The first Railway Bill passed by Parliament was for a line from
Wandsworth to Croydon, in 1801, but a quarter of a century elapsed before
the first line was actually constructed for carrying passengers between
Stockton and Darlington. People still living can remember the mail
coaches that plied once a month between Edinburgh and London, making the
journey in twelve or fourteen days. The _Annual Register_ of 1820 boasts
that “English mail coaches run 7 miles an hour; French only 4½ miles; the
former travelling, in the year, forty times the length of miles that the
French accomplish.” These coaches were a great improvement on the
previous method of sending the mails. In 1783 a petition to Parliament
stated that “the mails are generally entrusted to some idle boy, without
character, mounted on a worn-out hack.”
“_Progress of the World_” by M. G. Mulhall.