exhibited by the engineers of Great Britain is" (the quotation is from the Athenæum of April 22d, 1843)“ surprising." "Want of faith in the capabilities of the locomotive engine has formed one important item in the cost of the English railway system. Engineers set out in their railway career with the impression that the locomotive was ill-calculated to climb up-hill with its load, and that therefore to work with advantage, it must work on lines either altogether level, or nearly so; hence mountains required to be levelled; valleys filled up, tunnels pierced through rocks, and viaducts reared in the air; gigantic works at a gigantic cost, all for the purpose of enabling the engine to travel along a dead level, or nearly so. But here again was want of faith in the powers of the locomotive engine. The locomotive engine can climb the mountain side as well as career along the plain." So wrote the Athenæum in 1843, and so, in fact, it was proved a few years afterward, when the Lancaster and Carlisle was carried over Shap Fell at a height of 915 feet above the sea, with a gradient of 1 in 75 for 4 miles, and the Caledonian climbed for 9 miles at a gradient of 1 in 80 to Beattock Summit, 1015 feet above sea-level.

But, though the Athenæum was right, that the monumental lines of Stephenson and Brunel ought never to have been built in the style they were for the traffic of 1843, time has proved that, after all, the engineers were right, though they did not know it, and the philosophers were wrong. For to its splendidly straight and level track the North Western owes it that it can with ease keep abreast of the utmost efforts of its energetic rivals, the Great Northern and the Midland, in the race to Manchester, while the Great Western finds in the same circumstance ample compensation for the fact, that its line to Exeter is no less than 23 miles further than the rival route. Meanwhile, the day of monumental lines was over, and the projectors of new routes were being compelled by the prevailing depression to cut their coats according to their cloth, and content themselves with schemes much more moderate than those with which they would have been satisfied a few years before. UnconNEW SERIES.-VOL. XLVI., No. I

vinced, however, that locomotives could climb gradients, they were experimenting with cogged wheels, and various other contrivances to overcome their imaginary difficulties. One ingenious gentleman went so far as to suggest that, though the engine should have wheels to keep it on the line, the weight should be carried, and the driving power should be applied to rough rollers running upon a gravel road, maintained at the proper level between the two rails. By this method alone, he was convinced, would sufficient bite of the ground be obtained to enable a locomotive to draw a paying load up an incline. Another engineer proposed that on gradients steeper than I in 100 a second rail should be introduced, inside the ordinary one, on which the flange of the driving wheels, specially made rough for this purpose, might bite more firmly.

Still, in spite of all these difficulties and hesitations, railways were steadily taking more and more hold of the public life and habits. In February 1842, the Morning Post writes: "It is worthy of remark that Her Majesty never travels by railway. Prince Albert almost invariably accompanies the Queen, but patronizes the Great Western generally when compelled to come up from Windsor alone. The Prince, however, has been known to say, Not quite so fast, next time, Mr. Conductor, if you please. But the Queen could not hold out much longer, and on June 18th the Railway Times records :-" Her Majesty made her first railway trip on Monday last on the Great Western Railway, and we have no doubt will in future patronize the line as extensively as does her Royal Consort. The Queen Dowager, it is well known, is a frequent passenger by the London and Birmingham Railway, and has more than once testified her extreme satisfaction with the arrangements of the Company. On Wednesday last her Majesty Queen Adelaide went down by the South Western Railway for the first time en route for the Isle of Wight." Her Majesty returned a few days afterward, and accomplished the 78 miles between Southampton and Vauxhall in one minute under the two hours-a run of which the South-Western authorities were evidently not a little proud. Not long

5

But trains were not good enough even yet for foreign royalties. As late as July, 1843, the Globe translates from the French journal La Commerce the following story of Louis Philippe :-"When the King was intending to go with the Royal Family to his château of Bizy, he proposed to be conveyed by a special train on the railway as far as Rouen, and orders were given to this effect. But the Council of Ministers, on being acquainted with His Majesty's project, held a sitting, and came to the resolution that this mode of travelling by railway was not sufficiently secure to admit of its being used by the King, and consequently His Majesty went to Bizy with post-horses. This, it must be acknowledged, is a singular mode chosen by the Cabinet for encouraging railNo doubt the frightful Versailles accident of the year before, in which fifty passengers were burned to death, had something to do with the decision of His Majesty's ministers. It certainly gave rise to Sydney Smith's celebrated letter as to the necessity of sacrificing a bishop to secure railway reform. About the same time it is recorded that the Judges sent down as a Special Commission to try some rioters at Stafford, went by special train from Euston. It would appear, therefore," says the Railway Times, "that travelling by railway is not now considered beneath the dignity of the profession."

