Railways and Roads
Railways and roads are critical infrastructures in the international trade network since countries must have efficient means to transport goods from ports and airports to their destinations. The United States developed the interstate system in the 1950s, which created a vast network of highways that allowed for the much more efficient transporting of goods and people. Read this page, which discusses how railways developed in the United Kingdom in the 1830s and how that influenced the development of industry and transportation.
Government Involvement
While it had been necessary to obtain an Act of Parliament to build a new railway, the government initially took a laissez faire approach to their construction and operation. The state began to pay attention to safety matters with the 1840 Act for Regulating Railways, which empowered the Board of Trade to appoint railway inspectors. The Railway Inspectorate was established in 1840 to inquire into the causes of accidents and recommend ways of avoiding them. Colonel Frederic Smith conducted the first investigation into five deaths caused by a large casting falling from a moving train in 1840 (Howden rail crash). He also conducted an inquiry into the derailment on the GWR when a mixed goods and passenger train derailed on Christmas Eve, 1841. As early as 1844 a bill had been put before Parliament suggesting the state purchase the railways, but it was not adopted. It did, however, lead to the introduction of minimum standards that would require railway companies to offer services available to the poorer passengers on each railway route at least once a day (so-called Parliamentary carriages or trains).
Great Western Railway open passenger car
In the earliest days of passenger railways in Britain, the poor were encouraged to travel to find employment in the growing industrial centers, but trains were generally unaffordable to them except in the most basic of open wagons, in many cases attached to goods trains. The Railway Regulation Act, which took effect in 1844, compelled "the provision of at least one train a day each way at a speed of not less than 12 miles an hour including stops, which were to be made at all stations, and of carriages protected from the weather and provided with seats; for all which luxuries not more than a penny a mile might be charged".
The commercial interests of the early railway industry were often of a local nature and there was never a nationwide plan to develop a logical network of railways. Some railways, however, began to grow faster than others, often taking over smaller lines to expand their own. The L&MR success led to the idea of linking Liverpool to London, and from that the seeds of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR), an amalgamation of four hitherto separate enterprises, including the L&MR, were sown.