Railroad town

A railway town, or railroad town, is a settlement that originated or was greatly developed because of a railway station or junction at its site.

In Victorian Britain, the spread of railways greatly affected the fate of many small towns. Peterborough and Swindon became successful due to their status as railway towns; in contrast, towns such as Frome or Kendal remained small after being bypassed by main lines. Some entirely new towns grew up around railway works. Middlesbrough was the first new town to be developed due to the railways, growing from a hamlet of 40 into an industrial port after the was extended in 1830.Wolverton was fields before 1838 and had a population of 1,500 by 1844. Other examples of early railway towns include Ashford (Kent), Doncaster and Neasden.

Crewe grew greatly after the Grand Junction Railway Company moved there in 1843; the two rural towns that became Crewe had a population of 500 in 1841, and the population had reached more than 40,000 by 1900. The railway town of 'New Swindon' displaced the neighbouring pre-existing town after the Great Western Railway moved there: a market town of 2,000 in 1840 became a railway town of 50,000 in 1905. Railways became major employers, with 6,000 people employed by them in Crewe in 1877, and 14,000 in Swindon in 1905.

The growth of railway towns was often in the mould of the 'paternalistic employer' providing housing, schools, hospitals, churches and civic buildings for their workers, similar to Cadbury's Bournville; there was a "very rigid and unimaginative control" of the workers by GWR in Swindon. Workforces were loyal and obedient: industrial action in railway towns was rare because the workforce depended on the company. Railwaymen dominated local politics in railway towns, particularly Francis Webb's 'Independent Railway Company Party' in Crewe and George Leeman in York. The chief mechanical engineer of GWR, Daniel Gooch, was MP of Swindon for twenty years.

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