Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.A Double Dilemma and its Consequences.Meanwhile, the “tall good-looking fellow with the eyeglass and light whiskers” sat quaking opposite Emma Lee. The extreme absurdity, not to say danger, of his position as a traveller to nowhere without a ticket, flashed upon him when too late, and he would have cheerfully given fifty pounds, had he possessed such a sum, if the boards under his feet would have opened and let him drop between the rails. In fact he felt so confused and guilty that—albeit not naturally a shy youth—he did not dare to look at Emma for some time after starting, but sat with downcast eyes, revolving in his mind how he was to get out of the dilemma; but the more he revolved the matter the more hopeless did his case appear. At length he ventured to look at Emma, and their eyes encountered. Of course Gurwood looked pointedly out at the window and became fascinated by the landscape; and of course Emma, looked out at theotherwindow, and became equally interested in the landscape. Feeling very unhappy; Edwin soon after that took out a newspaper and tried to read, but failed so completely that he gave it up in despair and laid the paper on the seat beside him.Just then a happy thought flashed into his mind. He would go on to Langrye station, get out there, and make a confidant of his friend Joseph Tipps, who, of course, could easily get him out of his difficulty. He now felt as if a mighty load were lifted off his heart, and, his natural courage returning, he put up his eyeglass, which had been forgotten during the period of his humiliation, and gazed at the prospect with increasing interest—now through the right window, and then through the left—taking occasion each time to glance with still greater interest at Emma Lee’s beautiful countenance.The captain, whose disposition was sociable, and who had chatted a good deal with his daughter while theirvis-à-viswas in his agony, soon took occasion to remark that the scenery was very fine. Edwin, gazing at the black walls of a tunnel into which they plunged, and thinking of Emma’s face, replied that it was—extremely. Emerging from the tunnel, and observing the least possible approach to a smile on. Emma’s lips, Edwin remarked to the captain that railway travelling presented rather abrupt changes and contrasts in scenery. The captain laughingly agreed with this, and so, from one thing to another, they went on until the two got into a lively conversation—Captain Lee thinking his travelling companion an extremely agreeable young fellow, and Edwin esteeming the captain one of the jolliest old boys he had ever met! These are the very words he used, long after, in commenting on this meeting to his friend Joseph Tipps.During a pause in the conversation, Emma asked her father to whom a certain villa they were passing belonged.“I don’t know,” replied the captain; “stay, let me see, I ought to know most of the places hereabouts—no, I can’t remember.”“I rather think it belongs to a Colonel Jones,” said Gurwood, for the first time venturing to address Emma directly. “A friend of mine who is connected with this railway knows him, and has often spoken to me about him. The colonel has led an extremely adventurous life, I believe.”“Indeed!”There was not much apparently in that little word, but there must have been something mysterious in it, for it caused Edwin’s heart to leap as it had never leapt before. On the strength of it he began to relate some of Colonel Jones’s adventures, addressing himself now partly to the captain and partly to Emma. He had a happy knack of telling a story, and had thoroughly interested his hearers when the train slowed and stopped, but as this was not the station at which he meant to get out—Langrye being the next—he took no notice of the stoppage. Neither did he pay any regard to a question asked by the acute man, whose face appeared at the window as soon as the train stopped.“Is that your bundle, sir?” repeated Mr Blunt a little louder.“Eh? yes, yes—all right,” replied Edwin, annoyed at the interruption, and thinking only of Emma Lee, to whom he turned, and went on—“Well, when Colonel Jones had scaled the first wall—”“Come, sir,” said Blunt, entering the carriage, and laying his hand on Edwin’s shoulder, “it’snotall right. This is another man’s property.”The youth turned round indignantly, and, with a flushed countenance, said, “What do you mean?”“I mean that you are travelling with another man’s property,” said Blunt, quietly pointing to the strapped rug.“Thatis not my property,” said Edwin, looking at it with a perplexed air, “I never said it was.”“Didn’t you though?” exclaimed Blunt, with an appealing look to the captain. “Didn’t you say, when I asked you, ‘Yes, it’s all right.’ Moreover, young man, if it’s not yours, why did you bring it into the carriage with you?”“Idid not bring it into the carriage,” said Edwin, firmly, and with increasing indignation. “I came down to this train with a lady, who is now in it, and who can vouch for it that I brought no luggage of any kind with me. I—”At this moment the elderly gentleman with brown top-coat and spectacles bustled up to the carriage, recognised his rug, and claimed it, with a good deal of fuss and noise.“Where are you travelling to?” demanded Blunt, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone.Poor Gurwood’s countenance fell. He became somewhat pale, and said, in a much less resolute voice, “You have no right to ask that question; but since you suspect me, I may tell you that I am going to Langrye.”“Show your ticket,” said the guard, looking in at that moment.A glance showed the unhappy youth that Captain Lee was regarding him with surprise and Emma with intense pity. Desperation gave him courage. He turned abruptly to the captain, and said—“I regret deeply, sir, that we part with such a foul suspicion hanging over me. Come,” he added sternly to Blunt, “I will go with you, and shall soon prove myself innocent.”He leaped to the platform, closely accompanied by Blunt.“Where do you intend to take me?” he asked, turning to his guardian, whom he now knew to be a detective.“Here, step this way,” said Blunt, leading his prisoner towards the rear of the train.“Such a nice-looking young man, too, who’d ’ave thought it!” whispered one of the many heads that were thrust out at the carriage-windows to look at him as he passed.“Get in here,” said Blunt, holding open the door of an empty second-class compartment of the same train; “we shan’t want a ticket for this part of the journey.”“But the lady I mentioned,” said poor Edwin, “she can—”“You can see her at Langrye, young man; come, get in,” said Blunt, sternly, “the train’s just starting.”Edwin’s blood boiled. He turned to smite the acute-visaged man to the earth, but encountering the serene gaze of the magnificent guard who stood close beside him, he changed his mind and sprang into the carriage. Blunt followed, the door was banged and locked, the signal was given and the train moved on.“Why do you take me to Langrye instead of back to town?” asked Edwin, after proceeding some distance in silence.“Because we have an hour to wait for the up train, and it’s pleasanter waiting there than here,” replied Blunt; “besides, I have business at Langrye; I want to see one of my friends there who is looking after light-fingered gentry.”As this was said significantly Edwin did not deign a reply, but, leaning back in a corner, gazed out at the window and brooded over his unhappy fate. Truly he had something to brood over. Besides being in the unpleasant position which we have described, he had quite recently lost his only relative, a “rich uncle,” as he was called, who had brought Edwin up and had led him to believe that he should be his heir. It was found, however, on the examination of the old gentleman’s affairs, that his fortune was a myth, and that his house, furniture, and personal effects would have to be sold in order to pay his debts. When all was settled, Edwin Gurwood found himself cast upon his own resources with good health, a kind but wayward disposition, a strong handsome frame, a middling education, and between three and four hundred pounds in his pocket. He soon found that this amount of capital melted with alarming rapidity under the influence of a good appetite and expensive tastes, so he resolved at once to commence work of some kind. But what was he to turn to? His uncle had allowed him to do as he pleased. Naturally it pleased the energetic and enthusiastic boy to learn very little of anything useful, to read an immense amount of light literature, and to indulge in much open-air exercise.Bitterly did he now feel, poor fellow, that this course, although somewhat pleasing at the time, did not fit him to use and enjoy the more advanced period of life. He had disliked and refused to sit still even for an hour at a time in boyhood; it now began to dawn upon him that he was doomed for life to the greatest of all his horrors, the top of a three-legged stool! He had hated writing and figures, and now visions of ledgers, cash-books, invoice-books and similar literature with endless arithmetical calculations began to float before his mental vision. With intense regret he reflected that if he had only used reasonably well the brief period of life which as yet lay behind him, he might by that time have been done with initial drudgery and have been entering on a brilliant career in one of the learned professions. As to the army and navy, he was too old to get into either, even if he had possessed interest, which he did not. Sternly did he reproach his departed uncle when he brooded over his wrongs, and soliloquised thus:— “You ought to have known that I was a fool, that I could not be expected to know the fact, or to guide myself aright in opposition to and despite of my own folly, and you ought to have forced me to study when I declined to be led—bah! it’s too late to say all this now. Come, if there is any manhood in me worthy of the name, let me set to work at once and make the most of what is left to me!”Edwin reflected with complacency on the fact that one part of what was left to him was a tall strong frame and broad shoulders, but his judgment told him that though these were blessings not to be despised, and for which he had every reason to be thankful, he ought not to plume himself too much on them, seeing that he shared them in common with numerous prize-fighters and burglars, besides which they could not prove of very much value professionally unless he took to mining or coal-heaving. He also reflected sadly on the fact that beyond the three R’s, a little Latin and French, and a smattering of literary knowledge, he was little better than a red Indian. Being, as we have said, a resolute fellow, he determined to commence a course of study without delay, but soon found that the necessity of endeavouring to obtain a situation and of economising his slender fortune interfered sadly with his efforts. However, he persevered.In the time of his prosperity, young Gurwood had made many friends, but a touch of pride had induced him to turn aside from these—although many of them would undoubtedly have been glad to aid him in his aims—to quit the house of his childhood and betake himself to the flourishing town of Clatterby, where he knew nobody except one soft amiable little school-fellow, whom in boyish days he had always deemed a poor, miserable little creature, but for whom nevertheless he entertained a strong affection. We need scarcely say that this was Joseph Tipps, the clerk at Langrye station.

Meanwhile, the “tall good-looking fellow with the eyeglass and light whiskers” sat quaking opposite Emma Lee. The extreme absurdity, not to say danger, of his position as a traveller to nowhere without a ticket, flashed upon him when too late, and he would have cheerfully given fifty pounds, had he possessed such a sum, if the boards under his feet would have opened and let him drop between the rails. In fact he felt so confused and guilty that—albeit not naturally a shy youth—he did not dare to look at Emma for some time after starting, but sat with downcast eyes, revolving in his mind how he was to get out of the dilemma; but the more he revolved the matter the more hopeless did his case appear. At length he ventured to look at Emma, and their eyes encountered. Of course Gurwood looked pointedly out at the window and became fascinated by the landscape; and of course Emma, looked out at theotherwindow, and became equally interested in the landscape. Feeling very unhappy; Edwin soon after that took out a newspaper and tried to read, but failed so completely that he gave it up in despair and laid the paper on the seat beside him.

Just then a happy thought flashed into his mind. He would go on to Langrye station, get out there, and make a confidant of his friend Joseph Tipps, who, of course, could easily get him out of his difficulty. He now felt as if a mighty load were lifted off his heart, and, his natural courage returning, he put up his eyeglass, which had been forgotten during the period of his humiliation, and gazed at the prospect with increasing interest—now through the right window, and then through the left—taking occasion each time to glance with still greater interest at Emma Lee’s beautiful countenance.

The captain, whose disposition was sociable, and who had chatted a good deal with his daughter while theirvis-à-viswas in his agony, soon took occasion to remark that the scenery was very fine. Edwin, gazing at the black walls of a tunnel into which they plunged, and thinking of Emma’s face, replied that it was—extremely. Emerging from the tunnel, and observing the least possible approach to a smile on. Emma’s lips, Edwin remarked to the captain that railway travelling presented rather abrupt changes and contrasts in scenery. The captain laughingly agreed with this, and so, from one thing to another, they went on until the two got into a lively conversation—Captain Lee thinking his travelling companion an extremely agreeable young fellow, and Edwin esteeming the captain one of the jolliest old boys he had ever met! These are the very words he used, long after, in commenting on this meeting to his friend Joseph Tipps.

During a pause in the conversation, Emma asked her father to whom a certain villa they were passing belonged.

“I don’t know,” replied the captain; “stay, let me see, I ought to know most of the places hereabouts—no, I can’t remember.”

“I rather think it belongs to a Colonel Jones,” said Gurwood, for the first time venturing to address Emma directly. “A friend of mine who is connected with this railway knows him, and has often spoken to me about him. The colonel has led an extremely adventurous life, I believe.”

“Indeed!”

There was not much apparently in that little word, but there must have been something mysterious in it, for it caused Edwin’s heart to leap as it had never leapt before. On the strength of it he began to relate some of Colonel Jones’s adventures, addressing himself now partly to the captain and partly to Emma. He had a happy knack of telling a story, and had thoroughly interested his hearers when the train slowed and stopped, but as this was not the station at which he meant to get out—Langrye being the next—he took no notice of the stoppage. Neither did he pay any regard to a question asked by the acute man, whose face appeared at the window as soon as the train stopped.

“Is that your bundle, sir?” repeated Mr Blunt a little louder.

“Eh? yes, yes—all right,” replied Edwin, annoyed at the interruption, and thinking only of Emma Lee, to whom he turned, and went on—“Well, when Colonel Jones had scaled the first wall—”

“Come, sir,” said Blunt, entering the carriage, and laying his hand on Edwin’s shoulder, “it’snotall right. This is another man’s property.”

The youth turned round indignantly, and, with a flushed countenance, said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are travelling with another man’s property,” said Blunt, quietly pointing to the strapped rug.

“Thatis not my property,” said Edwin, looking at it with a perplexed air, “I never said it was.”

“Didn’t you though?” exclaimed Blunt, with an appealing look to the captain. “Didn’t you say, when I asked you, ‘Yes, it’s all right.’ Moreover, young man, if it’s not yours, why did you bring it into the carriage with you?”

“Idid not bring it into the carriage,” said Edwin, firmly, and with increasing indignation. “I came down to this train with a lady, who is now in it, and who can vouch for it that I brought no luggage of any kind with me. I—”

At this moment the elderly gentleman with brown top-coat and spectacles bustled up to the carriage, recognised his rug, and claimed it, with a good deal of fuss and noise.

“Where are you travelling to?” demanded Blunt, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone.

Poor Gurwood’s countenance fell. He became somewhat pale, and said, in a much less resolute voice, “You have no right to ask that question; but since you suspect me, I may tell you that I am going to Langrye.”

“Show your ticket,” said the guard, looking in at that moment.

A glance showed the unhappy youth that Captain Lee was regarding him with surprise and Emma with intense pity. Desperation gave him courage. He turned abruptly to the captain, and said—

“I regret deeply, sir, that we part with such a foul suspicion hanging over me. Come,” he added sternly to Blunt, “I will go with you, and shall soon prove myself innocent.”

He leaped to the platform, closely accompanied by Blunt.

“Where do you intend to take me?” he asked, turning to his guardian, whom he now knew to be a detective.

“Here, step this way,” said Blunt, leading his prisoner towards the rear of the train.

“Such a nice-looking young man, too, who’d ’ave thought it!” whispered one of the many heads that were thrust out at the carriage-windows to look at him as he passed.

“Get in here,” said Blunt, holding open the door of an empty second-class compartment of the same train; “we shan’t want a ticket for this part of the journey.”

“But the lady I mentioned,” said poor Edwin, “she can—”

“You can see her at Langrye, young man; come, get in,” said Blunt, sternly, “the train’s just starting.”

Edwin’s blood boiled. He turned to smite the acute-visaged man to the earth, but encountering the serene gaze of the magnificent guard who stood close beside him, he changed his mind and sprang into the carriage. Blunt followed, the door was banged and locked, the signal was given and the train moved on.

“Why do you take me to Langrye instead of back to town?” asked Edwin, after proceeding some distance in silence.

“Because we have an hour to wait for the up train, and it’s pleasanter waiting there than here,” replied Blunt; “besides, I have business at Langrye; I want to see one of my friends there who is looking after light-fingered gentry.”

