The development of railways in Portugal often involved British companies, surveyors, and engineers. As we shall see, relations with the Portuguese authorities were not always harmonious.
In 1845 James Anthony Emslie, who became insolvent for a second time in 1847, suggested the construction of a railway along the Tagus valley towards Spain, and some Portuguese engineers also suggested possible routes. The Portuguese government then signed a contract with a local company that included building a line between Lisbon and the Spanish border. However, the Revolution of Maria da Fonte, followed by the Patuleia civil war, prevented anything from being done at that time.
After conditions began to stabilise, a British businessman, Hardy Hislop, submitted a proposal involving a line to Badajoz in Spain. In 1851 the government issued a tender for the first stage of the line, from Lisbon to Santarém. Hislop, who had established the Central Peninsular Railway Company for this purpose, won the tender in May 1853, beating two other rival consortia. Little is known about Hislop but it appears that he had no prior knowledge of railway construction, having previously had concessions to supply gas in Porto and Coimbra. His consortium included the Waring Brothers, who were engineers and Kitson and Company, who were locomotive manufacturers. One of the competing consortia was also British, headed by Thomas Brassey who had built about one-third of the railways in Britain by 1847 and, by the time of his death in 1870, had built one in every twenty miles of railway in the world. Given this competing expertise, Hislop must have been very persuasive indeed.
Soon after Hislop had been awarded the contract, Queen D. Maria II cut the first sod of earth at a glamorous inauguration ceremony in Xabregas (picture), beginning the work on the first stretch from Lisbon to Carregado, just north of Vila Franca de Xira. The Society has a fading typed document describing the experiences of a Mr. Kerr on that day (possibly Archibald Kerr, a businessman who was to die from yellow fever in 1858). It is unclear whether this was a contemporary piece that had been retyped or something written more recently.
Work on the construction proceeded under the supervision of John Sutherland Valentine from Burton-upon-Trent. Valentine would later obtain a contract for the South-Eastern of Portugal Railway from Vendas Novas to Evora and Beja. That line was laid out and the contract let to a Mr. Edward Price who hailed from Shropshire and had previously worked on railways in Brazil. He completed the work to the government’s satisfaction and was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Christ.
In December 1855, the minister of public works, Fontes Pereira de Melo, rescinded Hislop’s contract, signing a new one with a Mr Shaw and the Waring Brothers. While Hislop was accused of failing to deliver, there were two sides to the story. The government wanted the company to provide its share of the capital in advance, while withholding its own share due to the lack of enthusiasm for the public subscription to raise funds. The government also tried to reduce the agreed payment per kilometre, and would not reimburse increases in prices for timber, over which the company had no control. It was also alleged that land prices were corruptly fixed.
A modified version of a route to Spain was approved for the Shaw and Waring Brothers contract. This had been surveyed by Thomas Rumball, who had previously worked with Sir Marc Isambard Brunel on the Thames Tunnel and was to work in Portugal and its colonies for forty years, also being made a Knight Commander of the Order of Christ. Despite continuing conflicts over payments, contractual obligations and, on one occasion, government armed guards seizing rolling stock, the first official journey on the Waring Brothers’ line from Lisbon to Carregado took place on 28 October 1856. The inauguration, which involved the royal family, was not without its hiccups: one of the locomotives, built in Manchester by Beyer Peacock & Company, broke down at Sacavém and the other therefore had to make two trips to get everyone back to the capital after the lavish celebrations.
The fate to befall Hislop was the first of many cases where railway contracts in Portugal were rescinded. These included those of the British entrepreneur and railway developer, Samuel Morton Peto, who contracted to build a line between Lisbon and Porto but failed to make any progress. It is likely that he was working with Sir John Fowler, the engineer responsible for London’s Metropolitan Railway, the world’s first underground line, as the Society’s library has a copy of a map of the proposed route between Lisbon and Porto, with Fowler’s name on it. A line to the Algarve contracted to a British consortium was also not completed. Additionally, Joseph Bleck, recently arrived from England, received a concession in 1878 to build and operate a railway from Lagos to Vila Real de Santo António in the Algarve. This also never came to fruition.
However, it was not only the British who failed to deliver. In 1854, the French businessman, Claranges Lucotte, who had earlier constructed a suspension bridge over the Douro at Porto, contracted to open a railway between Lisbon and Sintra with branches to Colares and Cascais, but he did not begin construction. Nevertheless, despite Lucotte’s failure in this case, accumulated bad experiences of working with British companies, probably more to do with financial rather than technical limitations, led the Portuguese government to initially turn to French rather than British companies for railway development, before Portuguese companies, such as that run by Henrique Burnay, became prominent.
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