Chapter I
As we look back upon all the wonderful changes presented by the nineteenth century, from the steamship to the telegram, it is probably the steam engine which comes puffing into the centre of the picture as the greatest and most substantial innovation of them all. The locomotive indeed filled a priceless place in the scheme of things, for it linked up in a manner never before comprehended the goods and the market. It diminished distances and raced against time. Small towns in the path of this monster of strength grew into cities, and England began to change in character very markedly. The changes were social as well as industrial, for the era of steam power affected the whole life of the nation. So deeply do railways affect the body politic that I soon found it would be impossible to begin the history of the A.S.L.E. & F, at the year 1880. Circumstances were preparing the way for it fifty years earlier, and all the forces at work in the half century that followed were really forging and shaping the destiny of the Society. It became as essential to enginemen as the engine itself was to this nation and others. The whole service turned completely upon engineers and firemen, who in those early days were the silk-hatted aristocracy of the line.
Not many of our 75,000 members to-day will be aware that one of our earliest members was actually a driver with George Stephenson
