This article uses a range of life writing to examine the ways in which urban travellers engaged with new transport technologies and experiences in Britain in the century after 1840. It is argued that people easily engaged with new forms and sites of mobility, mixed transport modes and incorporated them into their everyday travel. They enjoyed the greater speeds of travel that became available and expected transport networks to work. It is argued that many of the characteristics of ‘new mobilities’ usually associated with the late twentieth century were present over a century earlier, though some more traditional forms of mobility persisted.