Wilts, which had been let at £1992 in 1841, only produced £654 in 1842. For the tolls on the road between Wakefield and Sheffield not a single tender was sent in, and the trustees were compelled to collect them themselves. Almost every week came a notice that some famous line of coaches had ceased to run. One day the papers record the death of the Peak Ranger, a coach which had stood high in the estimation of the public, on the road between Sheffield and Manchester. "On Saturday last, when drawing near to Sheffield, its inevitable dissolution became apparent, and Mr. Clark, who was driving, almost despaired of reaching the terminus before death put a period to its existence; fortunately, however, the task was accomplished, and a few minutes after its arrival it quietly departed this life without a struggle or a groan. Report says that its remains are about to be sent by railway to the British Museum in London, where it will be exhibited as a relic of antiquity for centuries to come. Unfortunately for the coachman, he was, owing to this dreadful calamity, left at Sheffield, a distance of 24 miles from home. Every inquiry was made for a vehicle to convey him home. The Leeds Railway was recommended, but this he rejected in terms of bitter resentment, when fortunately it was discovered that one solitary wagon was still permitted to travel on that road. Having been snugly packed in the tail of the wagon, he was safely delivered at his own door within twenty-four hours after the fatal catastrophe. In March 1842, a few weeks after the opening of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, the Glasgow Courier reports, The whole of the stage coaches from Glasgow and Edinburgh are now off the road, with the exception of the six o'clock morning coach, which is kept running in consequence of its carrying the mail-bags.'

Indeed, Lord Lowther, the then Postmaster-General, seems to have thought, like Louis Philippe's ministers, that railways were not safe enough to be intrusted with Her Majesty's mails, and the papers are full of complaints that sufficient advantage is not taken of the rapidity of railway communication in the conveyance of letters. Nor was he alone in his opinion, for another peer,

Lord Abinger, presiding in the Court of Exchequer, said, "It would be a great tyranny if the Court were to lay down that a witness should only travel by railway. If he were a witness, in the present state of railways, he should refuse to come by such a conveyance.' The Brighton coaches having been driven off the road by the opening of the railway in 1841, the mails were sent down from London in a cart, in spite of an indignant memorial from Brighton residents, who protested that such a mode of conveyance was "neither safe nor respectable." Next year, however, the Brighton Railway Company raised its fares, and encouraged some coaches to enter again upon the unequal struggle. In May 1843, the battle was so far decided, that a provincial newspaper reports: Only eleven mail coaches now leave London daily for the country. few years since, before railways were formed, there were nearly eighty that used to leave the General Post Office." Even when the coaches had not been driven off the road altogether, they had been forced in many places to lower their fares.

66

44

A

Every one has heard of the 2000 posthorses that used to be kept in the inns at Hounslow. As early as April 1842, a daily paper reports: At the formerly flourishing village of Hounslow, so great is now the general depreciation of property, on account of the transfer of traffic to the railway, that at one of the chief inns is an inscription, New milk and cream sold here; while another announces the profession of the chief occupier as mending boots and shoes. "Maidenhead," writes an old Roadster, "is now in miserable plight. The glories of the Bear,' where a good twenty minutes were al lowed to the traveller to stow away some three or four shillings' worth of boiled fowls and ham to support his inward man during the night, are fast fading away forever. This celebrated hostelry is about to be permanently closed as a public inn.' Here is a yet more important effect of railways, according to the Berks Chronicle. The heath and birch-broom trade, which used to be of very considerable extent at Reading Michaelmas Fair, and from which many of the industrious poor profited, has

When

fallen away to a mere nothing. the dairymen had their cheese brought up the old road, they used to load the wagons home with brooms; but now since the mode of conveyance is changed to the railway, it does not answer the purpose of the dealers to pay the carriage for them by that mode of transit." Nor were coachmen, innkeepers, and broom-cutters the only people who suffered from change. The shop-keepers of Ashton-under-Lyne, Stockport, and other small towns round Manchester, complained bitterly that their customers all went into Manchester to shop, and that they were left to sit idle.

