History
The North British Railway Company was established in 1844 to build a railway from Edinburgh to Berwick-upon-Tweed, with a branch to Haddington. The line was completed in 1846, but a continuous rail connection between London and Edinburgh was not available until October 1848; the Caledonian having been able to offer a through service via Carstairs since March 1848 . The fastest trains between the two capitals then took slightly over 12 ½ hours (for both East Coast and West Coast routes), and the (cheaper) steamship service between Leith and London still took the bulk of the passenger traffic. The NBR had no running rights south of Berwick. Mineral traffic (in particular coal from the Lothian coalfield) was the largest source of revenue; an English shareholder blamed the low passenger revenue on the willingness of Scots to travel third-class even when they could afford better.
Read more about this topic: North British Railway
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)