rivers and empty plains. But here, the land refuses to yield easily At last, the drill sinks deep enough The Georgian pulls it free, steam rising from the metal, where it touches the frozen air The foreman comes over, and from a canvas bag he removes some sticks of dynamite and pushes them carefully into the rock. The fuse follows The men move quickly now, boots crunching along the frozen ground as they retreat. Huddling in the safety of the cutting, the Georgian glances once more at the cliff face. The stubborn wall of stone has halted the railway for months. We'll be glad to see it gone For a moment, the mountainside falls quiet as only the wind moves over the ice. thenen The blast splits the morning open. The ground jolts beneath his feet and a thunderous crack rolls across the frozen lake as rock shatters outwards from the cliff Chunks of stone tumbble down the slope, bouncing across the ice below Debris and snow billow through the air. When it clears, the worker looks at the result Wh the cliff had stood unbroken only moments earlier, a jagged new gap has opened in the rock Another few meters of Siberia have given way One day, trains will run here above the waters of Baiel, carrying passengers and freight across an empire that stretches from Europe to the Pacific Today, as the dust settles, the relentless work must begin again The Tr Siberian railway, when finally completed in nineteen sixteen, becomes an imperial artery. As well as allowing the movement of troops and goods, it will bind distant territories to the Russian state project its power across an entire continent Around the world, the same logic takes hold By the dawn of the twentieth century, the railway is undoubtedly one of the defining technologies of the modern world Now, having galvanized industrial progress, defined national identity and consolidated empires It is time for another change in gear Once the railway companies no longer have to invest in building new lines, which happens really towards the end of the nineteenth century, early twentieth century. They can then focus on trying to make the railways more comfortable, smoothing out curves in the track providing better facilities for passengers building grander stations and so on. So it's a gradual process of improvement which probably reaches its height both in Europe and America between the wars And byy now, rail travel for the elite classes has become there Express trains with their carriages of polished wood and brass promise style as much as speed Sleeping cars turn night journeys into private havens of comfort and discretion while dining cars serve exquisite multi course meals on moving tables dressed in crisp white linen Uniformed staff choreograph the whole luxury travel experience, as for those who can afford it The railway becomes the place to be seen There were wonderful trains that operated at the time and there's great posters about the travelvel itself and the offer of food on board. And on some trains you had secretaries who were available to type up letters for business people. And some trains you had DJs on them and they played music throughout the train Nothing embodies this better than the Orient expxpress The Grand hotel on Rails, which links Europe's capitals in a journey of just a few days Meanwhile, in the United States, Pullman cars offer similar elegance on journeys that cross thousands of miles of American landscape At the same time, railway companies compete not only on luxury but on speed The famous expresses like Britain's Flying Scotsman, France's Nord Express, and America's twentieth century Limited prrom passengers the once impossible opportunity to cross entire countries in a single day But this glamour and pace is carefully curated and exclusive and suddenly not accessible to everyone There were a lot of very nice trains at the time, but the basic service for a lot of people hadn't really changed much since the middle of the nineteenth century, where you get kind of smokey stations, you get a couple of carriages hauled by a tank engine rather slowly between towns and villages a pretty kind of desulttery service being offered by the railways Even so, the image of rail travel has changed dramatically. But the same railways that carry diplomats and champagne across Europe are also capable of carrying something far more deadly. railways have been shaping warfare for decades before the First World War. As early as the eighteen sixties, during the American Civil War, trains were already proving decisive in moving troops, supplying armies, and determining where battles would be fought The American Civil War was really the first railway war because most of the battles took place around junctions or places that were easily accessible by rail. Both sides used the railways very extensively and the North happened to be better at that than the secessionist That was one of the reasons why they won because they had better railways and made better use of them In the decades that follow Railways become an essential part of military planning in conflicts like the Franco Prussian War and the Ber Wars in South Africa They are used to assemble armies, move equipment, and keep supply lines open across vast distances When the First World War begins in nineteen fourteen faces a conflictt that will require millions of soldiers, along with artillery, horses, food and ammunition be moved across entire countries in a matter of days And the only way to do it is by train It is august nineteen fourteen at a railway junction in Western Germany A German army officer stands on the platform, watch in hand, scanning the line through drifting steam The station is already full Soldiers crowd the platform in tight ranks, rifles slung over their shoulders, kit bags at their feet Down the track, a long line of carriages waits, their dark windows clouded with condensation Another whistle cuts through the noise The officer checks his watch, pleased to see they're right on time The incoming train slows and pulls alongside the platform. Mal wheels squealing against the track Before it is fully stopped, doors are thrown open. Some soldiers disembark, stiff from the journey and blinking into the light, while others remain in the carriages to be moved on On the platform, fresh units are already being directed forward to take their places on the train The officer turns, measuring the flow of men, the loading of wagons, and checking the space on the line This train has three minutes at this platform. No more Behind him the telegraph chatters again A clerk hurries forward and presses a message into his hand, telling him that another convoy is running ahead of schedule. But in an operation this tightly planned, early is no better than late. It throws everything else out of sequence The officer folds the paper, already calling out to the soldiers boarding to get a move on These men scramble for the carriages as their officers shout roll calls over the noise The Crates of ammunition are hauled up into open wagons. Further down the line, a horse rears at the ramp, its hooves striking wood