Buckler drawing of first Railway Station at Berkhamsted. (On loan from Berkhamsted Local History and Museum Society)
Berkhamsted Local History and Museum Society cared for by The Dacorum Heritage Trust Ltd
Vigorously dissenting landowners held meetings in Berkhamsted and Watford when the plans for the railway were published in 1830 and 1831. The shareholders and trustees of the Sparrows Herne Turnpike and the Grand Junction Canal Company also opposed the Railway, since their routes ran almost parallel and would introduce serious competitionWhen George Stephenson discovered in the early 19th century that a locomotive lost three-quarters of its power on a 1:100 gradient, it was clear that valleys had to be banked up, whilst tunnels and cuttings would have to be made into raised ground.
In Dacorum, the London company of W & L Cubbitt secured the three contracts to construct just over nine miles of track from Kings Langley to Tring Station. This was largely straightforward banking and cutting, but included the Northchurch Tunnel and the difficult, soggy marshland around Berkhamsted Castle.
Boxmoor Station (now Hemel Hempstead Station). After all the dissension and debate, one can imagine the excitement when the Euston to Boxmoor section of the line was finally opened on 13 July, 1837. A month later the directors reported that the number of passengers had exceeded all expectation. Picture:
Dacorum Heritage Trust Ltd
The railway could not have survived in the early days without the use of horses. At Boxmoor, the Station Horse Bus was a regular feature trundling between the Station and the Marlowes Posting House. Picture:
Dacorum Heritage Trust Ltd
“The social and commercial impact of railways was tremendous,” so wrote Hamilton Ellis in his Pictorial Encyclopaedia of Railways. “This was the first mechanical form of land transport mankind had ever known. As the rails advanced, distances abruptly shrank. Motors and aircraft have only carried on the process which the railways initiated; it was the rail that changed the world”.
This was certainly true of the Dacorum area, as of everywhere else where railways triumphed.
By The Dacorum Heritage Trust Ltd
15th December 2010