Academic literature on the topic 'Utah Midland Railway Company'

This paper examines the extent to which the Midland Railway workforce in nineteenth-century Derby constituted some form of occupational community. Evidence for this paper is drawn from Midland Railway Company (MR) records combined with census data and other documentary and textual material. It explores the social and domestic world of employees at the Midland Railway Company's headquarters and critically examines the construction of community in both functional and symbolic terms.

Attitudes to environmental and investment risk are examined to determine whether they were a defining characteristic of middle-class behaviour in the period 1760 to 1850. Approximately 6,000 investors in eleven canal companies and seven railway companies were investigated to determine whether evaluation and mitigation of investment risk is determined by socio-economic background and gender. Investment risk was defined as inadequate access to, and imperfect interpretation of, information. The effectiveness of information transfer through public and private spheres was examined and the effect of differential access to these information conduits, as a consequence of gender or socio-economic background, was investigated. Investors' response to the risk environment of early death, war and unpredictable economic cycles was examined. Each canal company and the group of railway companies was ranked according to the level of investment risk during both the construction and operating period, using a mix of quantitative and qualitative tests. The risk preferences of 'economic' and 'financial' investors were compared. The strategies used by each group of investor to mitigate risk were examined. The study provides new evidence of the effective transmission of national market sentiment by the 1770s, but reveals that the physical market in canal company shares remained local and continued its separate existence long after the institutionalised national market for railway shares was established. Perceptible differences in the risk assessment and risk mitigation strategies of different groups of investors were observed. This was attributed to differential access to information, which in turn was attributed to gender and social, political and religious affiliation. The study provides evidence that although differences in behaviour were observed amongst groups within the sample population, it shared common investment strategies and that attitudes to risk and risk mitigation should be considered as valid criteria for class differentiation.

This thesis focuses on Litchurch, the railway suburb of Derby, the headquarters of the Midland Railway Company and its workforce, during the period 1840-1900, It examines the consequences of factory paternalism and company loyalty for the construction of 'community', exploring the connections between work, family, and wider social and political life. It begins by looking at Derby as a county town where an early alliance between Whigs and Liberals resulted in the political dominance of the town by a group of Liberal-radical textile manufacturers as a form of extended factory village. There is then a discussion of railway paternalism which investigates the many differences between the family firm and the corporate railway company. The relationship between the railways and the state is examined, through the twin theorization of the railway within the state-intrinsic to national integrity and as a state in microcosm- a form of space management derived from military and civil government. The role of Derby as headquarters of the M.R.is then considered: its decision making and service function; the technological mix of productive techniques; and the distinctive relationship between public and private space. A model of company loyalty based on the experience of the physical and organizational space of the railway company is developed through the notions of the career and the appropriation to the self of organisational space, the 'bailiwick'. The spatial and social structure of Litchurch is examined and its marriage and residence patterns. In the discussion of social institutions, churches, recreation and self-help, the tensions are explored between vertical integration and horizontal stratification which are intrinsic to corporate culture. The extent and limits of collective action in terms of local and national consciousness are then considered. A model of community is then proposed, founded on the routine practices of everyday life, which recognises the multiplicity of motivations and experiences subsumed within the symbolic affirmations of collective solidarity. It concludes with an examination of the antagonism between the county town of Derby, with its history and expectations of paternal intervention, and the corporate Midland Railway 1 which was economically, socially and politically independent of local systems.