as handlers struggle to force it into the stable carriage. Steam thickens the air, hot and damp against the railway officer's face. He checks his watch again one minute until departure Everything is going according to the meticulously precise Schliefen plan, the great timetable of troop movement prepared for years in advance, where every second has been calculated and every train assigned its place Without the railways and officers like him on the platform coordinating everything, it simply wouldn't work. Watch in hand, he counts down the seconds, then raises his arm. A little further up the platform, ahead of the engine, a signal clatters into an upward position and the driver releases the brake The train lurches forward, slowly at first and gathering speed as it pulls away from the platform. The last stragglers still wedging themselves inside and slamming the doors shut But the officer doesn't linger to watch them leave Already, another whistle sounds in the distance, signaling the next regiment All along the line, the same pattern is repeating as hundreds of thousands of German soldiers are moved as part of a single coordinated machine So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to sixty percent off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi', Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack atever your thing, it could be anything. Canba helps you make that thing a thing Canva is a simple online tool thing. It's a way to design with our magic AI tool things. You can social media your thing, generate images or videos of your thing, make decks for presentations to show your thing. Whatever needs to be done for your thing Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing In just two weeks, thanks to the Schlieifffen plan, German railways mobilize nearly two million troops towards the Western frontier And it's not unique to Germany Across Europe, mobilization plans hinge on precise schedules, with delayed trains capable of derailing entire campaigns whichich means stations, bridges, marshalling yards and even moving trains become prime targets. s are sabotaged under the cover of Darkness Armored trains patrol contested lines, while civilians flee along the same routes that carry soldiers towards the front Across Europe, Asia and beyond Railways are destroyed and rebuilt again and again. By war's end, the illusion of the railway as a neutral engine of progress is gone. It has helped shape the scale and outcome Even after the devastation of warar City life across the world moves to the rhythm of rail timetables Morning trains carry workers in from expanding suburbs and vast stations dominate the urban landscape newew cathedrals. For millions of people, the railway dictates where they live, how they work, and when they move This is the Golden age in its purest form but it is not experienced equally by Iuel period was commuting. And commuting was largely on kind of rather slow suburban trains that people were packed into like Sardines. It wasn't a great experience. For most passengers, the railway is a practical necessity. Crowded, but essential allowing people to live beyond the city and commute in for work But even now, the system is evolving There was a big debate in the interwall period where some rail industry figures really wanted to stick with steam and they tried to improve steam you have at the same time in Germany kind of fast diesel trains being developed And in America, you have these amazing streamliner diesel expxresses, which are seen as the future Whereas more forward looking people begin to realize that diesels and of course the best form of traction, electricity begin to dominate But although the railways continue to adapt, they face a more fundamental challenge as new rivals appear Cars promise personal freedom and the chance to travel without timetables or shared space Buses reach places rails never will O the radical idea of speed unbounded by geography As flexible road transport and long distance aviation emerge Investment shifts away from train travel For the railway companies, after decades of investment, the idea that trains could be sidelined is almost unfathomable And yet slowly But surely That's what he's happening By the mid twentieth century. The future seems no longer guaranteed to run on rails The Golden Age of the Railway ends but its imprint is everywhere Cities are still organized around stations Commuting patterns follow roots laid down generations ago Even when we're not on the train. We move through a world shaped by its legacy. And today, that legacy is expanding once more their survival and the fact they're thriving in the twenty first century thanks to the huge advantagage that commuter railways, high speed railways, heavy freight railways and sometimes even local railways have over other means of transport and the fact that they've won through. So it's obviously a developing story and who knows where the railways will be in fifty years time. But I suspect that They won't be very different from now. They will be faster, they will be probably be more efficient But I suspect they will be the mainstay of many countries' transport systems mododern high speed rail may look new. It builds on the nineteenth century ideas of fixed roots, shared schedules, and the movement of large numbers of people with precision China has built thirty thousand miles high speed lightine in a space of less than twenty years Japan runs two hundred and seventy trains a day between Tokyo and Osaka E to about eight hundred people in them metro systems that popping up in all sorts of places you wouldn't imagine It's ubiquitous Railways redefined movement and everything that comes with it. for everyone Even now, when we fly above the tracks or drive alongside them We live in a world first organized by iron rails and steam A world still quietly running on railway time If you could bring Stehvenson back from the dead, I think even you wouldd be surprised at how well his invention has done. I you He might have thought he'll take a few people between Lewhour and Manchester and there might be trains a bit around, but I don't think they could have envisaged that he started off it worldwide Revolution Next time on Short History of we'll bring you a short History of Charlemagne us today, he becomes incredibly important because he seems like the first, especially to nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars, kind of the founder of Europe in a real way. Charlemagne created this empire and then it was lost in the subsequent generations. And then it led to all this dissension of the European religious wars of the early modern period The worldld Wars of something like that. if we had only kept on to that unity, we would have had peace, we would have had modernity in an early period as well That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right Now without waiting and without adverts by subscribing to Noiser Plus Just hit the link in the episode description or head to wWw. noiser. com forward slash subscriptions s one lot more episodes today.