Preliminary Results

Growth of the Rail System

Explaining the Pattern of Railway Expansion

• The Location of Mineral Resources in Industrializing England and Wales

• The Railway Network in 1876: Among other things, it connected sites of mineral resources and
                                                      manufacturing centers.

The Growth of the Rail System in Rural Districts and Rural Out Migration

• After a surge of construction ceased in the 1850s, a new, sustained round of rail expansion began
  in the 1860s, gathering pace up to the mid 1870s and then continuing at a slower rate until the eve
  of World War I. The expansion of the 1860s and 1870s was particularly important for rural
  developments, for it marked the most significant extension of rail service to rural districts. This
  extension is well reflected in the maps of rail lines and rail stations in 1876. l
  
  

• Extension of rail system into rural England and Wales, 1855-1914:

Patterns of Rural Out Migration and Rail Density in the 1880s.  Within rural registration districts, was there a geographic correspondence between the rate of out migration and the availability of rail service, as indicated by levels of rail density? A correspondence between
lower rates of out migration and higher rates of rail density would be consistent with the hypothesis in question: that
the coming of rail service to rural districts served to retard out migration by fostering new economic opportunities,
at least for a time. Such opportunities manifested themselves in various forms:

• greater access to markets for the sale of local products
• commercial employment in the sale of goods brought in by rail, and in the hospitality trades that served a growing
  number of salesmen, visitors, tourists--depending upon local circumstances
  
• employment by rail companies as station masters, signal men, maintenance workers
  

These opportunities brought some period of relief to rural settlements that faced economic decline and depopulation.

The advantages for rural settlements were more or less temporary, for what the railway gave with one hand, it eventually
took away with the other. By shrinking space and increasing long-distance trade, rail transport intensified competition
throughout the country, which eventually undermined the livlihoods of small-scale, local producers. The agrarian depression
of 1873 to 1896 was one example. Partly because of effecient rail transport in the United States, arrival in England of
cheaper grain from the U.S. pulled the rug from under many a wheat farmer, forcing reductions in output and in labor
costs as well as other economies.

The search for a possible geographic correspondance between greater access to rail service and lower rates of
out migration can begin by inspecting the following map. With two exceptions, all the rural districts lost population in
the 1880s, with the highest rates concentrated in central Wales, in Somerset (SW), and in the peripheries of northern
Yorkshire and East Anglia. The visual comparison with the pattern of rail density in the rural districts shows that there a
correspondance in some cases where lower rates of out migration seem to go hand in hand with the higher levels of
rail density. On the other hand, the highest rates of out migration show no regular correspendance with the lowest
levels of rail density, as in central Wales and on the edges of East Anglia. In short, the visual comparison is suggestive
but inconclusive.

A second attempt using visual comparison shows in blue those rural districts that recorded lower than the median
level of out migration during the 1880s; those in gray sustained higher rates. Here the rail lines open in 1876 are
overlaid on the rural districts as another way of searching for corresponding geographic patterns. Once again the
results seem inconclusive.

Although inconclusive, the visual comparisons prompt useful reflections. First and foremost, the problem
in play is much more complex than the simple relationship between two variables. The varying rates of rural out migration
resulted from many causes. All were geographic related; some prominently so, such as: the proximity to localities with greater
economic opportunities, or the regional distribution of unemployment and economic distress--the "pull" and "push" of economic
factors on decisions to move.

Lacking the data for a complex analysis, the exploration of two variables across geographic space is nonethless worthwhile. It
shows that the retarding effect on rural out migration of rail service in the countryside is plausible and deserves further
further investigation. Second, it illustrates the limits of simple visualization as a means for identifying spatial relationships. Other,
more sophisticated methods are needed.

Chart Junk

• Passenger traffic