As this was said significantly Edwin did not deign a reply, but, leaning back in a corner, gazed out at the window and brooded over his unhappy fate. Truly he had something to brood over. Besides being in the unpleasant position which we have described, he had quite recently lost his only relative, a “rich uncle,” as he was called, who had brought Edwin up and had led him to believe that he should be his heir. It was found, however, on the examination of the old gentleman’s affairs, that his fortune was a myth, and that his house, furniture, and personal effects would have to be sold in order to pay his debts. When all was settled, Edwin Gurwood found himself cast upon his own resources with good health, a kind but wayward disposition, a strong handsome frame, a middling education, and between three and four hundred pounds in his pocket. He soon found that this amount of capital melted with alarming rapidity under the influence of a good appetite and expensive tastes, so he resolved at once to commence work of some kind. But what was he to turn to? His uncle had allowed him to do as he pleased. Naturally it pleased the energetic and enthusiastic boy to learn very little of anything useful, to read an immense amount of light literature, and to indulge in much open-air exercise.

Bitterly did he now feel, poor fellow, that this course, although somewhat pleasing at the time, did not fit him to use and enjoy the more advanced period of life. He had disliked and refused to sit still even for an hour at a time in boyhood; it now began to dawn upon him that he was doomed for life to the greatest of all his horrors, the top of a three-legged stool! He had hated writing and figures, and now visions of ledgers, cash-books, invoice-books and similar literature with endless arithmetical calculations began to float before his mental vision. With intense regret he reflected that if he had only used reasonably well the brief period of life which as yet lay behind him, he might by that time have been done with initial drudgery and have been entering on a brilliant career in one of the learned professions. As to the army and navy, he was too old to get into either, even if he had possessed interest, which he did not. Sternly did he reproach his departed uncle when he brooded over his wrongs, and soliloquised thus:— “You ought to have known that I was a fool, that I could not be expected to know the fact, or to guide myself aright in opposition to and despite of my own folly, and you ought to have forced me to study when I declined to be led—bah! it’s too late to say all this now. Come, if there is any manhood in me worthy of the name, let me set to work at once and make the most of what is left to me!”

Edwin reflected with complacency on the fact that one part of what was left to him was a tall strong frame and broad shoulders, but his judgment told him that though these were blessings not to be despised, and for which he had every reason to be thankful, he ought not to plume himself too much on them, seeing that he shared them in common with numerous prize-fighters and burglars, besides which they could not prove of very much value professionally unless he took to mining or coal-heaving. He also reflected sadly on the fact that beyond the three R’s, a little Latin and French, and a smattering of literary knowledge, he was little better than a red Indian. Being, as we have said, a resolute fellow, he determined to commence a course of study without delay, but soon found that the necessity of endeavouring to obtain a situation and of economising his slender fortune interfered sadly with his efforts. However, he persevered.

In the time of his prosperity, young Gurwood had made many friends, but a touch of pride had induced him to turn aside from these—although many of them would undoubtedly have been glad to aid him in his aims—to quit the house of his childhood and betake himself to the flourishing town of Clatterby, where he knew nobody except one soft amiable little school-fellow, whom in boyish days he had always deemed a poor, miserable little creature, but for whom nevertheless he entertained a strong affection. We need scarcely say that this was Joseph Tipps, the clerk at Langrye station.

Chapter Five.An Accident and its Consequences.Locomotives and telegraphy are mere snails compared to thought. Let us therefore use our advantage, reader, stride in advance of the 6:30 p.m. train (which by the way has now become a 7:45 p.m. train), and see what little Joseph Tipps is doing.There he stands—five feet four in his highest-heeled boots—as sterling and warm-hearted a little man as ever breathed. He was writing at a little desk close to a large window, which, owing to the station being a temporary one and its roof low, was flimsy, and came nearer to the ground than most windows do.Mr Tipps wrote somewhat nervously. He inherited his mother’s weakness in this respect; and, besides, his nerves had been a little shaken, by the sudden illness, with which his sister had been seized that day, at his lodgings.Outside on the platform a few people lounged, waiting the arrival of the expected train. Among them was one whose bulky frame and firm strongly-lined countenance spoke of much power to dare and do. He was considerably above the middle height and somewhere about middle age. His costume was of that quiet unobtrusive kind which seems to court retirement, and the sharp glance of his eyes seemed to possess something of the gimblet in their penetrating power. This was no less a personage than Mr Sharp, the inspector of police on the Grand National Trunk Railway. Mr Inspector Sharp had evidently an eye for the beautiful, for he stood at the farther extremity of the platform gazing in rapt attention at the sun, which just then was setting in a flood of golden light. But Mr Sharp had also a peculiar faculty for observing several things at once. Indeed, some of his friends, referring to this, were wont to remark that he was a perfect Argus, with eyes in his elbows and calves and back of his head. It would seem, indeed, that this, or something like it, must really have been the case, for he not only observed and enjoyed the sunset but also paid particular attention to the conversation of two men who stood not far from him, and at the same time was cognisant of the fact that behind him, a couple of hundred yards or more up the line, a goods engine was engaged in shunting trucks.This process of shunting, we may explain for the benefit of those who don’t know, consists in detaching trucks from trains of goods and shoving them into sidings, so that they may be out of the way, until their time comes to be attached to other trains, which will convey them to their proper destination, or to have their contents, if need be, unloaded and distributed among other trucks. Shunting is sometimes a tedious process, involving much hauling, pushing, puffing, and whistling, on the part of the engine, and uncoupling of trucks and shifting of points on the part of pointsmen and porters. There is considerable danger, too, in the process,—or rather therewasdanger before the introduction of the “block system,” which now, when it is adopted, renders accidents almost impossible,—of which system more shall be said hereafter. The danger lies in this, that shunting has frequently to be done during intervals between the passing of passenger-trains, and, on lines where passenger and goods traffic is very great, these intervals are sometimes extremely brief. But, strange to say, this danger is the mother of safety, for the difficulty of conducting extensive traffic is so great, that a combination of all but perfect systems of signalling, telegraphing, and organisation is absolutely needful to prevent constant mishap. Hence the marvellous result that, in the midst of danger, we are in safety, and travelling by railway is really less dangerous than travelling by stage-coach used to be in days of old. Yes, timid reader, we assure you that if you travel daily by rail your chances of coming to grief are very much fewer than if you were to travel daily by mail coach. Facts and figures prove this beyond all doubt, so that we are entitled to take the comfort of it. The marvel is, not that loss of life is so great, but that it is so small.Do you doubt it, reader? Behold the facts and figures—wonder, be thankful and doubt no more! A “Blue Book” (Captain Tyler’s General Report to the Board of Trade on Railway Accidents during the year 1870) tells us that the number of passengers killed on railways last year was ninety. The number of passenger journeys performed was 307 millions, which gives, in round numbers, one passenger killed for every three and a half millions that travelled. In the best mail and stage-coaching days the yearly number of travellers was about two millions. The present railway death-rate applied to this number amounts to a little more than one-half of a unit! Will any one out of Bedlam have the audacity to say that in coaching days only half a passenger was killed each year? We leave facts to speak for themselves, and common-sense to judge whether men were safer then than they are now.But to return. When Mr Sharp was looking at the distant waggons that were being shunted he observed that the engine which conducted the operation was moved about with so much unnecessary fuss and jerking that he concluded it must be worked by a new, or at all events a bad, driver. He shook his head, therefore, pulled out his watch, and muttered to himself that it seemed to him far too near the time of the arrival of a train to make it safe to do such work.The calculations, however, had been made correctly, and the train of trucks would have been well out of the way, if the driver had been a smarter man. Even as things stood, however, there should have been no danger, because the distant signal was turned to danger, which thus said to any approaching train, “Stop! for your life.” But here occurred one of these mistakes, or pieces of carelessness, or thoughtlessness, to which weak and sinful human nature is, and we suppose always will be, liable. Perhaps the signalman thought the goods train had completed its operation, or fancied that the express was not so near as it proved to be, or he got confused—we cannot tell; there is no accounting for such things, but whatever the cause, he turned off the danger-signal half a minute too soon, and set the line free.Suddenly the down train came tearing round the curve. It was at reduced speed certainly, but not sufficiently reduced to avoid a collision with the trucks on a part of the line where no trucks should be.Our friend John Marrot was on the look-out of course, and so was his mate. They saw the trucks at once. Like lightning John shut off the steam and at the same instant touched his whistle several sharp shrieks, which was the alarm to the guard to turn onhisbrakes. No men could have been more prompt or cool. Joe Turner and Will Garvie had on full brake-power in a second or two. At the same time John Marrot instantly reversing the engine, let on full steam—but all in vain. Fire flew in showers from the shrieking wheels—the friction on the rails must have been tremendous, nevertheless the engine dashed into the goods train like a thunderbolt with a stunning crash and a noise that is quite indescribable.The police superintendent, who was all but run over, stood for a few seconds aghast at the sight and at the action of the engine. Not satisfied with sending one of its own carriages into splinters, the iron horse made three terrific plunges or efforts to advance, and at each plunge a heavy truck full of goods was, as it were, pawed under its wheels and driven out behind, under the tender, in the form of a mass of matchwood—all the goods, hard and soft, as well as the heavy frame of the truck itself being minced up together in a manner that defies description. It seemed as though the monster had been suddenly endued with intelligence, and was seeking to vent its horrid rage on the thing that had dared to check its pace. Three loaded trucks it crushed down, over-ran, and scattered wide in this way, in three successive plunges, and then, rushing on a few yards among chaoticdébris, turned slowly on its side, and hurled the driver and fireman over the embankment.The shock received by the people at the station was tremendous. Poor Tipps, standing at his desk, was struck—nervously—as if by electricity. He made one wild involuntary bolt right through the window, as if it had been made of tissue paper, and did not cease to run until he found himself panting in the middle of a turnip-field that lay at the back of the station. Turning round, ashamed of himself, he ran back faster than he had run away, and leaping recklessly among thedébris, began to pull broken and jagged timber about, under the impression that he was rescuing fellow-creatures from destruction!Strange to say no one was killed on that occasion—no one was even severely hurt, except the driver. But of course this was not known at first and the people who were standing about hurried, with terrible forebodings, to lend assistance to the passengers.Mr Sharp seemed to have been smitten with feelings somewhat similar to those of Tipps, for, without knowing very well how or why, he suddenly found himself standing up to the armpits indébris, heaving might and main at masses of timber.“Hallo! lift away this beam, will you?” shouted a half-smothered voice close beside him.It came from beneath the carriage that we have described as having been broken to splinters.Sharp was a man of action. He hailed a porter near him and began with energy and power to tear up and hurl aside the boards. Presently on raising part of the broken framework of the carriage a man struggled to his feet and, wiping away the blood that flowed from a wound in his forehead, revealed the countenance of Edwin Gurwood to the astonished Tipps.“What! Edwin!” he exclaimed.“Ay—don’t stand there, man. Your mother is in the train.”Poor Tipps could not speak—he could only gasp the word, “Where?”“In a third-class, behind—there, it is safe, I see.”His friend at once leaped towards the vehicle pointed out, but Edwin did not follow, he glanced wildly round in search of another carriage.“You are hurt—Mr Gurwood, if I mistake not,—lean on me,” said Mr Sharp.“It’s nothing—only a scratch. Ha! that’s the carriage, follow me,” cried Edwin, struggling towards a first-class carriage, which appeared considerably damaged, though it had not left the rails. He wrenched open the door, and, springing in, found Captain Lee striving in vain to lift his daughter, who had fainted. Edwin stooped, raised her in his arms, and, kicking open the door on the opposite side, leaped down, followed by the captain. They quickly made their way to the station, where they found most of the passengers, hurt and unhurt, already assembled, with two doctors, who chanced to be in the train, attending to them.Edwin laid his light burden tenderly on a couch and one of the doctors immediately attended to her. While he was applying restoratives Mr Blunt touched Edwin on the elbow and requested him to follow him. With a feeling of sudden anger Gurwood turned round, but before he could speak his eye fell on Mrs Tipps, who sat on a bench leaning on her son’s breast, and looking deadly pale but quite composed.“My dear Mrs Tipps,” exclaimed the youth, stepping hastily forward, “I hope—I trust—”“Oh, Edwin—thank you, my dear fellow,” cried Joseph, grasping his hand and shaking it. “She is not hurt, thank God—not even a scratch—only a little shaken. Fetch a glass of water, you’ll find one in the booking-office.”Gurwood ran out to fetch it. As he was returning he met Captain Lee leading his daughter out of the waiting-room.“I sincerely hope that your daughter is not hurt,” he said, in earnest tones. “Perhaps a little water might—”“No, thank you,” said the captain somewhat stiffly.“The carriage is waiting, sir,” said a servant in livery, coming up at the moment and touching his hat.Emma looked at Edwin for a second, and, with a slight but perplexed smile of acknowledgment, passed on.Next moment the carriage drove away, and she was gone. Edwin at the same time became aware of the fact that the pertinacious Blunt was at his side. Walking quickly into the waiting-room he presented the glass of water to Mrs Tipps, but to his surprise that eccentric lady rose hastily and said,—“Thank you, Mr Gurwood, many thanks, but I am better. Come, Joseph—let us hasten to our darling Netta. Have you sent for a fly?”“There is one waiting, mother—take my arm. Many, many thanks for your kindness in coming with her, Gurwood,” said Tipps. “I can’t ask you to come with me just now, I—”The rest of his speech was lost in consequence of the impatient old lady dragging her son away, but what had been heard of it was sufficient to fill Mr Blunt with surprise and perplexity.“Well, Blunt,” said Mr Superintendent Sharp, coming up at that moment, “what has brought you here?”The detective related his story privately to his superior, and remarked that he began to fear there must be some mistake.“Yes, there is a mistake of some sort,” said Sharp, with a laugh, “for I’ve met him frequently at Clatterby station, and know him to be a friend of Mr Tipps; but you have done your duty, Blunt, so you can now leave the gentleman to me,” saying which he went up to Edwin and entered into an under-toned conversation with him, during which it might have been observed that Edwin looked a little confused at times, and Mr Sharp seemed not a little amused.“Well, it’s all right,” he said at last, “we have telegraphed for a special train to take on the passengers who wish to proceed, and you can go back, if you choose, in the up train, which is about due. It will be able to get past in the course of half-an-hour. Fortunately the rails of the up-line are not damaged and the wreck can soon be cleared.”Just then the dandy with the sleepy eyes and long whiskers sauntered up to the porter on duty, with an unconcerned and lazy air. He had received no further injury than a shaking, and therefore felt that he could afford to affect a cool and not-easy-to-be-ruffled demeanour.“Aw—po-taw,” said he, twirling his watch-key, “w’en d’you expect anotha twain to take us on?”“Don’t know, sir, probably half-an-hour.”“Aw! Dooced awkwad. My fwend has got the bwidge of his nose damaged, besides some sort of internal injuway, and won’t be able to attend to business to-night, I fear—dooced awkwad.”“D’you hear that?” whispered Sharp to Gurwood, as the “fwend” in question—he with the checked trousers—sauntered past holding a handkerchief to his nose. “I know by the way in which that was said that there will be something more heard some day hence of our fop in checks. Just come and stand with me in the doorway of the waiting-room, and listen to what some of the other passengers are saying.”“Very hard,” observed a middle-aged man with a sour countenance, who did not present the appearance of one who had sustained any injury at all, “very hard this. I shall miss meeting with a friend, and perhaps lose doin’ a good stroke of business to-night.”“Be thankful you haven’t lost your life,” said Will Garvie, who supported the head of his injured mate.“Mayhap Ihavelost my life, young man,” replied the other sharply. “Internal injuries from accidents often prove fatal, and don’t always show at first. I’ve had a severe shake.”Here the sour-faced man shook himself slightly, partly to illustrate and partly to prove his point.“You’re quite right, sur,” remarked an Irishman, who had a bandage tied round his head, but who did not appear to be much, if at all, the worse of the accident. “It’s a disgrace intirely that the railways should be allowed to trait us in this fashion. If they’d only go to the trouble an’ expense of havin’ proper signals on lines, there would be nothing o’ this kind. And if Government would make a law to have an arm-chair fitted up in front of every locomotive and a director made to travel with sich train, we’d hear of fewer accidents. But it’s meself ’ll come down on ’em for heavy damages for this.”He pointed to his bandaged head, and nodded with a significant glance at the company.A gentleman in a blue travelling-cap, who had hitherto said nothing, and who turned out to have received severer injuries than any other passenger, here looked up impatiently, and said—“It appears to me that there is a great deal of unjust and foolish talk against railway companies, as if they, any more than other companies, could avoid accidents. The system of signalling on a great part of this line is the best that has been discovered up to this date, and it is being applied to the whole line as fast as circumstances will warrant; but you can’t expect to attain perfection in a day. What would you have? How can you expect to travel at the rate you do, and yet be as safe as if you were in one of the old mail-coaches?”“Right, sir; you’re right,” cried John Marrot energetically, raising himself a little from the bench on which he lay, “right in sayin’ we shouldn’t ought to expect parfection, but wrong in supposin’ the old mail-coaches was safer. W’y, railways is safer. They won’t stand no comparison. Here ’ave I bin drivin’ on this ’ere line for the last eight year an’ only to come to grief three times, an’ killed no more than two people. There ain’t a old coach goin’, or gone, as could say as much. An’ w’en you come to consider that in them eight years I’ve bin goin’ more than two-thirds o’ the time at an average o’ forty mile an hour—off an’ on—all night a’most as well as all day, an’ run thousands and thousands o’ miles, besides carryin’ millions of passengers, more or less, it do seem most rediklous to go for to say that coaches was safer than railways—the revarse bein’ the truth. Turn me round a bit, Bill; so, that’ll do. It’s the bad leg I come down on, else I shouldn’t have bin so hard-up. Yes, sir, as you truly remark, railway companies ain’t fairly dealt with, by no means.”At this point the attention of the passengers was attracted by a remarkably fat woman, who had hitherto lain quietly on a couch breathing in a somewhat stertorous manner. One of the medical men had been so successful in his attention to her as to bring her to a state of consciousness. Indeed she had been more or less in this condition for some time past, but feeling rather comfortable than otherwise, and dreamy, she had lain still and enjoyed herself. Being roused, however, to a state of activity by means of smelling-salts, and hearing the doctor remark that, except a shaking, she appeared to have sustained no injury, this stout woman deemed it prudent to go off into hysterics, and began by uttering a yell that would have put to shame a Comanchee Indian, and did more damage, perhaps, to the nerves of her sensitive hearers than the accident itself. She followed it up by drumming heavily on the couch with her heels.Singularly enough her yell was replied to by the whistle of the up train, that had been due for some time past. She retorted by a renewed shriek, and became frantic in her assurances that no power yet discovered—whether mechanical, moral, or otherwise—could or would, ever persuade her to set foot again in a railway train! It was of no use to assure her that no one meant to exert such a power, even if he possessed it; that she was free to go where she pleased, and whenever she felt inclined. The more that stout woman was implored to compose herself, the more she discomposed herself, and everybody else; and the more she was besought to be calm, the more, a great deal, did she fill the waiting-room with hysterical shrieks and fiendish laughter, until at last every one was glad to go out of the place and get into the train that was waiting to take them back to Clatterby. Then the stout woman became suddenly calm, and declared to a porter—who must have had a heart of stone, so indifferent was he to her woes—that she would be, “glad to proceed to the nearest ’otel if ’e would be good enough to fetch her a fly.”“H’m!” said Mr Sharp, as he and young Gurwood entered a carriage together, after having seen John Marrot placed on a pile of rugs on the floor of a first-class carriage; “there’s been work brewin’ up for me to-night.”“How? What do you mean?” asked Edwin.“I mean that, from various indications which I observed this evening, we are likely to have some little correspondence with the passengers of the 6:30 p.m. train. However, we’re used to it; perhaps we’ll get not to mind it in course of time. We do all that we can to accommodate the public—fit up our carriages and stations in the best style compatible with giving our shareholders a small dividend—carry them to and fro over the land at little short of lightning speed, every day and all day and night too, for extremely moderate fares, and with excessive safety and exceeding comfort; enable them to live in the country and do business in the city, as well as afford facilities for visiting the very ends of the earth in a few days; not to mention other innumerable blessings to which we run them, or which we runtothem, and yet no sooner does a rare accident occur (as itwilloccur in every human institution, though it occurs less on railways than in most other institutions) than down comes this ungrateful public upon us with indignant cries of ‘disgraceful!’ and, in many cases, unreasonable demands for compensation.”“Such is life,” said Gurwood with a smile.“On the rail,” added Mr Superintendent Sharp with a sigh, as the whistle sounded and the train moved slowly out of the station.

