In the 18th century AD, coal was carried from mines by horses pulling trucks along rail tracks to canals or rivers for transporting. In the early 1800s, steam locomotives began to be used instead of horses. An economic boom in the 1820s, and the need to get coal more quickly to the manufacturing cities and ports, led to the development of the first railway companies in the north: the Stockton and Darlington Railway (1825) and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830).

Railway development was helped by the genius of men like George Stephenson (1781-1848), whose famous Rocket (1829) was the first really efficient steam locomotive. The 1840s saw the outbreak of ‘railway mania’, as wealthy ‘masters of industry’ competed to invest their money in new railways. By the 1850s the railway system covered the country, connecting most of the major cities, and steam power had also been applied to great iron ships.

Steam transport was advanced by a number of outstanding engineers. George Stephenson’s son Robert (1803-1859) built railways and bridges, including the High Level Bridge at Newcastle (1849) and the Menai Straits Bridge (1850). The most famous was Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59), who built the broad-gauge Great Western Railway, and the massive, pioneering steamships the Great Western (1837), Great Britain (1843) and Great Eastern (1858).