The Preston and Wyre Railway was amongst the earliest formed, and the impression made on the natives of this district, who had been accustomed to the slow-going coaches, must have been one of no little amazement, when, for the first time, they beheld the “iron horse” steaming along the rails at a speed which their past experience of travelling would make them regard as impossible. The following lines were written by a gentleman named Henry Anderton, a resident in the Fylde, on the opening of the railway: “Some fifty years since and a coach had no power, To move faster forward than six miles an hour, Till Sawney McAdam made highways as good, As paving-stones crushed into little bits could. The coachee quite proud of his horse-flesh and trip, Cried, ‘Go it, ye cripples!’ and gave them the whip, And ten miles an hour, by the help of the thong, They put forth their mettle and scampered along. The Present has taken great strides of the Past, For carriages run without horses at last! And what is more strange,—yet it’s truth I avow, Hack-horses themselves have turned passengers now! These coaches alive go in sixes and twelves, And once set in motion they travel themselves! They’ll run thirty miles while I’m cracking this joke, And need no provisions but pump-milk and coke! And with their long chimneys they skim o’er the rails, With two thousand hundred-weight tied to their tails! While Jarvey in stupid astonishment stands, Upturning both eyes and uplifting both hands, ‘My nags,’ he exclaims, betwixt laughing and crying, ‘Are good ’uns to go, but yon devils are flying.’” The fares on the Preston and Wyre Railway at its commencement were:— 1st class. 2nd class. 3rd class. Preston to Fleetwood or Blackpool 4s. 6d. 3s. 0d. 2s. 0d. Preston to Poulton 3s. 6d. 2s. 6d. 1s. 6d. Preston to Kirkham 2s. 0d. 1s. 3d. 0s. 9d. Preston to Lytham 3s. 0d. 2s. 6d. 1s. 6d. Until the opening of the branch lines to Lytham and Blackpool respectively, in 1846, passengers completed their journies from Kirkham and Poulton to those watering places by means of coaches. Three trains ran from the terminus at Fleetwood to Preston on each week-day, and one on Sunday, a similar number returning.