Bradshaw, 1892 and other ways of finding information

[whole diary]

[grahame]

What sort of print run would there have been for railway timetables such as Bradshaw (and rail company's own timetables) back in 1892?  Would it have been "everyone who used trains had one", just available in a few places, or somewhere between?   How would the occasional traveller on a cross country route have researched his options?

[Tim]

I suspect that whilst very many people used the railway, the vast vast majority would have stuck to a small number of routes the times of which would have been well known without needing to own a timetable.

Back in the day many services were far less frequent than now, so for a rural station there might be the early morning "workmans" train and a then a later one for the gentlemen, and the return services and that might have been pretty much it. 

The price in 1910 was 2 shillings.  Worth about £20 or £30 in today's money (about what a second hand copy will fetch on ebay today) so a significant outlay for many people, but not unaffordable for the "middling sorts", businessmen, commercial hotels or libraries.  My guess (and it is only that) was that print runs rose from the 1863 to about the 1920/30 and then slowly started to decline.

Presumably (and unlike with today's online enquiries) fare information was not in Bradshaws, so you would need a trip to the station anyway to "research your options" for many cross country journeys.  I am not so young to forget that a trip to the station "travel centre" or a "rail appointed travel agent" was the usual way to research a cross country journey anyway until say 15 years ago. 

As for companies' own timetables, it is my understanding that many companies issued reprints of the relevant pages of Bradshaw as their own guide.  The GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) being the only major exception to that. 

[grahame]

Many thanks, Tim ... some good points I would not have considered, and some depth I didn't know.   My wife's doing some historic research with a view to writing a book about events that happened in Wiltshire and north east Dorset in 1892 (with various things happening in Portsmouth and London too) and is looking at the likely journeys made by the 'lead' player - what he would have been likely to know and how much he would have been able to quickly research.   I had (I think) concluded already that Bradshaw wouldn't be in everyone's pocket - not so much thinking of the price but of the weight, but was left wondering what other sources would be available of whether (at a time of some stress in his life, our lead player would simply turn up at the station.

[Worcester_Passenger]

The local weekly paper in my grandparents' home town, Barrow in Furness, had the local railway timetable occupying the right-hand half of the back page before WWI.

Given that we were back in the days of letterpress, this must have been an easy job - the print would stay set for months (years?) on end.

I don't know to what extent this was normal practice for a local paper, but it may be worth looking at.