Looking for info on english railway travel in late 19th century.?

Question

I have been tasked with finding the travel time from London to Leeds by rail, circa 1880-1895. My searching hasn't turned anything consistant up yet, so any leads or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

What you need is a timetable for a railway which served that route in the time frame you're interested in.  That may be easy to find online in some collection that's displayed on a web page.  If not, you may need to talk to somebody who's an expert on the particular railroad that you need to investigate.

It's not that hard to find timetables, but you do have to kind of get in the network.

Answer 2

There were two main railways providing services from London to Leeds in the 19th century - the Great Northern from King's Cross and the Midland from St. Pancras. It is extremely difficult and requires a lot of patience to find old timetables on line as you tend to get many links to current service timetables - but it is worth trying. You could also try the National Railway Museum (http://www.nrm.org.uk/home/home.asp) - scroll down to 'research and archives' Currently you cannot search on line, but there are addresses for simple queries.

The current journey time is between about 2hr20 and 2hr30. Allowing for the fact that this is by high speed electric train, an educated guess would be that in the 19th century with trains travelling at about half the speed, the journey would take about 5 hours.