Brandreth report on the survey of Chat Moss, December 1826

Autograph letter by Henry Booth, company secretary and treasurer of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, to James Loch, with an autograph report on the survey of Chat Moss by Thomas Shaw Brandreth, 5 December 1826.

A letter from Henry Booth, secretary and treasurer of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway (L&MR) to James Loch. The letter includes a report on the survey of Chat Moss, a peat bog near Manchester, by Thomas Shaw Brandreth, who was aided by George Stephenson, acting as civil engineer. This report is significant as it documents the development of ground-breaking railway civil engineering techniques.

The letter was written in Liverpool on the 6th December 1826. It was written when construction was starting on L&MR, the company had just taken out contracts to drain Chat Moss in June of the same year. The letter was sent to Loch, in Bloomsbury Square, to inform him of the survey. The survey charts a course for further construction of the L&MR.

The report made history by contributing to the success of the L&MR and demonstrating that serious civil engineering challenges such as Chat Moss could be overcome. The L&MR railway was the first railway of its kind in many respects. It was the first to use steam-driven locomotives exclusively, the first to run tracks in each direction and the first to carry mail.