Episode two focuses on Capitalism and Commerce. The railways stimulated great changes to the nation's economy and they also changed the way business was done. This encouraged a new generation of mechanical engineers, skilled workers, managers and accountants. Originally, local railway entrepreneurs viewed trains as vehicles for shifting raw materials, stock and goods, but they soon discovered that there was money to be made from transporting people also.
Places such as Derby became known as ‘railway towns'. Derby was central to the new network and home to the engineers who made and maintained locomotives and carriages. However, the railway ‘boom' of the 1840s also came with a ‘bust'. A new age of middle-class shareholders who invested in the railways soon discovered what goes up can also go down. In addition, there were stories of railway rogues and dodgy dealings. Railway companies recovered from the crash and continued to develop as complex national business organisations capable of building great structures such as the Ribblehead Viaduct in Yorkshire and St Pancras Station in London.
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