Before I started writing Rust and Steam, I knew I had research to do. Was there a night train? How long was the journey? Between which stations? Were there dining cars, sleeping compartments? And could you safely cross between two train cars — and what would happen if a character absolutely had to?
Are you wondering now too? Here’s what I found:
Once, the trip from Edinburgh to London took three grueling days by stagecoach. By 1885, passengers taking an overnight steam train from Waverley Station to King’s Cross at about 60-75 miles per hour only needed 8 to 10 hours to reach their destination.
Travelers would have heard the chuff-chuff-chuff of exhausting steam mixed with the distinctive clickety-clack of wheels over rail joints, sounds we associate with trains, but rarely hear anymore.
Why? In 1885, rails were only about 60 feet long, joined together with fishplates and bolts at each segment. Thermite rail welding—which would eventually create the smooth, continuous rails of the modern era—wouldn’t be invented until the 1890s.
Dining cars were a relatively new luxury, first introduced in Britain in 1879—just six years earlier. Emphasis on luxury. Some enjoyed a proper meal, but many carried food baskets or purchased refreshments from vendors when the train stopped briefly to refuel and take on water. In Rust and Steam, our hero and heroine Ben and Alice sit in just such a car, beneath Lucifer lamps, much steadier and safer lighting than what would have been swaying oil lamps.
Sleeping berths were introduced in 1873 for the upper class—everyone else dozed (more or less) upright in their seats. Those berths were narrow, curtained affairs, more cot than bed, but a horizontal surface after eight hours was a luxury in itself.
But crossing between carriages on an open exterior platform while the train was in motion was a genuinely dangerous practice. The violent swaying and jolting, combined with the lack of any handrails or enclosures, meant the gap between cars could easily swallow a foot or a body. Enclosed vestibules connecting cars wouldn’t arrive in Britain until 1889. In Rust and Steam, a desperate heroine does exactly that — champagne bottle in hand.
When Ben and Alice finally arrived at King’s Cross Station at dawn, they’d foiled a villain, found their way back to each other, and traveled 400 miles. Nothing had gone according to plan but, in a single night, their derailed lives corrected course.
