Old London Railway Map

Historical Background

The Railway Clearing House was established in 1842 to manage the complicated financial arrangements created when passengers and goods travelled over lines belonging to several railway companies. It calculated how revenue should be divided and gradually became an important coordinating body within Britain’s railway system. By 1899, London possessed one of the most extensive and complicated railway networks in the world.

Map Details

• Original title: Official Railway Clearing House Map of London and its Environs
• Published by: Railway Clearing House
• Engraved by: J. & W. Emslie
• Place of publication: London
• Date: 1899
• Original scale: Two inches to one mile
• Area shown: London and its surrounding railway network
• Notable features: Railway lines, stations, goods yards, docks, industrial sites and company ownership
• Reproduction size: 46.8″ × 33.1″ (1189 × 841mm)

  Numerous independent companies operated routes into and around the capital, each with its own termini, suburban lines, goods depots and connections. The Railway Clearing House map brought these separate systems together in a single authoritative survey. The map records railway stations, lines, drainage, selected buildings, factories, mills, county boundaries and the extensive dock systems of east London.

  Relief is represented by hachures, while the original use of colour helped distinguish the routes and ownership of the different railway companies. Particularly striking is the density of railway infrastructure around the Thames and London docks. These lines carried vast quantities of freight between ships, warehouses, markets and inland destinations, helping London function as the commercial centre of the British Empire.

  Many stations and branches shown have since closed, been renamed or become part of the modern Underground and national rail networks. The map therefore records London’s transport system at a moment of exceptional expansion, shortly before the major railway groupings and reorganisations of the twentieth century.