Locomotives and telegraphy are mere snails compared to thought. Let us therefore use our advantage, reader, stride in advance of the 6:30 p.m. train (which by the way has now become a 7:45 p.m. train), and see what little Joseph Tipps is doing.

There he stands—five feet four in his highest-heeled boots—as sterling and warm-hearted a little man as ever breathed. He was writing at a little desk close to a large window, which, owing to the station being a temporary one and its roof low, was flimsy, and came nearer to the ground than most windows do.

Mr Tipps wrote somewhat nervously. He inherited his mother’s weakness in this respect; and, besides, his nerves had been a little shaken, by the sudden illness, with which his sister had been seized that day, at his lodgings.

Outside on the platform a few people lounged, waiting the arrival of the expected train. Among them was one whose bulky frame and firm strongly-lined countenance spoke of much power to dare and do. He was considerably above the middle height and somewhere about middle age. His costume was of that quiet unobtrusive kind which seems to court retirement, and the sharp glance of his eyes seemed to possess something of the gimblet in their penetrating power. This was no less a personage than Mr Sharp, the inspector of police on the Grand National Trunk Railway. Mr Inspector Sharp had evidently an eye for the beautiful, for he stood at the farther extremity of the platform gazing in rapt attention at the sun, which just then was setting in a flood of golden light. But Mr Sharp had also a peculiar faculty for observing several things at once. Indeed, some of his friends, referring to this, were wont to remark that he was a perfect Argus, with eyes in his elbows and calves and back of his head. It would seem, indeed, that this, or something like it, must really have been the case, for he not only observed and enjoyed the sunset but also paid particular attention to the conversation of two men who stood not far from him, and at the same time was cognisant of the fact that behind him, a couple of hundred yards or more up the line, a goods engine was engaged in shunting trucks.

This process of shunting, we may explain for the benefit of those who don’t know, consists in detaching trucks from trains of goods and shoving them into sidings, so that they may be out of the way, until their time comes to be attached to other trains, which will convey them to their proper destination, or to have their contents, if need be, unloaded and distributed among other trucks. Shunting is sometimes a tedious process, involving much hauling, pushing, puffing, and whistling, on the part of the engine, and uncoupling of trucks and shifting of points on the part of pointsmen and porters. There is considerable danger, too, in the process,—or rather therewasdanger before the introduction of the “block system,” which now, when it is adopted, renders accidents almost impossible,—of which system more shall be said hereafter. The danger lies in this, that shunting has frequently to be done during intervals between the passing of passenger-trains, and, on lines where passenger and goods traffic is very great, these intervals are sometimes extremely brief. But, strange to say, this danger is the mother of safety, for the difficulty of conducting extensive traffic is so great, that a combination of all but perfect systems of signalling, telegraphing, and organisation is absolutely needful to prevent constant mishap. Hence the marvellous result that, in the midst of danger, we are in safety, and travelling by railway is really less dangerous than travelling by stage-coach used to be in days of old. Yes, timid reader, we assure you that if you travel daily by rail your chances of coming to grief are very much fewer than if you were to travel daily by mail coach. Facts and figures prove this beyond all doubt, so that we are entitled to take the comfort of it. The marvel is, not that loss of life is so great, but that it is so small.

Do you doubt it, reader? Behold the facts and figures—wonder, be thankful and doubt no more! A “Blue Book” (Captain Tyler’s General Report to the Board of Trade on Railway Accidents during the year 1870) tells us that the number of passengers killed on railways last year was ninety. The number of passenger journeys performed was 307 millions, which gives, in round numbers, one passenger killed for every three and a half millions that travelled. In the best mail and stage-coaching days the yearly number of travellers was about two millions. The present railway death-rate applied to this number amounts to a little more than one-half of a unit! Will any one out of Bedlam have the audacity to say that in coaching days only half a passenger was killed each year? We leave facts to speak for themselves, and common-sense to judge whether men were safer then than they are now.

But to return. When Mr Sharp was looking at the distant waggons that were being shunted he observed that the engine which conducted the operation was moved about with so much unnecessary fuss and jerking that he concluded it must be worked by a new, or at all events a bad, driver. He shook his head, therefore, pulled out his watch, and muttered to himself that it seemed to him far too near the time of the arrival of a train to make it safe to do such work.

The calculations, however, had been made correctly, and the train of trucks would have been well out of the way, if the driver had been a smarter man. Even as things stood, however, there should have been no danger, because the distant signal was turned to danger, which thus said to any approaching train, “Stop! for your life.” But here occurred one of these mistakes, or pieces of carelessness, or thoughtlessness, to which weak and sinful human nature is, and we suppose always will be, liable. Perhaps the signalman thought the goods train had completed its operation, or fancied that the express was not so near as it proved to be, or he got confused—we cannot tell; there is no accounting for such things, but whatever the cause, he turned off the danger-signal half a minute too soon, and set the line free.

Suddenly the down train came tearing round the curve. It was at reduced speed certainly, but not sufficiently reduced to avoid a collision with the trucks on a part of the line where no trucks should be.

Our friend John Marrot was on the look-out of course, and so was his mate. They saw the trucks at once. Like lightning John shut off the steam and at the same instant touched his whistle several sharp shrieks, which was the alarm to the guard to turn onhisbrakes. No men could have been more prompt or cool. Joe Turner and Will Garvie had on full brake-power in a second or two. At the same time John Marrot instantly reversing the engine, let on full steam—but all in vain. Fire flew in showers from the shrieking wheels—the friction on the rails must have been tremendous, nevertheless the engine dashed into the goods train like a thunderbolt with a stunning crash and a noise that is quite indescribable.

The police superintendent, who was all but run over, stood for a few seconds aghast at the sight and at the action of the engine. Not satisfied with sending one of its own carriages into splinters, the iron horse made three terrific plunges or efforts to advance, and at each plunge a heavy truck full of goods was, as it were, pawed under its wheels and driven out behind, under the tender, in the form of a mass of matchwood—all the goods, hard and soft, as well as the heavy frame of the truck itself being minced up together in a manner that defies description. It seemed as though the monster had been suddenly endued with intelligence, and was seeking to vent its horrid rage on the thing that had dared to check its pace. Three loaded trucks it crushed down, over-ran, and scattered wide in this way, in three successive plunges, and then, rushing on a few yards among chaoticdébris, turned slowly on its side, and hurled the driver and fireman over the embankment.

The shock received by the people at the station was tremendous. Poor Tipps, standing at his desk, was struck—nervously—as if by electricity. He made one wild involuntary bolt right through the window, as if it had been made of tissue paper, and did not cease to run until he found himself panting in the middle of a turnip-field that lay at the back of the station. Turning round, ashamed of himself, he ran back faster than he had run away, and leaping recklessly among thedébris, began to pull broken and jagged timber about, under the impression that he was rescuing fellow-creatures from destruction!

Strange to say no one was killed on that occasion—no one was even severely hurt, except the driver. But of course this was not known at first and the people who were standing about hurried, with terrible forebodings, to lend assistance to the passengers.

Mr Sharp seemed to have been smitten with feelings somewhat similar to those of Tipps, for, without knowing very well how or why, he suddenly found himself standing up to the armpits indébris, heaving might and main at masses of timber.

“Hallo! lift away this beam, will you?” shouted a half-smothered voice close beside him.

It came from beneath the carriage that we have described as having been broken to splinters.

Sharp was a man of action. He hailed a porter near him and began with energy and power to tear up and hurl aside the boards. Presently on raising part of the broken framework of the carriage a man struggled to his feet and, wiping away the blood that flowed from a wound in his forehead, revealed the countenance of Edwin Gurwood to the astonished Tipps.

“What! Edwin!” he exclaimed.

“Ay—don’t stand there, man. Your mother is in the train.”

Poor Tipps could not speak—he could only gasp the word, “Where?”

“In a third-class, behind—there, it is safe, I see.”

His friend at once leaped towards the vehicle pointed out, but Edwin did not follow, he glanced wildly round in search of another carriage.

“You are hurt—Mr Gurwood, if I mistake not,—lean on me,” said Mr Sharp.

“It’s nothing—only a scratch. Ha! that’s the carriage, follow me,” cried Edwin, struggling towards a first-class carriage, which appeared considerably damaged, though it had not left the rails. He wrenched open the door, and, springing in, found Captain Lee striving in vain to lift his daughter, who had fainted. Edwin stooped, raised her in his arms, and, kicking open the door on the opposite side, leaped down, followed by the captain. They quickly made their way to the station, where they found most of the passengers, hurt and unhurt, already assembled, with two doctors, who chanced to be in the train, attending to them.

Edwin laid his light burden tenderly on a couch and one of the doctors immediately attended to her. While he was applying restoratives Mr Blunt touched Edwin on the elbow and requested him to follow him. With a feeling of sudden anger Gurwood turned round, but before he could speak his eye fell on Mrs Tipps, who sat on a bench leaning on her son’s breast, and looking deadly pale but quite composed.

“My dear Mrs Tipps,” exclaimed the youth, stepping hastily forward, “I hope—I trust—”

“Oh, Edwin—thank you, my dear fellow,” cried Joseph, grasping his hand and shaking it. “She is not hurt, thank God—not even a scratch—only a little shaken. Fetch a glass of water, you’ll find one in the booking-office.”

Gurwood ran out to fetch it. As he was returning he met Captain Lee leading his daughter out of the waiting-room.

“I sincerely hope that your daughter is not hurt,” he said, in earnest tones. “Perhaps a little water might—”

“No, thank you,” said the captain somewhat stiffly.

“The carriage is waiting, sir,” said a servant in livery, coming up at the moment and touching his hat.

Emma looked at Edwin for a second, and, with a slight but perplexed smile of acknowledgment, passed on.

Next moment the carriage drove away, and she was gone. Edwin at the same time became aware of the fact that the pertinacious Blunt was at his side. Walking quickly into the waiting-room he presented the glass of water to Mrs Tipps, but to his surprise that eccentric lady rose hastily and said,—“Thank you, Mr Gurwood, many thanks, but I am better. Come, Joseph—let us hasten to our darling Netta. Have you sent for a fly?”

“There is one waiting, mother—take my arm. Many, many thanks for your kindness in coming with her, Gurwood,” said Tipps. “I can’t ask you to come with me just now, I—”

The rest of his speech was lost in consequence of the impatient old lady dragging her son away, but what had been heard of it was sufficient to fill Mr Blunt with surprise and perplexity.

“Well, Blunt,” said Mr Superintendent Sharp, coming up at that moment, “what has brought you here?”

The detective related his story privately to his superior, and remarked that he began to fear there must be some mistake.

“Yes, there is a mistake of some sort,” said Sharp, with a laugh, “for I’ve met him frequently at Clatterby station, and know him to be a friend of Mr Tipps; but you have done your duty, Blunt, so you can now leave the gentleman to me,” saying which he went up to Edwin and entered into an under-toned conversation with him, during which it might have been observed that Edwin looked a little confused at times, and Mr Sharp seemed not a little amused.

“Well, it’s all right,” he said at last, “we have telegraphed for a special train to take on the passengers who wish to proceed, and you can go back, if you choose, in the up train, which is about due. It will be able to get past in the course of half-an-hour. Fortunately the rails of the up-line are not damaged and the wreck can soon be cleared.”

