Train times (1859)

Post date: Mar 28, 2013 4:53:8 PM

Timetables were printed weekly in the Maidstone Telegaph and the following is the weekday timetable from the 15th January 1859 newspaper.

SOUTH-EASTERN LINE

Railway timetables depended on the standardisation of time throughout the UK which had not prior to the railways been necessary and prior to the telegraph running alongside railway lines been possible. The following is an extract from the South Eastern Telegraph of 6 January 1852 reporting this development:

Railway Time .—It is proposed, by means of the electric telegraph, to regulate all the public clocks throughout the kingdom in accordance with Greenwich or railway time. Precisely at noon the signal indicating Greenwich time, as observed by the great electric clock in the central station, Lothbury, is to be sent over the various lines of wire, giving at an inappreciable interval the exact time

at every terminus.