Best Student Essays

Just before 1832 something happened in Britain that changed the country in so many different ways and transformed the country so fast it was unbelievable. By 1832 166 miles of railway had been built. After 18 years another 6 393 miles of railway had been built.

The British culture was one of the things that was changed by the railways. Trains managed to change the food that the working class could eat before railways the working class staple food was pig’s trotters but after the railways food could be quickly transported so it arrived fresh therefore the working class could eat things like fish and chips which gave them a slightly more balanced diet. Before the railways separate regions hade different times so people could get the most out of the sun but this caused crashes because trains from different regions could arrive at different local times but find that there was a train where they wanted to be; this caused the country to have a national time and that is what Britain uses today, Greenwich mean time. Trains meant that there could be a national newspaper because it was feasible that in a few hours the same paper could be on different sides of the country. Trains were quite smooth so people could also read in trains. Obviously the accents of different regions were diluted once everyone started to travel.

            The national newspapers gave people an opportunity to be informed about politics. The interest in politics meant that there was more of a conflict between different parties because the parties were starting to expand so more views were being introduced. Probably what some people say is one of the most important changes of the railways was the real birth of the left wing. Now millions of working class people were all together because trains had bought them together, and they really did have power because they could communicate via trains to other huge groups of workers. If the working class had gone on strike at this period it would not be an isolated event it would bring the whole country to a stand still. The workers did not strike but the leaders realised what would happen if they did. The workers soon had union leaders who would obtain proper rights for them, and now the left wing parties would start wanting to benefit the working class. This eventually ended with workers getting the vote.

The railways helped make the nation become an economic superpower and made the average British citizen richer or at least get more for their money. The railways made the price transporting goods go down because journeys usually took less than half the time so less people were needed to be paid on the journey. The price of transporting good decreased also because up to 80 times more cargo could be transported in one journey. The journey time and other reasons made products cheaper. Cheap products meant more people could afford more products. More being sold meant more products had to be produced which helped more people get jobs.

            The railway made great improvements to the lives of the people of Britain. The railways were not only made for transporting goods people could use them too and it was faster and cheaper for most people. The railways made it possible for people to have larger houses (the further from a city the cheaper land usually gets) because they could live further from work they could get on a train and travel to work. The railways meant that the working class could go for a day trip to the seaside without it costing too much. The railways created thousands more jobs for hundreds of different types of people with different skills. People were obviously needed to build the railways and stations; these things made many jobs but the jobs were not permanent. In the long run people were needed to drive and repair the engines but people also had to look after the tracks and stations. The demand for steel went up as the tracks needed huge amounts of steel and so did the actual trains. Coal was needed to power the trains also. Obviously this made far more jobs for miners. All of these jobs meant people moved more. More builders got jobs constructing houses around stations and train engineering towns, like Swindon, around seaside resorts, like Blackpool and Cromer and around coal and steel mines like Sheffield and County Durham.

            I feel without doubt that the most important impact on Britain was the creation of the left wing because without that the world would be full of extreme Right wing parties and fascists and the majority of the world would be treated without rights and without a voice.  It is hard to define the most important and least important because it would be hard to imagine a life without these important changes that we are so used to.

Top

As more and more people were working in factories the need in transportation was rising. In 1897, people began to realise just how much had changed during a very short period of time.

Roads had quite a big effect of things. Coaches were made with narrower wheels and seeing how that the new roads were smoother, coaches travelled faster. Canals were a great improvement on transportation. Cargo and goods were carried across the canals to other cities a lot quicker; they were also ideal for carrying heavy things like coal. But it wasn’t until the railways came, that things started to look in place. The railways had the biggest effect on transportation out of them all. Trains were a lot more efficient than anything else before; they also went to great distances and back in a very short period of time.

Political changes were probably the most unnoticed but equally as important as the rest. Because of the railways, newspapers could be transported to other cities just in time for the next day. People began to read and learn about politics, the Parliament and social reforms taking place faster and more efficient than ever before.

The railways transported goods fast and were a lot cheaper than anything else. Goods were then sold for less therefore people could afford to buy them. As more and more people were buying goods, more factories had to be built. This opened a big market for new employees. And with more people with jobs, people could afford to buy goods, therefore new factories were built and new employees needed to be found. This became a cycle that never stopped ad helped the industries tremendously. As people had more money, then they could be able to afford good food, which would then let them live longer and healthier lives.

