‘The most striking result produced by the completion of this Railway, is the sudden and marvellous change which has been effected in our ideas of time and space. What was quick is now slow; what was distant is now near.’

So wrote Henry Booth of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. The early railways changed all aspects of life: what people ate (and how they cooked), what they wore and how they communicated. But what was it like to travel on the railways in the 1830s and 1840s? This book hopes to explore the experiences of these pioneer railway travellers, from the first railway stations and railway carriages to the hazards of the journey itself.