Just then the dandy with the sleepy eyes and long whiskers sauntered up to the porter on duty, with an unconcerned and lazy air. He had received no further injury than a shaking, and therefore felt that he could afford to affect a cool and not-easy-to-be-ruffled demeanour.

“Aw—po-taw,” said he, twirling his watch-key, “w’en d’you expect anotha twain to take us on?”

“Don’t know, sir, probably half-an-hour.”

“Aw! Dooced awkwad. My fwend has got the bwidge of his nose damaged, besides some sort of internal injuway, and won’t be able to attend to business to-night, I fear—dooced awkwad.”

“D’you hear that?” whispered Sharp to Gurwood, as the “fwend” in question—he with the checked trousers—sauntered past holding a handkerchief to his nose. “I know by the way in which that was said that there will be something more heard some day hence of our fop in checks. Just come and stand with me in the doorway of the waiting-room, and listen to what some of the other passengers are saying.”

“Very hard,” observed a middle-aged man with a sour countenance, who did not present the appearance of one who had sustained any injury at all, “very hard this. I shall miss meeting with a friend, and perhaps lose doin’ a good stroke of business to-night.”

“Be thankful you haven’t lost your life,” said Will Garvie, who supported the head of his injured mate.

“Mayhap Ihavelost my life, young man,” replied the other sharply. “Internal injuries from accidents often prove fatal, and don’t always show at first. I’ve had a severe shake.”

Here the sour-faced man shook himself slightly, partly to illustrate and partly to prove his point.

“You’re quite right, sur,” remarked an Irishman, who had a bandage tied round his head, but who did not appear to be much, if at all, the worse of the accident. “It’s a disgrace intirely that the railways should be allowed to trait us in this fashion. If they’d only go to the trouble an’ expense of havin’ proper signals on lines, there would be nothing o’ this kind. And if Government would make a law to have an arm-chair fitted up in front of every locomotive and a director made to travel with sich train, we’d hear of fewer accidents. But it’s meself ’ll come down on ’em for heavy damages for this.”

He pointed to his bandaged head, and nodded with a significant glance at the company.

A gentleman in a blue travelling-cap, who had hitherto said nothing, and who turned out to have received severer injuries than any other passenger, here looked up impatiently, and said—

“It appears to me that there is a great deal of unjust and foolish talk against railway companies, as if they, any more than other companies, could avoid accidents. The system of signalling on a great part of this line is the best that has been discovered up to this date, and it is being applied to the whole line as fast as circumstances will warrant; but you can’t expect to attain perfection in a day. What would you have? How can you expect to travel at the rate you do, and yet be as safe as if you were in one of the old mail-coaches?”

“Right, sir; you’re right,” cried John Marrot energetically, raising himself a little from the bench on which he lay, “right in sayin’ we shouldn’t ought to expect parfection, but wrong in supposin’ the old mail-coaches was safer. W’y, railways is safer. They won’t stand no comparison. Here ’ave I bin drivin’ on this ’ere line for the last eight year an’ only to come to grief three times, an’ killed no more than two people. There ain’t a old coach goin’, or gone, as could say as much. An’ w’en you come to consider that in them eight years I’ve bin goin’ more than two-thirds o’ the time at an average o’ forty mile an hour—off an’ on—all night a’most as well as all day, an’ run thousands and thousands o’ miles, besides carryin’ millions of passengers, more or less, it do seem most rediklous to go for to say that coaches was safer than railways—the revarse bein’ the truth. Turn me round a bit, Bill; so, that’ll do. It’s the bad leg I come down on, else I shouldn’t have bin so hard-up. Yes, sir, as you truly remark, railway companies ain’t fairly dealt with, by no means.”

At this point the attention of the passengers was attracted by a remarkably fat woman, who had hitherto lain quietly on a couch breathing in a somewhat stertorous manner. One of the medical men had been so successful in his attention to her as to bring her to a state of consciousness. Indeed she had been more or less in this condition for some time past, but feeling rather comfortable than otherwise, and dreamy, she had lain still and enjoyed herself. Being roused, however, to a state of activity by means of smelling-salts, and hearing the doctor remark that, except a shaking, she appeared to have sustained no injury, this stout woman deemed it prudent to go off into hysterics, and began by uttering a yell that would have put to shame a Comanchee Indian, and did more damage, perhaps, to the nerves of her sensitive hearers than the accident itself. She followed it up by drumming heavily on the couch with her heels.

Singularly enough her yell was replied to by the whistle of the up train, that had been due for some time past. She retorted by a renewed shriek, and became frantic in her assurances that no power yet discovered—whether mechanical, moral, or otherwise—could or would, ever persuade her to set foot again in a railway train! It was of no use to assure her that no one meant to exert such a power, even if he possessed it; that she was free to go where she pleased, and whenever she felt inclined. The more that stout woman was implored to compose herself, the more she discomposed herself, and everybody else; and the more she was besought to be calm, the more, a great deal, did she fill the waiting-room with hysterical shrieks and fiendish laughter, until at last every one was glad to go out of the place and get into the train that was waiting to take them back to Clatterby. Then the stout woman became suddenly calm, and declared to a porter—who must have had a heart of stone, so indifferent was he to her woes—that she would be, “glad to proceed to the nearest ’otel if ’e would be good enough to fetch her a fly.”

“H’m!” said Mr Sharp, as he and young Gurwood entered a carriage together, after having seen John Marrot placed on a pile of rugs on the floor of a first-class carriage; “there’s been work brewin’ up for me to-night.”

“How? What do you mean?” asked Edwin.

“I mean that, from various indications which I observed this evening, we are likely to have some little correspondence with the passengers of the 6:30 p.m. train. However, we’re used to it; perhaps we’ll get not to mind it in course of time. We do all that we can to accommodate the public—fit up our carriages and stations in the best style compatible with giving our shareholders a small dividend—carry them to and fro over the land at little short of lightning speed, every day and all day and night too, for extremely moderate fares, and with excessive safety and exceeding comfort; enable them to live in the country and do business in the city, as well as afford facilities for visiting the very ends of the earth in a few days; not to mention other innumerable blessings to which we run them, or which we runtothem, and yet no sooner does a rare accident occur (as itwilloccur in every human institution, though it occurs less on railways than in most other institutions) than down comes this ungrateful public upon us with indignant cries of ‘disgraceful!’ and, in many cases, unreasonable demands for compensation.”

“Such is life,” said Gurwood with a smile.

“On the rail,” added Mr Superintendent Sharp with a sigh, as the whistle sounded and the train moved slowly out of the station.

