Railway Mania was a stock market bubble in the rail transportation industry of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the 1840s.[1] It followed a common pattern: as the price of railway shares increased, speculators invested more money, which further increased the price of railway shares, until the share price collapsed. The mania reached its zenith in 1846, when 263 Acts of Parliament for setting up new railway companies were passed, with the proposed routes totalling 9,500 miles (15,300 km). About a third of the railways authorised were never built—the companies either collapsed because of poor financial planning, were bought out by larger competitors before they could build their line, or turned out to be fraudulent enterprises to channel investors' money into other businesses.[2]
- ^ Campbell, Gareth (2014), "Government Policy during the British Railway Mania and the 1847 Commercial Crisis", British Financial Crises since 1825, Oxford University Press, pp. 58–75, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199688661.003.0004, ISBN 978-0-19-968866-1
- ^ Mark Casson (2009). The World's First Railway System: Enterprise, Competition, and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain. OUP Oxford. pp. 29, 289, 298, 320. ISBN 9780199213979. Retrieved 6 December 2019.