Walk, Run, Fly — Railroads Revolutionized Travel in the 19th Century
The world suddenly began moving faster for people living in France and England during the 1800s… much, much faster.
The time required for a person to travel from Paris to Calais decreased by a factor of eight over the course of the 19th century. Paris-to-Calais, the first leg in the most direct route between the capital cities of Paris and London, is one of the most heavily traveled routes in Europe.
On a visit to Paris from London, in 1801, it took William Francis Blagdon 44 hours of difficult travel in a sturdy horse-drawn coach to cover the distance of around 311 kilometers (190 miles). Blagdon might have walked the distance in the same amount of time, except for the necessity of carrying his luggage and sleeping en route
Forty years later, with improved road conditions, Charles Dickens traveled the same route by stagecoach in 22 hours, at the pace of a swift runner. By 1851 the South Eastern Railway Company offered regular service covering the entire distance, London to Paris, in half that time, 11 hours, including two hours to cross the English Channel by steamship. Calais to Paris by train took only 5 and a half hours, four times as fast as his trip by coach.
Dickens described the novelty of traveling so far so fast by train in a short article titled simply “Flight.” Written 50 years before aeroplanes became a reality, Dickens could only have intended to compare the experience of travel by train with the flight of a swallow flitting along a hedgerow. Nonetheless, continued innovation in railway transportation since the 19th century makes the comparison with modern air travel valid.
Today, passengers on the Eurostar trains make the trip between the centers of Paris and London, through the Channel Tunnel, in just over 2 hours, faster than can be achieved by commercial jet, allowing for the additional time it takes to travel between the airports and the city centers. The Eurostar covers the distance between Paris and Calais in around 80 minutes, four times as fast as Dickens’ “Flight” by rail in 1851 and 32 times as fast as the unfortunate Blagdon in 1801.
