All but the poorest enjoyed the freedom that from the city that the railway allowed them and many trekked out to Richmond or Hampstead Heath for family outings. Seaside resorts blossomed as the rich and middle-class would holiday in their new-found leisure time. 'Railroad travelling is a delightful improvement of human life. Man is become a bird; he can fly on longer and quicker than a solan goose...Everything is near, everything is immediate- time, distance, and delay are abolished.'9 Sydney Smith's comment regarding railways may seem a little naive in retrospect, however, and the effects of the railway were continuously debated with some saying that the new steam engines were noisy and polluting but until the railway's potential became realised the general opinion remained ambiguous.
During the 1840s and more specifically during the dates of Dombey and Son however, the railway firms attempted to promote their shares and speculation within their companies; this movement would eventually be called Railwaymania. This movement was led primarily by George Hudson, a drapier from York, who would eventually become known as the Railway King and would play a large part in the founding of the North Eastern Railway. He became quite wealthy from various dealings, most of it fraudulent, until he was exposed in 1849 towards Dombey's completion. Most of the speculation and investing regarding the movement, in fact, fraudulent but was non the less responsible for the great expansion of the railway lines: in the years during Dickens's writing of the novel, railway lines had more than quadrupled: in 1843, 1,952 miles of railway were operational and by 1848 there were nearly 5,000 miles of track in use; that figure would reach 8,000 miles by 1855.
