The coaching age ended, so far as Lynn was concerned, in 1847, when the East Anglian Railway, from Ely to Lynn, with branches to Dereham, Wisbeach, and Huntingdon, was opened. It was an unfortunate line, an amalgamation of three separate undertakings: the Lynn and Dereham, the Ely and Huntingdon, and the Lynn and Ely Railways. By its junction with the Eastern Counties, now the Great Eastern, at Ely, a through journey to London was first rendered possible. Three trains each way, instead of the twenty now running, were then considered sufficient for all needs. They were not, at that early date, either swift or dignified journeys, for engine-power was often insufficient, and it was a common thing for a train to be stopped for hours while engine-driver and stoker effected necessary repairs. It was then, and on those not infrequent occasions when trains ran by favour of the sheriff, accompanied by a "man in possession" and plastered with ignominious labels announcing the fact, that passengers lamented the coaches. The East Anglian Railway, indeed, like the Great Eastern, which swallowed it, had a very troubled early career.
Lynn in those early years of innovation still retained many of its old-world ways. It was a sleepy time, as Mr. Thew, who has written his reminiscences of it, testifies. For police the town possessed one old watchman, who bore the old East Anglian name of Blanchflower, and patrolled the streets "with one arm and a lantern." The posting of letters was then a serious business, calling for much patience, for you did not in those days drop them into a letter-box, but handed them through a window at which you knocked. When the clerk in charge, one John Cooper, had satisfied his official dignity and kept you waiting long enough, he was graciously pleased to open the window and receive the letters. The successor to this upholder of official traditions, was one Charles Rix, addicted to declaiming Shakespeare from his window.
The postmaster of Lynn at this easy-going time was Mr. Robinson Cruso, who also filled the miscellaneous occupations of auctioneer and estate agent, and wine and spirit merchant, and was a member of the Town Council. He was a descendant of an old Lynn family, many of whose representatives lie in the church of St. Nicholas. This Cruso (they spelled their name without the "e") was an upholsterer, and born ten years after Defoe's famous book was published; hence the "Robinson." There are still a number of the name in Norfolk and Suffolk.