Abstract

The First Battle for London: The Royal Commission on Metropolitan Termini, SUSAN RYLEY HOYLE ,I F you took a sponge and sponged out the whole of the City, leaving St Paul's standing in the midst, I think probably you would be able to have accommodation there for carrying on your [railway and related] traffic; but then you would want the means of getting to it in every direction. '1 This comment by Joseph Baxendale, head of Pickford's and one-time chairman of the South Western Railway Company, was inspired by the attempt of the railway companies, at the height of the railway mania of 1845-7, to extend into central London. Their attempt was one of the most interesting aspects of that mania; equally interesting was their failure. The mania was a culmination of fifteen years' spectacular if unsteady growth in railways: in 1832, there were 166 miles of railroad in the country; six years later there were 1,952 miles;2 and in 1845, there were 2,441 miles. During that year, parliament was presented with no fewer than 110 railway bills, and authorised the construction of 2,816 miles of new track - which, if built, would have more than doubled the length