The Inception of the English Railway Station

Extract

Antiquity of origin is an attribute of most classes of building. Occasionally, however, additions accrue to the general heritage of building types as, from time to time, a new class of building is called into being by fresh circumstances.

The railway station is of modern inception and its origins illustrate, in our own day, the processes by which a new building type may emerge and develop. Though one might query the universal applicability of Alberti’s observation, it is particularly true in the case of the railway station—“ For all building in general, if you consider it well, owes its birth to necessity, was nursed by convenience and embellished by use; pleasure was the last thing consulted in it.”

For our present purpose, the origins of the railway station may be sought on the early rail-roads of the opening years of the nineteenth century. There is, however, one prior fact to be noted which derives from a more ancient past and which has played, necessarily, a major role in the design of railway structures. This fact is the gauge of the track; for it is width of gauge which is the source of railway scale.