\paperw3360 \margr0\margl0\ATXph16380 \plain \fs20 \f1 \fs22 The idea of passenger transport by railway came about in an utterly haphazard way. The owners of railways originally
laid for goods transport were prepared to let anybody willing to pay the toll use their lines with his own carriages. One was opened in 1805, chiefly for carrying stone and lime from Merstham in Surrey via Croydon to Wandsworth on the outskirts of Lond
on. Nearly 200 miles of such railways began working between 1800 and 1820. The famous Stockton to Darlington railway was projected with similar intentions. Passenger vehicles were converted stage-coaches drawn by horses, though traction by \b \cf4 \ATXht10781000 steam-engine \b0 \cf0 \ATXht0 was gradually introduced. On a single-track railway provided with sidings at roughly quarter mile intervals and no signalling system, it can be imagined that this mass of uncoordinated traffic soon led to confusio
n. Conventions were worked out as to who should go back if vehicles or trains met between sidings, but eventually the company had to take over the entire operation. \ATXnt901 Those who invested in railways\ATXnt0 originally expected to draw their grea
test gains from the carriage of coal and merchandise. They had no idea that such transport would soon create its own passenger traffic. When the Liverpool-Manchester line was extended four miles along the coast in 1830 to create a new coal-carrying sea
-port, there was one farmhouse on the spot. Ten years later, 6000 people lived there in what had become the town of Middlesborough. By 1835 passenger traffic accounted for 53 percent of total receipts . The Liverpool-Manchester line demonstrated all t
he basic principles of railway technology and organisation. It also showed that railways paid: by 1833 share values had more than doubled. The rest of the country followed, somewhat cautiously at first, and then with the enthusiasm that led to the rail
way boom. By 1850 Britain was covered by a 6000-mile network of railway track.\par
