THE FIRST RAILWAY MAP. The name George Bradshaw (1801-53) is synonymous with the British Railways. He was the author and publisher of the railway guides which were such an important part of Victorian travel. ‘Bradshaw, whose name was to become synonymous with railway timetables, published his first guide in 1830 with the opening of the Liverpool-Manchester Line and his first timetable in 1839, the same year as this, the first railway map’ (Wardington). Apprenticed to an engraver in Manchester, Bradshaw shadowed the industrial revolution and began by publishing maps of the Canal networks in 1829. These were on a very large scale with great detail. In the introduction to this work Bradshaw states ‘It would be superfluous to expatriate on the vast utility of a correct map of the Railways of this Kingdom. The want of such a work has been long felt and acknowledged’. The map depicts extant lines in red, those before Parliament in blue and those in yellow proposed. An inset features those in the region of London. This network is laid on the existing road network; the whole is engraved by John Dower at the scale of 10 miles to an inch. In the margins may be found thirty-three fascinating sections of the main railway lines drawn to scale displaying length and elevation. Particular detail is given to identifying the gradients of the railways which was a particular hazard to early railways. In 1830 the network of passenger railways stood at barely 100 miles, by the end of the decade when this map was published the figure stood above 2000 miles.

It is not generally known which map bears the accolade of displaying the first railroad, after all the earliest were for purely mining purposes. Indeed, there are earlier maps which display passenger railways. However, Bradshaw’s map of 1839, as Shirley states, is ‘undoubtedly the first large scale map to treat railways as the primary subject in terms of content and presentation. The first state of his map is now rare, and even later editions with the overprinting of the routes of newly construed lines are relatively uncommon’. Provenance: private English collection. James (1983); Shirley (1987); Wardington sale, Sotheby’s 18 October 2005 lot 69.