Chapter Six.History of the Iron Horse.Having gone thus far in our tale, permit us, good reader, to turn aside for a little to make a somewhat closer inspection of the Iron Horse and his belongings.Railways existed long before the Iron Horse was born. They sprang into being two centuries ago in the form of tramways, which at first were nothing more or less than planks or rails of timber laid down between the Newcastle-on-Tyne collieries and the river, for the purpose of forming a better “way” over which to run the coal-trucks. From simple timber-rails men soon advanced to planks having a strip of iron nailed on their surface to prevent too rapid tear and wear, but it was not till the year 1767 that cast-iron rails were introduced. In order to prevent the trucks from slipping off the line the rails were cast with an upright flange or guide at one side, and were laid on wooden or stone sleepers.This form of rail being found inconvenient, the flange was transferred from the rails to the wheels, and this arrangement, under various modifications has been ever since retained.These “innocent” railroads—as they have been sometimes and most appropriately named, seeing that they were guiltless alike of blood and high speed—were drawn by horses, and confined at first to the conveyance of coals. Modest though their pretensions were, however, they were found to be an immense improvement on the ordinary roads, insomuch that ten horses were found to be capable of working the traffic on railroads, which it required 400 horses to perform on a common road. These iron roads, therefore, began to multiply, and about the beginning of the present century they were largely employed in the coal-fields and mineral districts of the kingdom. About the same time thoughtful men, seeing the immense advantage of such ways, began to suggest the formation of railways, or tramways, to run along the side of our turnpike-roads—a mode of conveyance, by the way, in regard to towns, which thoughtful men are still, ever at the present day of supposed enlightenment, endeavouring to urge upon an unbelieving public—a mode of conveyance which we feel very confident will entirely supersede our cumbrous and antiquated “’bus” in a very short time. What, we ask, in the name of science and art and common-sense, is to prevent a tramway being laid from Kensington to the Bank, “or elsewhere,” which shall be traversed by a succession of roomy carriages following each other every five minutes; which tramway might be crossed and recrossed and run upon, or, in other words, used by all the other vehicles of London except when the rightful carriages were in the way? Nothing prevents, save that same unbelief which has obstructed the development of every good thing from the time that Noah built the ark! But we feel assured that the thing shall be, and those who read this book may perhaps live to see it!But to return. Among these thoughtful and far-seeing men was one Dr James Anderson, who in 1800 proposed the formation of railways by the roadsides, and he was so correct in his views that the plans which he suggested of keeping the level, by going round the base of hills, or forming viaducts, or cutting tunnels, is precisely the method practised by engineers of the present day. Two years later a Mr Edgeworth announced that he had long before, “formed the project of laying iron railways for baggage waggons on the great roads of England,” and, in order to prevent tear and wear, he proposed, instead of conveying heavy loads in one huge waggon, to have a train of small waggons. With the modesty of true genius, which never over-estimates or forms wildly sanguine expectations, he thought that each waggon might perhaps carry one ton and a half! Edgeworth also suggested thatpassengersmight travel by such a mode of conveyance. Bold man! What a goose many people of his day must have thought him. If they had been alive now, what geese they might have thought themselves. The Society of Arts, however, were in advance of their time. They rewarded Edgeworth with their gold medal.This man seems to have been a transcendent genius, because he not only devised and made (on a small scale) iron railways, but proposed to take ordinary vehicles, such as mail-coaches and private carriages, on his trucks, and convey them along his line at the rate of six or eight miles an hour with one horse. He also propounded the idea of the employment of stationary steam-engines (locomotives not having been dreamed of) to drag the trains up steep inclines.Another semi-prophetic man of these days was Thomas Gray, of Leeds, who in 1820 published a work on what he styled a “General Iron Railway, or Land Steam Conveyance, to supersede the necessity of Horses in all public vehicles, showing its vast superiority in every respect over the present pitiful Methods of Conveyance by Turnpike-Roads and Canals.” Gray, whose mind appears to have been unusually comprehensive, proposed a system of railway communication between all the important cities and towns in the kingdom, and pointed out the immense advantage that would be gained to commerce by such a ready and rapid means of conveying fish, vegetables, and other perishable articles from place to place. He also showed that two post deliveries in the day would become possible, and that fire insurance companies would be able to promote their interests by keeping railway fire-engines, ready to be transported to scenes of conflagration without delay.But Gray was not esteemed a prophet. His suggestions were not adopted nor his plans acted on, though unquestionably his wisdom and energy gave an impulse to railway development, of which we are reaping the benefit to-day. His labours were not in vain.Horse railways soon began to multiply over the country. The first authorised by Act of Parliament was the Surrey Railway in 1801. Twenty years later twenty lines of railway were in operation.About this time, too, another man of note and of great scientific and mechanical sagacity lent his powerful aid to advance the interests of the railway cause. This was Charles Maclaren, of Edinburgh, editor of theScotsmannewspaper for nearly thirty years. He had long foreseen, and boldly asserted his belief in, the certain success of steam locomotion by rail, at a time when opinions such as his were scouted as wild delusive dreams. But he did more, he brought his able pen to bear on the subject, and in December 1825 published a series of articles in theScotsmanon the subject of railways, which were not only extensively quoted and republished in this country and in America, but were deemed worthy of being translated into French and German, and so disseminated over Europe. Mr Maclaren was thus among the foremost of those who gave a telling impulse to the cause at that critical period when the Iron horse was about to be put on the rail—the right horse in the right place—for it was not many years afterwards that that auspicious event took place. Mr Maclaren not only advocated generally the adoption of railways, but logically demonstrated the wonderful powers and capacities of the steam locomotive, arguing, from the experiments on friction made more than half a century before by Vince and Colomb, that by the use of steam-power on railroads a much more rapid and cheaper transit of persons as well as merchandise might be confidently anticipated. He leaped far ahead of many of even the most hopeful advocates of the cause, and with almost prophetic foresight wrote, “there is scarcely any limit to the rapidity of movement these iron pathways will enable us to command.” And again,—“We have spoken of vehicles travelling at twenty miles an hour; but we see no reason for thinking that, in the progress of improvement, a much higher velocity might not be found practicable; and in twenty years hence a shopkeeper or mechanic, on the most ordinary occasion, may probably travel with a speed that would leave the fleetest courser behind.” Wonderful words these! At a first glance we may not deem them so, being so familiar with the ideas which they convey, but our estimate of them will be more just if we reflect that when they were penned railways had scarcely sprung into being, steam locomotives had only just been born, and not only men in general, but even many learned, scientific and practical men regarded the statement of all such opinions as being little short of insanity. Nevertheless, many deep-thinking men thought differently, and one contemporary, reviewing this subject in after years, said of Mr Maclaren’s papers, that, “they prepared the way for the success of railway projectors.”We have said that the steam locomotive—the material transformer of the world—our Iron Horse, had just been born. It was not however born on the rails, but on the common road, and a tremendous baby-giant it was, tearing up its cradle in such furious fashion that men were terrified by it, and tried their best to condemn it to inactivity, just as a weak and foolish father might lock up his unruly boy and restrain him perforce, instead of training him wisely in the way in which he should go.But the progenitors of the Iron Horse were, like their Herculean child, men of mettle. They fought a gallant fight for their darling’s freedom, and came off victorious!Of course, many men and many nations were anxious to father this magnificent infant, and to this day it is impossible to say precisely who originated him. He is said by some to have sprung from the brains of Englishmen, others assert that brains in France and Switzerland begat him, and we believe that brother Jonathan exercised his prolific brain on him, before the actual time of his birth. The first name on record in connexion with this infant Hercules is that of Dr Robison, who communicated his ideas to Watt in 1759. The latter thereupon made a model locomotive, but entertained doubts as to its safety. Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, patented a “steam waggon” in 1782. William Murdoch, the friend and assistant of Watt, made a model in 1787 which drew a small waggon round a room in his house in Cornwall. In the same year Symington exhibited a model locomotive in Edinburgh, and in 1795 he worked a steam-engine on a turnpike-road in Lanarkshire. Richard Trevethick, who had seen Murdoch’s model, made and patented a locomotive in 1802. It drew on a tramway a load of ten tons at the rate of five miles an hour. Trevethick also made a carriage to run on common roads, and altogether did good service in the cause.Blenkinsop, of Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, made locomotives in 1811 which hauled coals up steep ascents by means of a toothed rail, with a toothed propelling wheel working into it. This unnatural infant, however, turned out to be not the true child. It was found that such a powerful creature did not require teeth at all, that he could “bite” quite well enough by means of his weight alone,—so the teeth were plucked out and never allowed to grow again.After this, in 1813, came Brunton of Butterley, with a curious contrivance in the form of legs and feet, which were attached to the rear of his engine and propelled it by a sort of walking motion. It did not walk well, however, and very soon walked off the field of competition altogether.At last, in the fulness of time there came upon the scene the great railway king, George Stephenson, who, if he cannot be said to have begotten the infant, at all events brought him up and effectually completed his training.George Stephenson was one of our most celebrated engineers, and the “father of the railway system.” He may truly be said to have been one of mankind’s greatest benefactors. He was a self-taught man, was born near Newcastle in 1781, began life as a pit-engine boy with wages at two-pence a day, and ultimately rose to fame and fortune as an engineer.In 1814 he made a locomotive for the Killingworth Colliery Railway. It drew thirty tons at the rate of four miles an hour, and was regarded as a great success. In 1825 an engine of the same kind was used on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, of which Stephenson had been made engineer.But the great crowning effort of Stephenson, and the grand impulse to the railway cause, which carried it steadily and swiftly on to its present amazing degree of prosperity, did not occur till the year 1829.Previous to that date the Manchester and Liverpool Railway was being constructed, and so little was known as to the capabilities of railways and the best mode of working them, that the directors and engineers had some difficulty in deciding whether the line should be worked by fixed engines or by locomotives. It was ultimately decided that the latter should be used, and a premium of 500 pounds was offered for the best locomotive that could be produced, in accordance with certain conditions. These were— That the chimney should emit no smoke—that the engine should be on springs—that it should not weigh more than six tons, or four-and-a-half tons if it had only four wheels—that it should be able to draw a load of twenty tons at the rate of ten miles an hour, with a pressure of fifty pounds to the square inch in the boiler, and should not cost more than 500 pounds.The Iron Horse was now at last about to assume its right position. It was no longer an infant, but a powerful stripling—though still far from its full growth; as far as six tons is from sixty!Four iron steeds were entered to compete for the prize. It was in October 1829 that this celebrated trial came off, and great was the interest manifested on the occasion, for not only did the public entertain doubts as to the capabilities of locomotives, but very few even of the engineers of the country would admit the possibility of a locomotive engine attaining a speed greater than ten miles an hour! First came the “Novelty” of Braithwaite and Ericson; then the “Sans pareil” of Hawkworth; the “Perseverance” of Burstall; and, lastly, the “Rocket” of Stephenson. Of the first three we shall merely say that the “Novelty,” being weak in the wheels, broke down; the “Sans pareil” burst one of her cylinders; and the “Perseverance” turned out to be too heavy to comply with the conditions of the trial.The “Rocket” advanced, and was harnessed to a train of waggons weighing thirteen tons; the fire was lighted, and the steam got up. The valves lifted at the stipulated fifty pounds pressure, and away it went with its load at an average speed of fifteen, and a maximum speed of twenty-nine miles an hour! Thus triumphantly the “Rocket” won the prize of 500 pounds, and the Iron Horse was fairly and finally married to the Iron Road. One of the important elements of Stephenson’s success lay in the introduction of numerous tubes into his boiler, through which the fire, and heat passed, and thus presented a vast amount of heating surface to the water. Another point was his allowing the waste steam to pass through the chimney, thus increasing the draught and intensifying the combustion; for heat is the life of the locomotive, and without much of this, high rates of speed could not be attained.The difference between the first locomotive and those now in use is very great—as may be seen any day in London, by any one who chooses to visit one of our great railway stations, and go thence to the Kensington Museum, where the “Rocket” is now enshrined—a memorial of Stephenson’s wisdom, and of the beginning of our magnificent railway system. Yet though the difference be great it is wonderful how complete the “Rocket” was, all things considered. The modern improvements made on locomotives consist chiefly in clothing the boiler with wood, felt, and other non-conductors to increase the life-giving heat; in heating the feed-water, coupling the driving-wheels, working the cylinders horizontally, economising steam by cutting off the supply at any part of the stroke that may be required, and economising fuel by using raw coal instead of coke, and consuming the smoke, besides many other minor contrivances, but all the great principles affecting the locomotive were applied by George Stephenson, and illustrated in the “Rocket.”It is no wonder that the first Iron Horse was clumsy in appearance and somewhat grotesque, owing to the complication of rods, cranks, and other machinery, which was all exposed to view. It required years of experience to enable our engineers to construct the grand, massive, simple chargers which now run off with our monster-trains as if they were feathers. When the iron horse was first made, men were naturally in haste to ascertain his power and paces. He was trotted out, so to speak, in his skeleton, with his heart and lungs and muscles exposed to view in complex hideosity! Now-a-days he never appears without his skin well-groomed and made gay with paint and polished brass and steel.We have said that the “Rocket” drew thirteen tons at nearly thirty miles an hour. Our best engines can now draw hundreds of tons, and they can run at the rate of above sixty miles an hour at maximum speed. The more ordinary speed, however, for passenger-trains is from thirty to forty-five miles an hour. The weight of the “Rocket” was six tons. That of some of our largest engines with tenders is from forty to above fifty tons.From the time of the opening of the old Manchester and Liverpool Railway in 1830 to the present day—a period of little more than forty years—railway construction has gone forward throughout the land—and we may add the world—with truly railway speed, insomuch that England has become covered from end to end with an absolute network of iron roads, and the benefit to our country has been inconceivably great. It would require a large volume to treat of these and correlative subjects, as they deserve.Two hundred years ago the course of post between London and Edinburgh was one month; before an answer could be received two months had to elapse! About a hundred years later there was one stage-coach between the two cities, which did the distance in a fortnight, rendering communication and reply possible once in each month. In those days roads were uncommonly bad. One writer tells us that, while travelling in Lancashire, a county now traversed by railways in all directions, he found one of the principal roads so bad that there were ruts in it, which he measured, four feet deep, and that the only mending it received was the tumbling of stones into these holes to fill them up. The extremely limited goods traffic of the country was conducted by the slow means of carts and waggons. Enterprising men, however, then as now, were pushing the world forward, though they were by no means so numerous then as now. In 1673 it took a week to travel between London and Exeter, and cost from forty to forty-five shillings. About the same period a six-horse coach took six days to perform the journey between Edinburgh and Glasgow and back. To accomplish fifty miles or thereabouts in two days with a six-horse stage-coach, was considered good work and high speed about the beginning of last century. Near the middle of it (1740) travelling by night was for the first time introduced, and soon after that a coach was started with a wicker-basket slung behind for outside passengers! Some years afterwards an enterprising individual started a “flying coach” drawn by eight horses, which travelled between London and Dover in a day—the fare being one guinea. Even at the beginning of the present century four miles an hour was deemed a very fair rate of travelling for a stage-coach.With the improvement of roads by the famous Macadam in 1816, began improved travelling and increased speed. The process was rapid. Mail-coaches began to overrun the country in all directions at the then remarkable pace of from eight to ten miles an hour,—and, let us remark in passing, there was a whirl and dash about these stage-coaches which railway trains, with all their velocity can never hope to attain to, except when they dash into each other! Man is but a weak creature in some senses. Facts are scarcely facts to him unless they touch his eye or ear. The smooth run of a train at twenty or even thirty miles an hour, with its gradual start and gentle pull up, has but a slight effect on him now compared with the splendid swing of the well-appointed mail coach of old as it swept round the bend of a road, and, with red-coated driver and guard, cracking whip, flying dust and stones, and reeking foam-flecked horses, dashed into town and pulled up, while at nearly full speed, amid all the glorious crash and turmoil of arrival! No doubt the passing of an express train within a yard of your nose is something peculiarly awful, and if you ever get permission to ride on the engine of an express, therealtruth regarding speed, weight, momentum, will make a profound impression on you, but in ordinary circumstances the arrival of a train cannot for a moment compare with the dash, the animal spirit, the enthusiasm, the romance of the mail coach of days gone by.About the time that the day of slow speed was drawing to a close (1837) licenses were granted to 3026 stage-coaches, of which 1507 went to and from London, besides 103 mail-coaches. And it has been estimated that the number of passengers carried in the year about that time was two millions. In regard to the merchandise traffic of the kingdom, we cannot give statistics, but we ask the reader to bear in mind that it was all conducted by means of heavy waggons and slow-going canal barges.Now, let us contrast this state of things with the condition and influence of railways up to the present time. As we have said, the iron horse began his career in 1830 on the Liverpool and Manchester line—long since become part of the London and North-Western Railway—at that time thirty-one miles long. Eight years later, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham were completely connected with London by railway. Then, as success attended the scheme, new lines were undertaken and opened at a still more rapid rate until, in 1843—despite the depression caused for a time by over-speculating—there were nearly 2000 miles of railway open for traffic. In 1850 there were above 6000 miles open; in 1860, above 10,000. In 1864 the railways of the kingdom employed upwards of 7200 locomotives, 23,470 passenger carriages, and 212,900 goods and mineral waggons. In that one year about five million passengers and goods trains ran 130 millions of miles—a distance that would encircle the earth 5221 times—the earth being 24,896 miles in circumference. In 1866 the gross receipts of railways was about forty millions of pounds sterling. At the present date (1871) above 14,000 miles of railway are open in the United Kingdom. This mileage is divided amongst about 430 companies, but a considerable number of these have been incorporated with the larger companies, such as the London and North west, the Great Western, etcetera.All the lines carried in one year (1870) somewhere about 307 millions of passengers—in other words, that number of passenger journeys were performed on them. The mail and stage-coaches in their best days only conveyed, as we have said, two millions! See note at end of chapter.It is almost overwhelming to consider what a vast change in the condition and habits of the people of this country is implied in these figures. Forty years ago none travelled but the comparatively rich, and that only to an extent equal to about two-thirds of the present population of London. Now-a-days the poorest artisan can, and does, afford to travel, and the number of journeys performed each year on all our British railways is equal to more than the entire population of Europe! which, in Stewart’s “Modern Geography,” is set down at 285 millions. From this of course it follows, that as many thousands of men, women, and children never travel at all, many others must have undertaken numerous journeys in that year.The facilities afforded by railways are altogether innumerable. If so disposed you may sup one night in the south of England and the next night in the north of Scotland. Thousands of families dwell in the country, while the heads thereof go to their business in town by rail every morning and return home every evening. Huntsmen, booted and spurred, are whirled off, horses and all, to distant fields, whence, after “crossing country” all day, they return to the railway and are whirled back to town in time for dinner. Navvys and artisans are conveyed to their work at a penny a mile, and monster-trains carry thousands of excursionists to scenes of rural delight that our fathers never dreamed of in their wildest flights of fancy.One of the most remarkable and interesting facts in connexion with all this is, that although mail-coaches have been beaten off the field, there are actually more horses employed in this country now than there were in 1837, while canals are doing more business than they ever did, and are making higher profits too. In 1865 the carriage of cattle by railway amounted to between fourteen or fifteen million head of all kinds. The consumption of coal, in the same year, by our railways amounted to four million tons, and the quantity of that and other minerals carried by rail continually is enormous.The benefit derived by the post-office also from our railways is incalculable. We cannot afford space to enter into details, but it may be truly said that but for railways the Post-Office Savings Bank system could not have existed; and of course, also, our frequent deliveries of letters and rapid as well as cheap communication with all parts of the kingdom would have been impossible. The railway service of the Post-Office is over 60,000 miles a day, and the gross sum paid by the Post-Office to railways in one year was 570,500 pounds.These are but a few of the amazing statistics connected with our railway system, which, if fully enlarged upon, would fill a bulky volume. If our readers desire more there are several most interesting and instructive works on the subject, which are well worthy of perusal. See note 2 at the end of the chapter.Before closing this perhaps too statistical chapter, we shall say a few words as to the construction of a railway. No one who has not looked pretty closely into the subject can form any adequate conception of the difficulties that beset an engineer-in-chief in the formation of a line of railway. We will suppose that all the Parliamentary battles have been fought, opposition overcome, the heavy expenses connected therewith paid, and the work begun.The engineer has walked again and again over the country through which the railway is to be carried and selected the best route, his assistants having meanwhile taken for him “flying levels” and “cross levels.” Too frequently prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness interpose to prevent the best route being taken, and immense sums that might have been saved are spent in constructing the line on the next best route. As soon as the course of a line is fixed, accurate surveys are made by the assistant engineers, copies of which are placed, according to Act of Parliament, with the various clerks of the peace of the counties, through which the line is to pass, with the Commissioners of Railways and others, besides which there has to be prepared for each parish its proportion, and for each landholder a section showing the greatest depth of cutting or embankment in any of his fields.As soon as all this has been done, and the Act of Parliament authorising the line obtained, an accurate plan and section of the whole line is made, from which the engineer ascertains and lays down its gradients, in other words its ascents and descents, determines the number and size of the bridges and viaducts to be made, calculates the quantity of embankments required to fill up hollows, and the number of cuttings to level obstructions, in which latter calculations he estimates that the cutting down of elevations will be made subservient as far as may be, to the elevation of depressions. All this involves very nice and exact calculation as to quantity of material, masonry, etcetera, and the sinking of “trial shafts” to ascertain the nature of the various strata to be excavated or tunnelled. Then the cost of all the works has to be estimated in detail, apportioned into lengths and advertised for execution by contract. To each section of the line thus apportioned—forty or fifty miles—an experienced engineer is appointed, having under him “sub-assistants,” who superintend from ten to fifteen miles each, and these again are assisted by “inspectors” of masonry, mining, earth-work and permanent way, to each of whom a district is assigned.These managing and guiding men having been appointed, the physical workers are then called into action, in the form of bands of navvies. As the steam and mechanism of the locomotive are useless except in regulated combination, so brain and muscle can achieve nothing without wise and harmonious union. If boys and men would reflect more deeply on this great truth, pride, boasting, and the false separation of classes would be less rife. We sayfalse, because there is a separation of classes which is natural and unavoidable. No one ever complains ofthat. If ill-advised or angry navvies were to refuse to work, what could directors and engineers do? If, on the other hand, ill-advised or angry directors and engineers refused to pay, what could navvies do? Antagonism is an unhealthy condition of things. There is far too much of it between employers and employed in this world. “Agree with thine adversary quickly” is a command which applies to bodies of men quite as much as to individuals, and the word is “agree,” not coerce or force. If we cannot agree, let us agree to differ; or, if that won’t do in our peculiar circumstances, then let us agree to separate. Fighting, save in self-defence, is only fit for fools.But to return. When bone and muscle have been for the time welded to brain, then the work of construction goes on “full swing.” Difficulties and obstructions are overcome in a way that appears to the unskilled eye nothing less than miraculous. But the work is often hindered and rendered greatly more expensive by the sudden appearance of evils against which no amount of human wisdom or foresight could have guarded.The Kilsby tunnel of the London and North west Railway is a case in point. When that tunnel was proposed, it was arranged that it should be about 3000 yards long, and 160 feet below the surface, with two great ventilating shafts 60 feet in diameter. It was a gigantic work. The engineer examined the ground in the usual way, with much care, and then advertised for “tenders.” The various competing contractors also examined the ground minutely, and the offer of one of them to work it for 99,000 pounds was accepted. Forthwith the contractor went to work, and all went well and busily for some time, until it was suddenly discovered that a hidden quicksand extended 400 yards into the tunnel, which the trial shafts had just passed without touching. This was a more tremendous blow to the contractor than most readers may at first thought suppose, for he believed that to solidify a quicksand was impossible. The effect on him was so great that he was mentally prostrated, and although the company generously and justly relieved him from his engagement, the reprieve came too late, for he died. It then came to be a question whether or not the tunnel should be abandoned. Many advised that it should. At this juncture Mr Robert Stephenson, son of the great George, came forward and undertook the work. He placed his chief dependence on the steam-engine to keep the water down while the work was in progress. At first he was successful, but one day, while the men were busy laying their bricks in cement one of them drove into the roof, and a deluge of water burst in on them, and although they tried to continue their work on a raft the water prevailed and at last drove them out. They escaped with difficulty up one of the air-shafts. The water having put an effectual stop to the work, the directors felt disposed to give it up, but Stephenson begged for a fortnight more. It was granted. By means of thirteen steam-engines, the amazing quantity of 1800 gallons of water perminutewas pumped out of the quicksand night and day for eight months. With the aid of 1250 men and 200 horses the work was finally completed, having occupied altogether thirty months from the laying of the first brick.Two very singular accidents occurred during the course of the construction of this tunnel. On one occasion a man who had been working in it was being hauled up one of the shafts, when his coat caught in an angular crevice of the partition, that separated the pumps from the passage for the men, and became so firmly jammed that he was compelled to let go the rope, and was left there dangling in the air, about a hundred feet from the bottom, until his horrified comrades went down and rescued him by cutting away the piece of his coat. This piece of cloth was long preserved in the engineer’s office as a memorial of the event! On another occasion some men were at work on a platform, half-way down the shaft, executing some repairs, when a huge navvy, named Jack Pierson, fell from the surface, went right through the platform, as if it had been made of paper, and fell to the bottom. Fortunately there was water to receive him there, else he had been killed on the spot. The men, whom of course he had narrowly missed in his fall, began to shout for a rope to those above, and they hallooed their advice down the shaft in reply. In the midst of the confusion Jack Pierson himself calmly advised them to make less noise and pull him out, which they very soon did, and the poor man was carried home and put to bed. He lay there for many weeks unable to move, but ultimately recovered.What we have said of the Kilsby tunnel gives a slight glimpse of some of the expenses, difficulties, and dangers that occasionally attend the construction of a railway.Of course these difficulties and expenses vary according to the nature of the ground. In some places the gradients are slight, bridges few, and cuttings, etcetera, insignificant; but in other places the reverse is emphatically the case, and costly laborious works have to be undertaken.One such work, which occurred at the very opening of our railway system in 1828, was the bridging of the Chat Moss, on the Liverpool and Manchester line. George Stephenson, the constructer of the “Rocket,” was also the hero of the Chat Moss. This moss was a great swamp or bog, four miles in extent, which was so soft that it could not be walked on with safety, and in some places an iron rod laid on the surface would sink by its own weight. Like many other difficulties in this world, the solidification of the Chat Moss was said to be impossible, but the great engineer scarce admitted the propriety of allowing the word “impossible” to cumber our dictionaries. He began the work at once by forming an embankment twenty feet high, which he carried some distance across the treacherous soil, when the whole affair sank down one day and disappeared! Undismayed, Stephenson began again, and went on steadily depositing thousands on thousands of tons of earth, which were greedily swallowed up, until at last a solid foundation was obtained over the greater part of the bog. But there was a particularly soft part of it, known by the name of the “flow moss,” which was insatiable. Over this hurdles interwoven with heath were spread, and on these earth and gravel were laid down. When this road showed a tendency to sink below the level, Stephenson loaded the moss beyond the track to balance it; when water oozed through, he invented a new kind of drain-pipe formed of old tallow casks, headed into each other, and ballasted to keep them down, and at last the feat was accomplished—the railway was run over the wet quaking moss on firm dry land.It was in the formation of this, the true beginning of railways, that the British “navvy” was called into being. To perform the laborious work, Stephenson employed the men called “inland navigators,” in other words, the canal excavators. This body of strong “navigators” or “navvies” formed the nucleus, which gathered recruits from all parts of the kingdom. As the work of railway making, which thenceforward grew fast and furious, was unusually severe, only men who were unusually powerful were suited for the navvy ranks, so that they became a distinct class of gigantic men, whose capacity for bread and beef was in accordance with their muscular development and power to toil. Splendid fellows they were, and are; somewhat rugged and untamed, no doubt, with a tendency to fight occasionally, and a great deal of genuine kindness and simplicity. That they are capable of being imbued with refined feeling, noble sentiment, and love to God, has been shown by the publications of Miss Marsh, which detail that lady’s interesting and earnest labours to bring the unbelievers among these men to our Saviour.Another celebrated piece of railway engineering is theBritannia Bridgeover the Menai Straits, which separates Caernarvonshire from the island of Anglesey. This was the first bridge ever built on the tubular principle. The importance of crossing the strait was very great, as it lay in the direct route to Holyhead and Ireland. Telford, the engineer, daringly resolved to span the strait with a suspension bridge 100 feet above the water. He began it in 1818, and on the last day of January 1826 the London mail coach passed over the estuary. The bridge remains to this day a vast and beautiful monument of engineering skill. But when railways began to play, something more ponderous and powerful became necessary. A bridge with arches was talked of, but this was considered likely to be obstructive to the navigation of the strait, therefore another plan was demanded. At this juncture Robert Stephenson came forward with a plan. Pounding his opinion on the known fact that hollow columns are stronger than solid ones; that hollow beams are better than solid beams, he leaped to the bold conclusion that a hollow iron beam, or tube, could be made large enough to allow a train to pass through it! As usual there sprang up a host of cold-waterers, but thanks to British enterprise, which can dare anything, there were found enough of men willing to promote the scheme. It was no sooner resolved on than begun. Massive abutments of stone were raised on each shore to the height of 100 feet above high-water. The width of the strait between these abutments is nearly 500 yards. Midway across is the Britannia Rock, just visible at half tide. The engineer resolved to found one of his towers on that rock. It was done; but the distance being too great for a single span of tube, two other towers were added. The centre towel rises 35 feet higher than the abutments, thus giving to the tube a very slight arch, which, however, is barely perceptible.The tubes were rectangular, with double top and bottom made of plates of wrought-iron, from three-eighths to three-quarters of an inch thick, and varying in length according to their position—the whole when put together forming a single tube about 500 yards long. The two centre ones were the largest and most difficult to manage, each having to be built on shore, floated off on barges, and lifted by hydraulic power a height of about 100 feet. Some idea of what this implied may be gathered from the following fact. Each tube weighed 1800 tons—the weight of a goodly-sized ocean steamer! A perfect army of men worked at the building of the tubes; cutting, punching, fitting, riveting, etcetera, and as the place became the temporary abode of so many artificers and labourers, with their wives and children, a village sprang up around them, with shops, a school, and a surgery. Two fire-engines and large tanks of water were kept in constant readiness in case of fire, and for many months rivet-making machines, punching machines, shearing machines, etcetera, were in full work. There were two million rivets used altogether, and the quantity of three-quarter-inch iron rod used in making them measured 126 miles. The total weight of iron used was nearly 12,000 tons. The bridge was strengthened by eighty-three miles of angle iron. For many months the outlay in wages alone was 6000 pounds a week, and the cost for the whole of the works more than 600,000 pounds. A curious fact connected with this enormous mass of iron is, that arrangements had to be made to permit of shrinkage and expansion. The tubes were placed on a series of rollers and iron balls, and it was afterwards found that in the hottest part of summer they were twelve inches longer than in winter—a difference which, if not provided for, would have caused the destruction of the towers by a constant and irresistible pull and thrust! The Menai Bridge was begun in 1846 and opened for traffic in March 1850.Space would fail us were we to attempt even a slight sketch of the great engineering works that railways have called into being. We can merely point to such achievements as the high-level bridges at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Berwick-on-Tweed, and at Saltash, over the Tamar. There are viaducts of great height, length, and beauty in all parts of the kingdom; there are terminal stations so vast and magnificent as to remind one of the structures of Eastern splendour described in theArabian Nights Entertainments; and there are hundreds of miles of tunnelling at the present time in the United Kingdom.The Metropolitan Railway is the most important and singular of these tunnels—for it is entitled to be regarded as a gigantic tunnel—which burrows under the streets of London.This stupendous work was undertaken in order to relieve the traffic in the streets of London. The frequent blocks that used to occur not many years ago in the main thoroughfares of the Metropolis, had rendered relief absolutely necessary. When the increase of railways began to pour human beings and goods from all parts of the kingdom into London in a continuous and ever-increasing stream, it became obvious that some new mode of conveyance must be opened up. After much deliberation as to the best method, it was finally resolved that an underground railway should be made, encircling the Metropolis, so that travellers arriving from all points of the compass might find a ready and sufficient means of conveyance into the central parts of the city. There was opposition to the scheme, of course; but, through the persevering energy of the solicitor to the undertaking and others, the work was at length begun, and the line opened for traffic in January 1863. Its extraordinary success soon proved the wisdom of its promoters.At first it was thought that the chief revenues would be derived from the conveyance of goods from the west to the eastern districts of London, but its enormous passenger traffic eventually became the chief cause of its great prosperity. In the very first year of its opening the number of passengers who travelled by it between Farringdon Street and Bishop’s Road, Paddington, amounted to nearly nine and a half millions of individuals, which is more than three times the entire population of London—also, let us add, more than three times the entire population of Scotland!The number of trains which are constantly following each other in quick succession (at times every two or three minutes) on this magnificent railway has rendered a most perfect system of signalling necessary, as well as a working staff of superior intelligence and activity. The drivers are all picked men, and indeed it is obvious to every one who travels by it that the porters, and guards, and all employed on the line are unusually smart men. The engineering difficulties connected with the Metropolitan railway were very great as may easily be believed, seeing that it had to be formed under streets whose foundations were unavoidably shaken, and amongst an infinite ramification of gas and water-pipes and sewers whose separate action had to be maintained intact while the process of construction was going on. Some of the stations are most ingeniously lighted from the streets above by bright reflecting tile-work, while others, too deep for such a method, or too much overtopped with buildings to admit of it, are lit perpetually with gas. The whole of the works are a singular instance of engineering skill, reflecting great credit on Mr Fowler, the engineer-in-chief. Despite its great length of tunnelling the line is perfectly dry throughout.At first fears were entertained that human beings could not with safety travel through such tunnels as were here formed, but experience has proved those fears, like many others, to have been groundless, and a very thorough analysis of the atmosphere of the line in all circumstances, and by the most competent men of the day, has demonstrated that the air of the Metropolitan railway is not injurious to health. The excellent general health of the employés also affords additional and conclusive testimony to this fact even although it is unquestionably true that there is at times a somewhat sulphurous smell there.This thorough ventilation, of course, could only have been achieved by ingenious arrangements and a peculiar construction of the engines, whereby the waste steam and fumes of the furnaces should be prevented from emitting their foul and sulphurous odours. The carriages are brilliantly lighted with gas, contained in long india-rubber bags on their roofs, and the motion of the trains is much gentler than that of ordinary railways, although they travel at the rate of from fifteen to twenty miles an hour, including stoppages,—a rate, be it observed, which could not have been ventured on at all but for the thorough and effective system of telegraphic and semaphore signalling employed, to indicate from station to station the exact state of the line—as to trains—at all times. On the whole the Metropolitan Railway has proved one of the most useful and successful undertakings of modern times. See Note 3 at the end of the chapter.In reference to foreign railways, we have only space to say that there are works as grand, and as worthy of note, as any of which we can boast; and it is with much regret that we feel constrained to do no more than point to such magnificent undertakings as theMont CenisRailway, which ascends and tunnels through the Alps; and that stupendous line, the Union Pacific Railroad, 3000 miles in length, formed by the daring and enterprising Americans, by means of which the prairies and the Rocky Mountains are made of no account and New York is brought within seven days of San Francisco! The engineering works on the Sömmering Railway, between Vienna and Trieste; the mighty Victoria Tubular Bridge at Montreal; the railway bridge over Niagara; the difficulties encountered and overcome in India; the bold achievements of railway engineers amid the dizzy heights and solitudes of the Andes—all these subjects must be passed over in silence, else our readers will, we fear, come to the conclusion that we have lost command of the Iron Horse altogether, allowed him to take the bit in his teeth and fairly run away.Note 1. Many readers may find it difficult to form an adequate conception of such a vast number as 307 millions. It may help one to some idea of it to know that, if a man were to devote himself to count it, one by one,—sitting down after breakfast counting at the rate of one every moment, and working without intermission for eight hours every day, excepting Sundays,—he would not conclude his task until the thirty-fifth year.Note 2. We would refer them particularly to Messrs W. and R. Chambers’ comprehensive and popularly written work on “Railways, Steamer, and Telegraphs;” Money’s “Rambles on Railways,” which bristles with figures and swarms with anecdote; “Stokers and Pokers,” by Sir Francis Head, a capital and very full work, though somewhat old; W.B. Adams’ “Roads and Rails,” and Bremrer’s “Industries of Scotland.”Note 3. We had intended to devote much larger space to this most interesting line, but the nature of our book forbids it. We quit the subject regretfully; referring the reader, who may desire to know more, to an able notice of the Metropolitan Railway in “The Shops and Companies of London,” edited by Henry Mayhew.

