The Industrial Revolution: Part 5

Transport played a key role in the industrial revolution as without transport

 People couldn’t be moved from villages to cities and towns and the manufactured goods from the factories in the towns and cities couldn’t be transported and traded around Britain.

Innovations such as the canal and the railways drove the industrial revolution along.

Canals had been the reason that goods could be transported around Britain easily with little cost and effort. The invention of the lock helped boats travel up and down hill. The railways were also a great help to the transportation of goods and not only that but people as well.

The people that built the railways were called navigators or navvies for short – they were hard working people who strained to build these massive feats of engineering.

Coal

Coal was the compound that fuelled the industrial revolution; literally. Without coal many thing wouldn’t be possible, things such as: factories as they need coal to power the machines, railways as they needed coal to fuel the locomotives, new agricultural tools as they needed coal. All the black smoke that puffed out of the dark chimneys, that loomed over the landscape was caused by coal.

Coal mining was a very hard business as miners were lowered deep underground in the small, unstable tunnels where there was a chance of a cave in or gas. Children as young as 6 were sent into the mines.