As railways were built all over the country, train stations were built in more towns and villages. This helped people travel to work and back in just one day. People who were born in one place could travel and move to another because of the railways. Therefore people were constantly moving to different places and create growth in the towns and villages. 

As the railways were smooth to travel on, people soon read lot more than they had before. They read books, newspapers and soon began to change their dialects as a result. Since so many people lived in an isolated world, in soon changed when the railways came along, because people from different areas had to adjust their accents to make themselves understood by other people. The trains were so much faster, that people ate fresh food like, eggs, milk, and fish and chips instead of pigs’ trotters.

Railways had an incredible change over Britain. It helped the employment industry and helped people have better and healthier lives. It changed in which the way people held themselves, and spoke to others. It made people interested in politics and the Parliament and other world events that were going on in the time. It also changed the way people lived and where they lived as a result.

Top

Railways have been used for transport for a very long time. They have changed the way people live in a very short amount of time. There are four different ways that the railways changed things.  Politically, when people on the trains could read newspapers and find out about famous and important people and know about the special events, there could also have been job opportunities in the newspapers so they didn’t need to look very hard any more. Economically, when people needed jobs, there were many opportunities to be workers for the trains, so then they would receive their earnings and be able to afford their daily needs. Socially, it was much easier for people to move house and find new places to live, and last of all, Culturally, when people went on the train they had to speak clearer so others could understand.

The railways affected the price of goods, as they could get further in a shorter amount of time. This meant that more people could afford the goods, and had more choice. More goods get sold and extra food needs to be produced, the workers need new people to make the goods, therefore, more people get hired and have jobs. This also meant that more workers were needed so people got jobs and earned money to buy food for their families. This decreased the death rate because less people died of starvation and poverty. Also, around this time, the average age at which people married dropped from 27 to 20 meaning families tended to get bigger, so there was a rise in the birth rate.  This resulted in a growth in population and more goods were getting bought.

          It was cheaper to transport goods by railway rather than roads because it was a lot faster and the goods stayed fresh for longer. Railways also effected journey times from London. Before, people travelled by mail coaches but they took an unbelievably long time, so people started to travel by train, which was much faster and cheaper. For instance, to get from London to Liverpool by mail coach, it took 24 hours but by train it took 6 ½ hours. Railways also changed the time that people lived by, for example, each country used to have its own time but this caused train crashes as train drivers thought that they were on the rails at different times. So, station clocks in London decided to operate using GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) instead.

          Railways ended up adding some really dramatic changes to Britain.  The most important consequences were the political ones. Being on trains, the people didn’t have much to do, so they read books and newspapers, meaning they learnt a lot more about the Kings and Queens of the country and about events that they could go to.  Without that happening back then, would we care as much about politics now? I think the least important consequence was the change in peoples taste for food. People started eating different foods as a result of the railway network development.  A typical workers lunchtime meal at the time was pigs’ trotters, but that changed because fresh eggs, milk and fish could be carried into the new industrial towns. So the workers started to eat fish and chips at lunch instead. Railways had a really big impact on Britain; I wonder what will in the future?

Top

                In the late 1700s to the early 1800s people were looking to find a way to transport people and goods around the country. They had canals but they were asking themselves whether they could find something faster cheaper and easier. Their answer was the railways. The railways could do everything the canals could do but faster, cheaper and more efficiently.

                The railways had a massive impact on the industrial revolution. They changed everything from travel to way we speak. The creation of the railways was probably the biggest turning point in the whole of the Industrial Revolution. Its affects can be classified into four main groups, these groups are: political, social, economical and cultural.

                The railways helped companies transport their goods a lot quicker, saving time and money. It provided a lot of jobs for all sorts of people. The iron factorise who built the tracks needed people with skills in machinery. The drivers of the trains needed to have certain skills as well as the guards. The railways created a sort of job cycle; the railways made goods cheaper so goods can be sold for less so more people can afford the goods so more goods are sold and more need to be produced so the factorise making them employ more people so more jobs means more people can afford goods… and it just goes round and round and round.