On the other hand new trades were springing up on all sides. One day it is recorded in a Liverpool paper that a Cheshire farmer has ceased to make cheese, and is supplying the Liverpool market with fresh milk from a "distance of over 43 miles, delivering the same by half-past eight in the morning." Another day readers are startled to learn that wet fish from the East coast ports can be delivered fresh in Birmingham or Derby. A tenant on the Holkham estate bears witness to the advantage of a railway to the Norfolk farmers. fat cattle, so he said, used to be driven up to London by road. They were a fortnight on the journey, and when they reached Smithfield had lost three guineas in value, besides all the cost out of pocket. As soon as the Eastern Counties line was opened, he would send his cattle through by train in twelve hours. Again, the Great Western Railway is reported to be making arrange..ents to convey Bathstone in large quantities from the quarries at Box to London.

His

But, as a rule, goods traffic on the great through lines was in 1843 a very secondary affair. secondary affair. The Great Western was earning £13,000 a week from passengers and only £3000 from goods. On the London and Birmingham the goods receipts were much the same, but the passengers returned some £15,000. On the South Western the proportion was six to one; on the Brighton more than seven to one; on the South Eastern more than ten to one. Even on the Midland Counties and North Midland, where nowadays passengers are quite unimportant compared with goods and minerals, five-eighths of the whole re

ceipts came from the "coaching'' traffic. Of course there were exceptions, and on a purely mineral line, such as the Taff Vale, the goods receipts were five-sixths of the total, while on the Newcastle and Carlisle they were two-thirds. Still, taking England as a whole, the goods traffic was only about a quarter of the total, instead of three-fifths as it is today. The carriage of coal to London by rail had, however, already begun. As early as 1838 a Select Committee of the House of Commons had only failed by one vote to adopt the recommendation of Lord Granville Somerset that the coal dues should be discontinued. The majority against their abolition was composed, according to the Railway Times, of two aldermen of the City of London, three coal-owners, and one coal-factor. In those days, however, the Metropolitan Board of Works as yet was not; the Corporation took the whole of the dues, and was under no obligation to spend them upon metropolitan improvements.

The express and through trains on the great lines, such as the Great Western or the London and Birmingham, were timed to run at about 25 to 28 miles an hour. From London to Bristol, for example, 118 miles, the train took four hours and a quarter, the same time that the Dutchman" now takes to reach Exeter, 76 miles farther. But the time was in a very great degree spent not in movement but at the stations. There was a stoppage for refreshments at Wolverton, half way from London to Birmingham, and another at Falkirk, on the 47 mile journey between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

When, however, they were actually in motion, trains could run fast enough. We have already mentioned a run from Southampton to London at the rate of over 46 miles an hour. Lord Eglinton's trainer, in order to be in time for a race, took a special" from Manchester to Liverpool, 30 miles in 40 minutes, or at the rate of 45 miles an hour. Another "special ran from Derby, 40 miles in 66 minutes, of which 16 were spent in three stoppages. A third, from Brighton to Croydon, 40 miles in 50 minutes. And there is abundant proof that the light trains of those days (two small coaches and a guard's van probably) could get along nearly as fast as our

own ponderous expresses, which must be not unfrequently quite twenty times as heavy. Indeed, it was the custom, if any important person missed his train, to charter a "special" and start in pursuit. With good luck he might count on overtaking a train which had only had half an hour's "law," before it had got much more than half the distance between London and Brighton. On one occasion the Secretary of the London and Greenwich Railway, having missed the train, mounted an engine, and started in such hot pursuit. that he ran into the tail carriage with sufficient violence to break the legs of one or two passengers.

But, except when a Queen travelled, for whose convenience the whole traffic was disorganized, high speed was impossible over any long distance. Not only were the engines too small to run more than 40 or 50 miles without taking in water, but there were numerous spots where the permanent way was not wholly to be trusted. Here it had shown a tendency to subside, there the sides of a cutting looked like slipping. Maidenhead Bridge was said to be unsafe; if Dean Buckland could be trusted, even the Box Tunnel was not above suspicion. In the absence of all signalling, except by hand, all these points would need that speed should be slackened. The Prince Consort, too, was not the only person who protested against over-rapid travelling. The newspapers are full of complaints of dangerous speed. dangerous speed. One correspondent suggests that notice boards shall be fixed all along the line, prescribing the due speed for each stretch, lest the engine-driver should be tempted to exceed the bounds of prudence.

