A railway town is a settlement that originated or was greatly developed because of a railway station or junction at its site.
In Victorian Britain, the spread of railways greatly affected the fate of many small towns. Peterborough and Swindon became successful due to their status as railway towns; in contrast towns such as Frome or Kendall remained small after being bypassed by main lines.[1] Some entirely new towns grew up around railway works. Middlesbrough was the first new town to be developed due to the railways, growing from a hamlet of 40 into an industrial port after the Stockton and Darlington Railway was extended in 1830.[2] Wolverton was fields before 1838 and had a population of 1,500 by 1844.[3] Other examples of early railway towns include Ashford, Darlington, Doncaster and Neasden.[4]
Crewe grew greatly after the Grand Junction Railway Company moved there in 1843; the two rural towns that became Crewe had a population of 500 in 1841, and the population had reached more than 40,000 by 1900.[3][5] The railway town of 'New Swindon' displaced the neighbouring pre-existing town after the Great Western Railway moved there: a market town of 2,000 in 1840 became a railway town of 50,000 in 1905.[3][4] Railways became major employers, with 6,000 people employed by them in Crewe in 1877, and 14,000 in Swindon in 1905.[1] The growth of railway towns was often in the mould of the 'paternalistic employer' providing housing, schools, hospitals, churches and civic buildings for their workers, similar to Cadbury's Bournville;[4][6] there was a "very rigid and unimaginative control" of the workers by GWR in Swindon.[4] Workforces were loyal and obedient: industrial action in railway towns was rare because the workforce depended on the company. Railwaymen dominated local politics in railway towns, particularly Francis Webb's 'Independent Railway Company Party' in Crewe and George Leeman in York. The chief mechanical engineer of GWR, Daniel Gooch, was MP of Swindon for twenty years.[6] Crewe was a 'company town' for its first few decades as workers moved in their thousands from other parts of the country. Most social amenities and organisations were sponsored by the railway, but moves such as the establishment of a town council in 1877 slowly reduced company influence, and the railway company began to consider spending on town amenities as a municipal concern.[5] Workers organised their own institutions such as clubs, trade unions, and co-operatives to gain independence from company control, and they became the basis for political opposition in railway towns.[6] In western Canada, railway towns became associated with brothels and prostitution, and concerned railway companies started a series of YMCAs in the late nineteenth century in response.[7]
In Denmark and Sweden, a related concept is the stationsby or "station town". Stationsbyer are rural towns that grew up around railways, but they were based on agricultural co-operatives and artisan communities rather than on railway industries.[8][9]
Changchun in China was built by the Japanese, then occupying Manchuria, as a 'model town' as part of Japan's imperialist modernisation. The first railway town at Changchun was begun by the Russians in 1898, but it excluded Chinese residents. A second major railway town was designed and built from 1905 by the South Manchuria Railway, inspired by Russian railway towns such as Dalian. It was based on a rectangular system that contrasted with the circular walled town of old Changchun, and grid patterns became the standard for Chinese railway towns. The SMR developed dozens of railway towns in north-east China from 1906-1936, such as at Harbin and Mukden.[10][11]