Dan Bull - Origins of the British Railway lyrics

In ancient days
There was no day-to day travel on trains
No national railway by the time of the 1800s
When the mines provided for Great
Britain's hunger for energy
They had to come up with a method
To get stuff directly to where
It was meant to be
So they designed lines to provide the mines
In Tyneside with many connections effectively
Then, inevitably, many men and MPs
Objected to these developments heavily
They rejected the perception that
The step was needed
As they believed that ten was a deadly speed
But by the end of the century
There were three hundred tracks just
In that forementioned region
Nevertheless, it was never easy
To set up shop and steam ahead of the rest
Many moneyed men would never invest
Unless it was tested and already a success
Then there were the farmers -
Alarmed by the smoke
Choked with no knowing whether
It would harm us
Even the elite were keen to stop shunting
Merely as it interfered with fox hunting
Canal companies grumpily acknowledged
That their monopoly had come to be abolished
Try and fail, the sheen and polish
Of these iron rails could never be demolished
It was time tables were
Turned to deepen wallets
So the first train was timetabled
With people on it
And since the days of James Watt
They've got increasingly prominent
Yeah - trainspotters may seem a strange lot
But they've got a whole
Heap of knowledge listen:

In the year 1758 Parliament first
Allowed a rig for trains
1767 - Iron rails in
Coalbrookdale were fixed together
1781 - A productive year - James
Watt pioneered the sun and gear
In 1803 the Surrey Iron
Railway opened publicly