Railway Mania

About Railway Mania

A speculative bubble in British railway shares in the 1840s. Parliament authorized 8,000 miles of new railway lines. Ordinary citizens invested their savings in railway shares, which seemed certain to profit. By 1845, railway stocks peaked and then collapsed. Many investors lost everything. The bubble funded real infrastructure that transformed Britain, but the financial returns were far below expectations. Railway Mania parallels the dot com bubble: genuine technological transformation obscured by unsustainable financial speculation. The post bubble railway consolidation created the major British railway companies that lasted until nationalization in 1948.