Having gone thus far in our tale, permit us, good reader, to turn aside for a little to make a somewhat closer inspection of the Iron Horse and his belongings.

Railways existed long before the Iron Horse was born. They sprang into being two centuries ago in the form of tramways, which at first were nothing more or less than planks or rails of timber laid down between the Newcastle-on-Tyne collieries and the river, for the purpose of forming a better “way” over which to run the coal-trucks. From simple timber-rails men soon advanced to planks having a strip of iron nailed on their surface to prevent too rapid tear and wear, but it was not till the year 1767 that cast-iron rails were introduced. In order to prevent the trucks from slipping off the line the rails were cast with an upright flange or guide at one side, and were laid on wooden or stone sleepers.

This form of rail being found inconvenient, the flange was transferred from the rails to the wheels, and this arrangement, under various modifications has been ever since retained.

These “innocent” railroads—as they have been sometimes and most appropriately named, seeing that they were guiltless alike of blood and high speed—were drawn by horses, and confined at first to the conveyance of coals. Modest though their pretensions were, however, they were found to be an immense improvement on the ordinary roads, insomuch that ten horses were found to be capable of working the traffic on railroads, which it required 400 horses to perform on a common road. These iron roads, therefore, began to multiply, and about the beginning of the present century they were largely employed in the coal-fields and mineral districts of the kingdom. About the same time thoughtful men, seeing the immense advantage of such ways, began to suggest the formation of railways, or tramways, to run along the side of our turnpike-roads—a mode of conveyance, by the way, in regard to towns, which thoughtful men are still, ever at the present day of supposed enlightenment, endeavouring to urge upon an unbelieving public—a mode of conveyance which we feel very confident will entirely supersede our cumbrous and antiquated “’bus” in a very short time. What, we ask, in the name of science and art and common-sense, is to prevent a tramway being laid from Kensington to the Bank, “or elsewhere,” which shall be traversed by a succession of roomy carriages following each other every five minutes; which tramway might be crossed and recrossed and run upon, or, in other words, used by all the other vehicles of London except when the rightful carriages were in the way? Nothing prevents, save that same unbelief which has obstructed the development of every good thing from the time that Noah built the ark! But we feel assured that the thing shall be, and those who read this book may perhaps live to see it!

But to return. Among these thoughtful and far-seeing men was one Dr James Anderson, who in 1800 proposed the formation of railways by the roadsides, and he was so correct in his views that the plans which he suggested of keeping the level, by going round the base of hills, or forming viaducts, or cutting tunnels, is precisely the method practised by engineers of the present day. Two years later a Mr Edgeworth announced that he had long before, “formed the project of laying iron railways for baggage waggons on the great roads of England,” and, in order to prevent tear and wear, he proposed, instead of conveying heavy loads in one huge waggon, to have a train of small waggons. With the modesty of true genius, which never over-estimates or forms wildly sanguine expectations, he thought that each waggon might perhaps carry one ton and a half! Edgeworth also suggested thatpassengersmight travel by such a mode of conveyance. Bold man! What a goose many people of his day must have thought him. If they had been alive now, what geese they might have thought themselves. The Society of Arts, however, were in advance of their time. They rewarded Edgeworth with their gold medal.

This man seems to have been a transcendent genius, because he not only devised and made (on a small scale) iron railways, but proposed to take ordinary vehicles, such as mail-coaches and private carriages, on his trucks, and convey them along his line at the rate of six or eight miles an hour with one horse. He also propounded the idea of the employment of stationary steam-engines (locomotives not having been dreamed of) to drag the trains up steep inclines.

Another semi-prophetic man of these days was Thomas Gray, of Leeds, who in 1820 published a work on what he styled a “General Iron Railway, or Land Steam Conveyance, to supersede the necessity of Horses in all public vehicles, showing its vast superiority in every respect over the present pitiful Methods of Conveyance by Turnpike-Roads and Canals.” Gray, whose mind appears to have been unusually comprehensive, proposed a system of railway communication between all the important cities and towns in the kingdom, and pointed out the immense advantage that would be gained to commerce by such a ready and rapid means of conveying fish, vegetables, and other perishable articles from place to place. He also showed that two post deliveries in the day would become possible, and that fire insurance companies would be able to promote their interests by keeping railway fire-engines, ready to be transported to scenes of conflagration without delay.