                With more jobs more people could travel and with the railways travelling was cheaper. As wall as being cheap the railways cut the time of transport by three quarters in some cases. Long distance trips such as London to Edinburgh to only 12 hours instead of 43 or a holiday trip such as London to Brighton took just over and hour instead of six hours, his made it possible for the working class to go on day trips around the country. With day trips places like Brighton were launched into business as holiday beach towns. With more of these town popping up the tourist business became very good and more and more people went on holidays.

                This meant that people from all over the country met each other at the seaside or some place like that. This was difficult back then because everywhere you went people had different accents and sometimes only spoke their local dialect resulting in a big difficulty to communicate. Eventually people had to loose their accents to be understood, this was when the standard English accent started. Another thing that had to change was time; at that point time was a very local thing, in places there could have a half an hour time difference with other towns. All this had to stop with the birth of railways, for example: If a train from London was passing by an area at 2 o’clock local time and another from Blackpool at 2:30 local time they could be on a head on collision course. It was too dangerous so the Greenwich Mean Time was created to have one standard time throughout the whole country.  

                With more people trusting the railway they decided that they didn’t have to live in the same place that they worked. This was the birth of commuting. The railways had to have railway stations, around these stations small towns became a lot bigger with people moving away from the city to live in the countryside and commute using the local train stations. This became more and more popular to the point that some towns such as Crewe were created just because the railways went through the area.

                Trains encouraged people to read. It sounds strange but they did, people had time to kill when they were on the trains and unlike the roads trains were smooth so that people could read while they were seated on the train. With more people reading more people got interested in politics. The working class started to realise that they were the majority and wanted to start having a say in the how the country was being run. They had been the majority for a long time but they didn’t know it, all the things that tried to do in small groups they were now going to do as one. They started putting their points forward, the wanted a party to represent them; all this lead to the birth of the socialism.  

Top

The railways improved the whole of Britain, economically the most, but also socially, politically, and culturally in this essay it will show all the points of how Britain changed throughout the 19th Century. 

The economic impact the railways had on Britain were the jobs, transporting goods and cost. The railways had a good affect on working people as they could work further away. The railways need coal and iron to run, so industries had to employ lots more people to be able to do this. Railways also transported factory goods to market, his allowed the goods to get there safely and still be fresh, this was cheaper than transporting by horse-drawn tram, as the horse could only travel a certain amount a day whereas the train could do at least six times as much as a horse. All the food became cheaper which made working class people open to eat more different kinds of food. Mail was transported by train making it cheaper and quicker to send mail. Railways had to employ engineers too as well as driver and guards for the trains. Although the railway brought a lot of employment to Britain, but it put Turnpike Trusts, Canals and Stage-Coach companies out of business, because they couldn’t keep up with the railways.

The social Impact the railways had on Britain were seaside resorts, national newspapers and Fish and Chips. The Railways made it possible to have cheap day trips to seaside resorts, such as Blackpool and Brighton; these developed more as more people came to them. Also holidays became possible because people could travel further to resorts. National newspapers became possible due to the fact that the trains could transport the newspapers to all over Britain, this could mean that social events could be broadcast over Britain. Working class people ate pigs’ trotters originally due to the fact they couldn’t afford much else, then after the trains the food they mostly ate was fish and chips.

The political Impact the railways had on Britain was newspapers. Newspapers were printed and made accessible to the rest of the Nation. Newspapers made politics, more noticeable to the public as they weren’t able to find out this before the railways. It also became a way for the public to be more involved with politics.

The cultural Impact the Railways had on Britain was Time and accents. Railways had to be on the same time due to the fact that trains had been crashing because each country had a different time, based around the sun. To stop this problem they made the time the same all over Britain. This took the culture away from each place, even though it was necessary if they wanted travel. More people moved to get work and as they did so, people’s local accents began to adapt and change, again taking away the culture. Also the railways cleared some towns out as they ran through the centre and destroyed them, the railways made them noisy and destroyed the wildlife.

Overall the economical impact was the most import change to Britain as it gave the country more money and jobs, this increased the country’s development, but also urbanized the food people ate, the transport, and generally increased people’s health, all due to the trains.