Accidents were naturally of frequent occurrence, taking mainly the shape of collisions. Here, for example, is a record of a single line, the North Midland, for a single week of January, 1843, as given by a correspondent of the Railway Times of that date. This Company appears to have engaged several new drivers, one of whom had just been released from Wakefield jail, where he had served two months' imprisonment for being "in a beastly state of intoxication'' when in charge of an engine.

Jan. 2d.-Engine broke down, seriously damaged.

Jan. 3d.-One train six hours late; another overtook and ran into a coal train with four engines attached, all disabled.

Jan. 4th.-Three engines broke down. Jan. 5th.-Three engines broke down. Jan. 6th.-One engine broke down; a second ran into a passenger train in front; a goods train and a passenger train came into collision, the carriages were knocked to bits, and the only passenger in the train was decapitated.

The above tale of disasters might lead us to imagine that trains seldom reached their destination in safety. But apparently we should be wrong in so thinking. In 1841 only 24 passengers were killed and 72 injured from causes beyond their own control. In 1842 the numbers were 5 and 14 respectively. "These figures" (say the Board of Trade officials) "would seem to indicate that the science of locomotion has, as far as the public safety is concerned, reached a high degree of perfection; of the 18,000,000 passengers conveyed by railway in the course of the year, only one was killed while riding in the train and observing the common degree of caution." "We are satisfied that a degree of security has been attained upon well-managed railways decidedly superior to that of any other mode of con

veyance.

The truth seems to be that accidents were frequent rather than serious. Neither the companies' servants nor the public had yet learned to treat railway trains with the necessary caution. Engine-drivers fancied that a collision between two engines was no more serious than the interlocking of the wheels of two rival stage-coaches. Passengers tried to jump on and off trains moving at full speed with absolute recklessness. Again and again is it recorded, "injured, jumped out after his hat;" "fell off, riding on the side of a wagon ;""skull broken, riding on the top of the carriage, came in collision with a bridge;'

guard's head struck against a bridge, attempting to remove a passenger who had improperly seated himself outside;" "fell out of a third-class carriage while pushing and jostling with a friend." On one occasion a prisoner, who was

being taken by train, sprang out and rolled down the embankment. The jailer sprang after him, and caught him. Both were uninjured. And if passengers had scarcely learned the need of caution, still less had the brute creation. The number of "coos" that found how awkward a customer was a railway engine passes belief. Sometimes the train kept the rails, sometimes it ran off, as happened to a North Western express that was charged by a bull on the embankment near Watford. Here is one entry "No fewer than nine hares and one dog have within the last fortnight been run down by the trains on the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway."

Not but what serious accidents did occasionally happen. On Christmas Eve, 1841, a goods train left Paddington at 4 40 A.M., consisting of an engine and tender, two third-class carriages conveying thirty-eight passengers, a luggage van and sixteen goods wagons. All went well as far as Twyford, which was reached about 6.40 A.M. Between Twyford and Reading, in the deep Sonning cutting, the train ran into a mass of earth that had fallen on to the line and covered it to a depth of nearly three feet. The driver and fireman jumped off as the engine turned over, and were uninjured. The passenger carriages were dashed against the prostrate engine by the weight of the goods wagons pressing forward from behind. Eight of the occupants, "people of the poorer classes who were looking forward to a Christmas holiday with their friends in the country," were killed on the spot, while seventeen were severely injured. The Coroner's jury brought in a verdict, "Accidental death in all the cases, with a deodand of £1000 on the engine, tender, and carriages. Since Lord Campbell's Act, deodands have become obsolete, and the word will probably need explanation. By the Common Law any chattel, be it a gun, or a wagon, or a savage ox, by which a man's death was caused, was deo dandum, or forfeited for pious uses. In practice it was redeemed at a price fixed by the jury, and the proceeds devoted to the benefit of the family of the deceased. In this particular case the Standard records as follows: "The £1000 deodand goes, by a grant