But Gray was not esteemed a prophet. His suggestions were not adopted nor his plans acted on, though unquestionably his wisdom and energy gave an impulse to railway development, of which we are reaping the benefit to-day. His labours were not in vain.

Horse railways soon began to multiply over the country. The first authorised by Act of Parliament was the Surrey Railway in 1801. Twenty years later twenty lines of railway were in operation.

About this time, too, another man of note and of great scientific and mechanical sagacity lent his powerful aid to advance the interests of the railway cause. This was Charles Maclaren, of Edinburgh, editor of theScotsmannewspaper for nearly thirty years. He had long foreseen, and boldly asserted his belief in, the certain success of steam locomotion by rail, at a time when opinions such as his were scouted as wild delusive dreams. But he did more, he brought his able pen to bear on the subject, and in December 1825 published a series of articles in theScotsmanon the subject of railways, which were not only extensively quoted and republished in this country and in America, but were deemed worthy of being translated into French and German, and so disseminated over Europe. Mr Maclaren was thus among the foremost of those who gave a telling impulse to the cause at that critical period when the Iron horse was about to be put on the rail—the right horse in the right place—for it was not many years afterwards that that auspicious event took place. Mr Maclaren not only advocated generally the adoption of railways, but logically demonstrated the wonderful powers and capacities of the steam locomotive, arguing, from the experiments on friction made more than half a century before by Vince and Colomb, that by the use of steam-power on railroads a much more rapid and cheaper transit of persons as well as merchandise might be confidently anticipated. He leaped far ahead of many of even the most hopeful advocates of the cause, and with almost prophetic foresight wrote, “there is scarcely any limit to the rapidity of movement these iron pathways will enable us to command.” And again,—“We have spoken of vehicles travelling at twenty miles an hour; but we see no reason for thinking that, in the progress of improvement, a much higher velocity might not be found practicable; and in twenty years hence a shopkeeper or mechanic, on the most ordinary occasion, may probably travel with a speed that would leave the fleetest courser behind.” Wonderful words these! At a first glance we may not deem them so, being so familiar with the ideas which they convey, but our estimate of them will be more just if we reflect that when they were penned railways had scarcely sprung into being, steam locomotives had only just been born, and not only men in general, but even many learned, scientific and practical men regarded the statement of all such opinions as being little short of insanity. Nevertheless, many deep-thinking men thought differently, and one contemporary, reviewing this subject in after years, said of Mr Maclaren’s papers, that, “they prepared the way for the success of railway projectors.”

We have said that the steam locomotive—the material transformer of the world—our Iron Horse, had just been born. It was not however born on the rails, but on the common road, and a tremendous baby-giant it was, tearing up its cradle in such furious fashion that men were terrified by it, and tried their best to condemn it to inactivity, just as a weak and foolish father might lock up his unruly boy and restrain him perforce, instead of training him wisely in the way in which he should go.

But the progenitors of the Iron Horse were, like their Herculean child, men of mettle. They fought a gallant fight for their darling’s freedom, and came off victorious!

Of course, many men and many nations were anxious to father this magnificent infant, and to this day it is impossible to say precisely who originated him. He is said by some to have sprung from the brains of Englishmen, others assert that brains in France and Switzerland begat him, and we believe that brother Jonathan exercised his prolific brain on him, before the actual time of his birth. The first name on record in connexion with this infant Hercules is that of Dr Robison, who communicated his ideas to Watt in 1759. The latter thereupon made a model locomotive, but entertained doubts as to its safety. Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, patented a “steam waggon” in 1782. William Murdoch, the friend and assistant of Watt, made a model in 1787 which drew a small waggon round a room in his house in Cornwall. In the same year Symington exhibited a model locomotive in Edinburgh, and in 1795 he worked a steam-engine on a turnpike-road in Lanarkshire. Richard Trevethick, who had seen Murdoch’s model, made and patented a locomotive in 1802. It drew on a tramway a load of ten tons at the rate of five miles an hour. Trevethick also made a carriage to run on common roads, and altogether did good service in the cause.

Blenkinsop, of Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, made locomotives in 1811 which hauled coals up steep ascents by means of a toothed rail, with a toothed propelling wheel working into it. This unnatural infant, however, turned out to be not the true child. It was found that such a powerful creature did not require teeth at all, that he could “bite” quite well enough by means of his weight alone,—so the teeth were plucked out and never allowed to grow again.

After this, in 1813, came Brunton of Butterley, with a curious contrivance in the form of legs and feet, which were attached to the rear of his engine and propelled it by a sort of walking motion. It did not walk well, however, and very soon walked off the field of competition altogether.

At last, in the fulness of time there came upon the scene the great railway king, George Stephenson, who, if he cannot be said to have begotten the infant, at all events brought him up and effectually completed his training.

George Stephenson was one of our most celebrated engineers, and the “father of the railway system.” He may truly be said to have been one of mankind’s greatest benefactors. He was a self-taught man, was born near Newcastle in 1781, began life as a pit-engine boy with wages at two-pence a day, and ultimately rose to fame and fortune as an engineer.

In 1814 he made a locomotive for the Killingworth Colliery Railway. It drew thirty tons at the rate of four miles an hour, and was regarded as a great success. In 1825 an engine of the same kind was used on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, of which Stephenson had been made engineer.

But the great crowning effort of Stephenson, and the grand impulse to the railway cause, which carried it steadily and swiftly on to its present amazing degree of prosperity, did not occur till the year 1829.

Previous to that date the Manchester and Liverpool Railway was being constructed, and so little was known as to the capabilities of railways and the best mode of working them, that the directors and engineers had some difficulty in deciding whether the line should be worked by fixed engines or by locomotives. It was ultimately decided that the latter should be used, and a premium of 500 pounds was offered for the best locomotive that could be produced, in accordance with certain conditions. These were— That the chimney should emit no smoke—that the engine should be on springs—that it should not weigh more than six tons, or four-and-a-half tons if it had only four wheels—that it should be able to draw a load of twenty tons at the rate of ten miles an hour, with a pressure of fifty pounds to the square inch in the boiler, and should not cost more than 500 pounds.

The Iron Horse was now at last about to assume its right position. It was no longer an infant, but a powerful stripling—though still far from its full growth; as far as six tons is from sixty!

Four iron steeds were entered to compete for the prize. It was in October 1829 that this celebrated trial came off, and great was the interest manifested on the occasion, for not only did the public entertain doubts as to the capabilities of locomotives, but very few even of the engineers of the country would admit the possibility of a locomotive engine attaining a speed greater than ten miles an hour! First came the “Novelty” of Braithwaite and Ericson; then the “Sans pareil” of Hawkworth; the “Perseverance” of Burstall; and, lastly, the “Rocket” of Stephenson. Of the first three we shall merely say that the “Novelty,” being weak in the wheels, broke down; the “Sans pareil” burst one of her cylinders; and the “Perseverance” turned out to be too heavy to comply with the conditions of the trial.

The “Rocket” advanced, and was harnessed to a train of waggons weighing thirteen tons; the fire was lighted, and the steam got up. The valves lifted at the stipulated fifty pounds pressure, and away it went with its load at an average speed of fifteen, and a maximum speed of twenty-nine miles an hour! Thus triumphantly the “Rocket” won the prize of 500 pounds, and the Iron Horse was fairly and finally married to the Iron Road. One of the important elements of Stephenson’s success lay in the introduction of numerous tubes into his boiler, through which the fire, and heat passed, and thus presented a vast amount of heating surface to the water. Another point was his allowing the waste steam to pass through the chimney, thus increasing the draught and intensifying the combustion; for heat is the life of the locomotive, and without much of this, high rates of speed could not be attained.

The difference between the first locomotive and those now in use is very great—as may be seen any day in London, by any one who chooses to visit one of our great railway stations, and go thence to the Kensington Museum, where the “Rocket” is now enshrined—a memorial of Stephenson’s wisdom, and of the beginning of our magnificent railway system. Yet though the difference be great it is wonderful how complete the “Rocket” was, all things considered. The modern improvements made on locomotives consist chiefly in clothing the boiler with wood, felt, and other non-conductors to increase the life-giving heat; in heating the feed-water, coupling the driving-wheels, working the cylinders horizontally, economising steam by cutting off the supply at any part of the stroke that may be required, and economising fuel by using raw coal instead of coke, and consuming the smoke, besides many other minor contrivances, but all the great principles affecting the locomotive were applied by George Stephenson, and illustrated in the “Rocket.”

It is no wonder that the first Iron Horse was clumsy in appearance and somewhat grotesque, owing to the complication of rods, cranks, and other machinery, which was all exposed to view. It required years of experience to enable our engineers to construct the grand, massive, simple chargers which now run off with our monster-trains as if they were feathers. When the iron horse was first made, men were naturally in haste to ascertain his power and paces. He was trotted out, so to speak, in his skeleton, with his heart and lungs and muscles exposed to view in complex hideosity! Now-a-days he never appears without his skin well-groomed and made gay with paint and polished brass and steel.

We have said that the “Rocket” drew thirteen tons at nearly thirty miles an hour. Our best engines can now draw hundreds of tons, and they can run at the rate of above sixty miles an hour at maximum speed. The more ordinary speed, however, for passenger-trains is from thirty to forty-five miles an hour. The weight of the “Rocket” was six tons. That of some of our largest engines with tenders is from forty to above fifty tons.

From the time of the opening of the old Manchester and Liverpool Railway in 1830 to the present day—a period of little more than forty years—railway construction has gone forward throughout the land—and we may add the world—with truly railway speed, insomuch that England has become covered from end to end with an absolute network of iron roads, and the benefit to our country has been inconceivably great. It would require a large volume to treat of these and correlative subjects, as they deserve.

Two hundred years ago the course of post between London and Edinburgh was one month; before an answer could be received two months had to elapse! About a hundred years later there was one stage-coach between the two cities, which did the distance in a fortnight, rendering communication and reply possible once in each month. In those days roads were uncommonly bad. One writer tells us that, while travelling in Lancashire, a county now traversed by railways in all directions, he found one of the principal roads so bad that there were ruts in it, which he measured, four feet deep, and that the only mending it received was the tumbling of stones into these holes to fill them up. The extremely limited goods traffic of the country was conducted by the slow means of carts and waggons. Enterprising men, however, then as now, were pushing the world forward, though they were by no means so numerous then as now. In 1673 it took a week to travel between London and Exeter, and cost from forty to forty-five shillings. About the same period a six-horse coach took six days to perform the journey between Edinburgh and Glasgow and back. To accomplish fifty miles or thereabouts in two days with a six-horse stage-coach, was considered good work and high speed about the beginning of last century. Near the middle of it (1740) travelling by night was for the first time introduced, and soon after that a coach was started with a wicker-basket slung behind for outside passengers! Some years afterwards an enterprising individual started a “flying coach” drawn by eight horses, which travelled between London and Dover in a day—the fare being one guinea. Even at the beginning of the present century four miles an hour was deemed a very fair rate of travelling for a stage-coach.

With the improvement of roads by the famous Macadam in 1816, began improved travelling and increased speed. The process was rapid. Mail-coaches began to overrun the country in all directions at the then remarkable pace of from eight to ten miles an hour,—and, let us remark in passing, there was a whirl and dash about these stage-coaches which railway trains, with all their velocity can never hope to attain to, except when they dash into each other! Man is but a weak creature in some senses. Facts are scarcely facts to him unless they touch his eye or ear. The smooth run of a train at twenty or even thirty miles an hour, with its gradual start and gentle pull up, has but a slight effect on him now compared with the splendid swing of the well-appointed mail coach of old as it swept round the bend of a road, and, with red-coated driver and guard, cracking whip, flying dust and stones, and reeking foam-flecked horses, dashed into town and pulled up, while at nearly full speed, amid all the glorious crash and turmoil of arrival! No doubt the passing of an express train within a yard of your nose is something peculiarly awful, and if you ever get permission to ride on the engine of an express, therealtruth regarding speed, weight, momentum, will make a profound impression on you, but in ordinary circumstances the arrival of a train cannot for a moment compare with the dash, the animal spirit, the enthusiasm, the romance of the mail coach of days gone by.

About the time that the day of slow speed was drawing to a close (1837) licenses were granted to 3026 stage-coaches, of which 1507 went to and from London, besides 103 mail-coaches. And it has been estimated that the number of passengers carried in the year about that time was two millions. In regard to the merchandise traffic of the kingdom, we cannot give statistics, but we ask the reader to bear in mind that it was all conducted by means of heavy waggons and slow-going canal barges.

Now, let us contrast this state of things with the condition and influence of railways up to the present time. As we have said, the iron horse began his career in 1830 on the Liverpool and Manchester line—long since become part of the London and North-Western Railway—at that time thirty-one miles long. Eight years later, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham were completely connected with London by railway. Then, as success attended the scheme, new lines were undertaken and opened at a still more rapid rate until, in 1843—despite the depression caused for a time by over-speculating—there were nearly 2000 miles of railway open for traffic. In 1850 there were above 6000 miles open; in 1860, above 10,000. In 1864 the railways of the kingdom employed upwards of 7200 locomotives, 23,470 passenger carriages, and 212,900 goods and mineral waggons. In that one year about five million passengers and goods trains ran 130 millions of miles—a distance that would encircle the earth 5221 times—the earth being 24,896 miles in circumference. In 1866 the gross receipts of railways was about forty millions of pounds sterling. At the present date (1871) above 14,000 miles of railway are open in the United Kingdom. This mileage is divided amongst about 430 companies, but a considerable number of these have been incorporated with the larger companies, such as the London and North west, the Great Western, etcetera.

All the lines carried in one year (1870) somewhere about 307 millions of passengers—in other words, that number of passenger journeys were performed on them. The mail and stage-coaches in their best days only conveyed, as we have said, two millions! See note at end of chapter.

It is almost overwhelming to consider what a vast change in the condition and habits of the people of this country is implied in these figures. Forty years ago none travelled but the comparatively rich, and that only to an extent equal to about two-thirds of the present population of London. Now-a-days the poorest artisan can, and does, afford to travel, and the number of journeys performed each year on all our British railways is equal to more than the entire population of Europe! which, in Stewart’s “Modern Geography,” is set down at 285 millions. From this of course it follows, that as many thousands of men, women, and children never travel at all, many others must have undertaken numerous journeys in that year.

The facilities afforded by railways are altogether innumerable. If so disposed you may sup one night in the south of England and the next night in the north of Scotland. Thousands of families dwell in the country, while the heads thereof go to their business in town by rail every morning and return home every evening. Huntsmen, booted and spurred, are whirled off, horses and all, to distant fields, whence, after “crossing country” all day, they return to the railway and are whirled back to town in time for dinner. Navvys and artisans are conveyed to their work at a penny a mile, and monster-trains carry thousands of excursionists to scenes of rural delight that our fathers never dreamed of in their wildest flights of fancy.

One of the most remarkable and interesting facts in connexion with all this is, that although mail-coaches have been beaten off the field, there are actually more horses employed in this country now than there were in 1837, while canals are doing more business than they ever did, and are making higher profits too. In 1865 the carriage of cattle by railway amounted to between fourteen or fifteen million head of all kinds. The consumption of coal, in the same year, by our railways amounted to four million tons, and the quantity of that and other minerals carried by rail continually is enormous.

The benefit derived by the post-office also from our railways is incalculable. We cannot afford space to enter into details, but it may be truly said that but for railways the Post-Office Savings Bank system could not have existed; and of course, also, our frequent deliveries of letters and rapid as well as cheap communication with all parts of the kingdom would have been impossible. The railway service of the Post-Office is over 60,000 miles a day, and the gross sum paid by the Post-Office to railways in one year was 570,500 pounds.

