'The Railway Menace'

In the course of over sixty years of adult life in Manchester, Crossley moved house only three times. His first and most enduring address was Booth Street (now Paton Street), Piccadilly. As early as 1820 Crossley was receiving mail at Booth Street, when he made his first contact with Henry Southern, of the Retrospective Review. He remained in Booth Street until 1869, when the area became threatened with redevelopment by the railway companies, which seemed to be consuming much of the city at that time. Grandiose schemes were afoot to rebuild the road systems around the two main stations, London Road and Victoria, at the railway companies’ expense, an arrangement that pleased the City Council greatly. Such was the rate of expansion that eventually even the hallowed stones of Chetham’s Hospital and Library were demanded by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway for their purposes. Crossley’s reaction was angry and combative: ‘we must be prepared for those insatiable directors … whose maw would swallow up all edifices, sacred and profane without mercy or compunction.' Many of these plans came to nothing, and Crossley’s anxiety was misplaced, but illustrates the unstable situation that the city residents had to endure at this time. It seems to have been the expansionist ambitions of the company directors who aroused Crossley's ire, rather than the form of transport itself, which was opening the country for travel by the mass of people. He modified his opinions eventually, however, and in a letter to Francis Raines in 1863 he revealed that:

A young friend of mine who is superintending the Branch Railway from Rochdale to Milnrow tells me that the next time I go in that direction he will give me a ride upon one of the Engines.

Going on to picture himself astride an elephant, Crossley is perhaps thinking of one of the earliest locomotives, 'The Steam Elephant' built in 1815 for use in the Wallsend Colliery, Tyneside, and illustrated above (from an 1820 painting).