These are but a few of the amazing statistics connected with our railway system, which, if fully enlarged upon, would fill a bulky volume. If our readers desire more there are several most interesting and instructive works on the subject, which are well worthy of perusal. See note 2 at the end of the chapter.

Before closing this perhaps too statistical chapter, we shall say a few words as to the construction of a railway. No one who has not looked pretty closely into the subject can form any adequate conception of the difficulties that beset an engineer-in-chief in the formation of a line of railway. We will suppose that all the Parliamentary battles have been fought, opposition overcome, the heavy expenses connected therewith paid, and the work begun.

The engineer has walked again and again over the country through which the railway is to be carried and selected the best route, his assistants having meanwhile taken for him “flying levels” and “cross levels.” Too frequently prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness interpose to prevent the best route being taken, and immense sums that might have been saved are spent in constructing the line on the next best route. As soon as the course of a line is fixed, accurate surveys are made by the assistant engineers, copies of which are placed, according to Act of Parliament, with the various clerks of the peace of the counties, through which the line is to pass, with the Commissioners of Railways and others, besides which there has to be prepared for each parish its proportion, and for each landholder a section showing the greatest depth of cutting or embankment in any of his fields.

As soon as all this has been done, and the Act of Parliament authorising the line obtained, an accurate plan and section of the whole line is made, from which the engineer ascertains and lays down its gradients, in other words its ascents and descents, determines the number and size of the bridges and viaducts to be made, calculates the quantity of embankments required to fill up hollows, and the number of cuttings to level obstructions, in which latter calculations he estimates that the cutting down of elevations will be made subservient as far as may be, to the elevation of depressions. All this involves very nice and exact calculation as to quantity of material, masonry, etcetera, and the sinking of “trial shafts” to ascertain the nature of the various strata to be excavated or tunnelled. Then the cost of all the works has to be estimated in detail, apportioned into lengths and advertised for execution by contract. To each section of the line thus apportioned—forty or fifty miles—an experienced engineer is appointed, having under him “sub-assistants,” who superintend from ten to fifteen miles each, and these again are assisted by “inspectors” of masonry, mining, earth-work and permanent way, to each of whom a district is assigned.

These managing and guiding men having been appointed, the physical workers are then called into action, in the form of bands of navvies. As the steam and mechanism of the locomotive are useless except in regulated combination, so brain and muscle can achieve nothing without wise and harmonious union. If boys and men would reflect more deeply on this great truth, pride, boasting, and the false separation of classes would be less rife. We sayfalse, because there is a separation of classes which is natural and unavoidable. No one ever complains ofthat. If ill-advised or angry navvies were to refuse to work, what could directors and engineers do? If, on the other hand, ill-advised or angry directors and engineers refused to pay, what could navvies do? Antagonism is an unhealthy condition of things. There is far too much of it between employers and employed in this world. “Agree with thine adversary quickly” is a command which applies to bodies of men quite as much as to individuals, and the word is “agree,” not coerce or force. If we cannot agree, let us agree to differ; or, if that won’t do in our peculiar circumstances, then let us agree to separate. Fighting, save in self-defence, is only fit for fools.

But to return. When bone and muscle have been for the time welded to brain, then the work of construction goes on “full swing.” Difficulties and obstructions are overcome in a way that appears to the unskilled eye nothing less than miraculous. But the work is often hindered and rendered greatly more expensive by the sudden appearance of evils against which no amount of human wisdom or foresight could have guarded.

The Kilsby tunnel of the London and North west Railway is a case in point. When that tunnel was proposed, it was arranged that it should be about 3000 yards long, and 160 feet below the surface, with two great ventilating shafts 60 feet in diameter. It was a gigantic work. The engineer examined the ground in the usual way, with much care, and then advertised for “tenders.” The various competing contractors also examined the ground minutely, and the offer of one of them to work it for 99,000 pounds was accepted. Forthwith the contractor went to work, and all went well and busily for some time, until it was suddenly discovered that a hidden quicksand extended 400 yards into the tunnel, which the trial shafts had just passed without touching. This was a more tremendous blow to the contractor than most readers may at first thought suppose, for he believed that to solidify a quicksand was impossible. The effect on him was so great that he was mentally prostrated, and although the company generously and justly relieved him from his engagement, the reprieve came too late, for he died. It then came to be a question whether or not the tunnel should be abandoned. Many advised that it should. At this juncture Mr Robert Stephenson, son of the great George, came forward and undertook the work. He placed his chief dependence on the steam-engine to keep the water down while the work was in progress. At first he was successful, but one day, while the men were busy laying their bricks in cement one of them drove into the roof, and a deluge of water burst in on them, and although they tried to continue their work on a raft the water prevailed and at last drove them out. They escaped with difficulty up one of the air-shafts. The water having put an effectual stop to the work, the directors felt disposed to give it up, but Stephenson begged for a fortnight more. It was granted. By means of thirteen steam-engines, the amazing quantity of 1800 gallons of water perminutewas pumped out of the quicksand night and day for eight months. With the aid of 1250 men and 200 horses the work was finally completed, having occupied altogether thirty months from the laying of the first brick.

Two very singular accidents occurred during the course of the construction of this tunnel. On one occasion a man who had been working in it was being hauled up one of the shafts, when his coat caught in an angular crevice of the partition, that separated the pumps from the passage for the men, and became so firmly jammed that he was compelled to let go the rope, and was left there dangling in the air, about a hundred feet from the bottom, until his horrified comrades went down and rescued him by cutting away the piece of his coat. This piece of cloth was long preserved in the engineer’s office as a memorial of the event! On another occasion some men were at work on a platform, half-way down the shaft, executing some repairs, when a huge navvy, named Jack Pierson, fell from the surface, went right through the platform, as if it had been made of paper, and fell to the bottom. Fortunately there was water to receive him there, else he had been killed on the spot. The men, whom of course he had narrowly missed in his fall, began to shout for a rope to those above, and they hallooed their advice down the shaft in reply. In the midst of the confusion Jack Pierson himself calmly advised them to make less noise and pull him out, which they very soon did, and the poor man was carried home and put to bed. He lay there for many weeks unable to move, but ultimately recovered.

What we have said of the Kilsby tunnel gives a slight glimpse of some of the expenses, difficulties, and dangers that occasionally attend the construction of a railway.

Of course these difficulties and expenses vary according to the nature of the ground. In some places the gradients are slight, bridges few, and cuttings, etcetera, insignificant; but in other places the reverse is emphatically the case, and costly laborious works have to be undertaken.

One such work, which occurred at the very opening of our railway system in 1828, was the bridging of the Chat Moss, on the Liverpool and Manchester line. George Stephenson, the constructer of the “Rocket,” was also the hero of the Chat Moss. This moss was a great swamp or bog, four miles in extent, which was so soft that it could not be walked on with safety, and in some places an iron rod laid on the surface would sink by its own weight. Like many other difficulties in this world, the solidification of the Chat Moss was said to be impossible, but the great engineer scarce admitted the propriety of allowing the word “impossible” to cumber our dictionaries. He began the work at once by forming an embankment twenty feet high, which he carried some distance across the treacherous soil, when the whole affair sank down one day and disappeared! Undismayed, Stephenson began again, and went on steadily depositing thousands on thousands of tons of earth, which were greedily swallowed up, until at last a solid foundation was obtained over the greater part of the bog. But there was a particularly soft part of it, known by the name of the “flow moss,” which was insatiable. Over this hurdles interwoven with heath were spread, and on these earth and gravel were laid down. When this road showed a tendency to sink below the level, Stephenson loaded the moss beyond the track to balance it; when water oozed through, he invented a new kind of drain-pipe formed of old tallow casks, headed into each other, and ballasted to keep them down, and at last the feat was accomplished—the railway was run over the wet quaking moss on firm dry land.

It was in the formation of this, the true beginning of railways, that the British “navvy” was called into being. To perform the laborious work, Stephenson employed the men called “inland navigators,” in other words, the canal excavators. This body of strong “navigators” or “navvies” formed the nucleus, which gathered recruits from all parts of the kingdom. As the work of railway making, which thenceforward grew fast and furious, was unusually severe, only men who were unusually powerful were suited for the navvy ranks, so that they became a distinct class of gigantic men, whose capacity for bread and beef was in accordance with their muscular development and power to toil. Splendid fellows they were, and are; somewhat rugged and untamed, no doubt, with a tendency to fight occasionally, and a great deal of genuine kindness and simplicity. That they are capable of being imbued with refined feeling, noble sentiment, and love to God, has been shown by the publications of Miss Marsh, which detail that lady’s interesting and earnest labours to bring the unbelievers among these men to our Saviour.

Another celebrated piece of railway engineering is theBritannia Bridgeover the Menai Straits, which separates Caernarvonshire from the island of Anglesey. This was the first bridge ever built on the tubular principle. The importance of crossing the strait was very great, as it lay in the direct route to Holyhead and Ireland. Telford, the engineer, daringly resolved to span the strait with a suspension bridge 100 feet above the water. He began it in 1818, and on the last day of January 1826 the London mail coach passed over the estuary. The bridge remains to this day a vast and beautiful monument of engineering skill. But when railways began to play, something more ponderous and powerful became necessary. A bridge with arches was talked of, but this was considered likely to be obstructive to the navigation of the strait, therefore another plan was demanded. At this juncture Robert Stephenson came forward with a plan. Pounding his opinion on the known fact that hollow columns are stronger than solid ones; that hollow beams are better than solid beams, he leaped to the bold conclusion that a hollow iron beam, or tube, could be made large enough to allow a train to pass through it! As usual there sprang up a host of cold-waterers, but thanks to British enterprise, which can dare anything, there were found enough of men willing to promote the scheme. It was no sooner resolved on than begun. Massive abutments of stone were raised on each shore to the height of 100 feet above high-water. The width of the strait between these abutments is nearly 500 yards. Midway across is the Britannia Rock, just visible at half tide. The engineer resolved to found one of his towers on that rock. It was done; but the distance being too great for a single span of tube, two other towers were added. The centre towel rises 35 feet higher than the abutments, thus giving to the tube a very slight arch, which, however, is barely perceptible.

The tubes were rectangular, with double top and bottom made of plates of wrought-iron, from three-eighths to three-quarters of an inch thick, and varying in length according to their position—the whole when put together forming a single tube about 500 yards long. The two centre ones were the largest and most difficult to manage, each having to be built on shore, floated off on barges, and lifted by hydraulic power a height of about 100 feet. Some idea of what this implied may be gathered from the following fact. Each tube weighed 1800 tons—the weight of a goodly-sized ocean steamer! A perfect army of men worked at the building of the tubes; cutting, punching, fitting, riveting, etcetera, and as the place became the temporary abode of so many artificers and labourers, with their wives and children, a village sprang up around them, with shops, a school, and a surgery. Two fire-engines and large tanks of water were kept in constant readiness in case of fire, and for many months rivet-making machines, punching machines, shearing machines, etcetera, were in full work. There were two million rivets used altogether, and the quantity of three-quarter-inch iron rod used in making them measured 126 miles. The total weight of iron used was nearly 12,000 tons. The bridge was strengthened by eighty-three miles of angle iron. For many months the outlay in wages alone was 6000 pounds a week, and the cost for the whole of the works more than 600,000 pounds. A curious fact connected with this enormous mass of iron is, that arrangements had to be made to permit of shrinkage and expansion. The tubes were placed on a series of rollers and iron balls, and it was afterwards found that in the hottest part of summer they were twelve inches longer than in winter—a difference which, if not provided for, would have caused the destruction of the towers by a constant and irresistible pull and thrust! The Menai Bridge was begun in 1846 and opened for traffic in March 1850.

Space would fail us were we to attempt even a slight sketch of the great engineering works that railways have called into being. We can merely point to such achievements as the high-level bridges at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Berwick-on-Tweed, and at Saltash, over the Tamar. There are viaducts of great height, length, and beauty in all parts of the kingdom; there are terminal stations so vast and magnificent as to remind one of the structures of Eastern splendour described in theArabian Nights Entertainments; and there are hundreds of miles of tunnelling at the present time in the United Kingdom.

The Metropolitan Railway is the most important and singular of these tunnels—for it is entitled to be regarded as a gigantic tunnel—which burrows under the streets of London.

This stupendous work was undertaken in order to relieve the traffic in the streets of London. The frequent blocks that used to occur not many years ago in the main thoroughfares of the Metropolis, had rendered relief absolutely necessary. When the increase of railways began to pour human beings and goods from all parts of the kingdom into London in a continuous and ever-increasing stream, it became obvious that some new mode of conveyance must be opened up. After much deliberation as to the best method, it was finally resolved that an underground railway should be made, encircling the Metropolis, so that travellers arriving from all points of the compass might find a ready and sufficient means of conveyance into the central parts of the city. There was opposition to the scheme, of course; but, through the persevering energy of the solicitor to the undertaking and others, the work was at length begun, and the line opened for traffic in January 1863. Its extraordinary success soon proved the wisdom of its promoters.

At first it was thought that the chief revenues would be derived from the conveyance of goods from the west to the eastern districts of London, but its enormous passenger traffic eventually became the chief cause of its great prosperity. In the very first year of its opening the number of passengers who travelled by it between Farringdon Street and Bishop’s Road, Paddington, amounted to nearly nine and a half millions of individuals, which is more than three times the entire population of London—also, let us add, more than three times the entire population of Scotland!

The number of trains which are constantly following each other in quick succession (at times every two or three minutes) on this magnificent railway has rendered a most perfect system of signalling necessary, as well as a working staff of superior intelligence and activity. The drivers are all picked men, and indeed it is obvious to every one who travels by it that the porters, and guards, and all employed on the line are unusually smart men. The engineering difficulties connected with the Metropolitan railway were very great as may easily be believed, seeing that it had to be formed under streets whose foundations were unavoidably shaken, and amongst an infinite ramification of gas and water-pipes and sewers whose separate action had to be maintained intact while the process of construction was going on. Some of the stations are most ingeniously lighted from the streets above by bright reflecting tile-work, while others, too deep for such a method, or too much overtopped with buildings to admit of it, are lit perpetually with gas. The whole of the works are a singular instance of engineering skill, reflecting great credit on Mr Fowler, the engineer-in-chief. Despite its great length of tunnelling the line is perfectly dry throughout.

At first fears were entertained that human beings could not with safety travel through such tunnels as were here formed, but experience has proved those fears, like many others, to have been groundless, and a very thorough analysis of the atmosphere of the line in all circumstances, and by the most competent men of the day, has demonstrated that the air of the Metropolitan railway is not injurious to health. The excellent general health of the employés also affords additional and conclusive testimony to this fact even although it is unquestionably true that there is at times a somewhat sulphurous smell there.

This thorough ventilation, of course, could only have been achieved by ingenious arrangements and a peculiar construction of the engines, whereby the waste steam and fumes of the furnaces should be prevented from emitting their foul and sulphurous odours. The carriages are brilliantly lighted with gas, contained in long india-rubber bags on their roofs, and the motion of the trains is much gentler than that of ordinary railways, although they travel at the rate of from fifteen to twenty miles an hour, including stoppages,—a rate, be it observed, which could not have been ventured on at all but for the thorough and effective system of telegraphic and semaphore signalling employed, to indicate from station to station the exact state of the line—as to trains—at all times. On the whole the Metropolitan Railway has proved one of the most useful and successful undertakings of modern times. See Note 3 at the end of the chapter.

In reference to foreign railways, we have only space to say that there are works as grand, and as worthy of note, as any of which we can boast; and it is with much regret that we feel constrained to do no more than point to such magnificent undertakings as theMont CenisRailway, which ascends and tunnels through the Alps; and that stupendous line, the Union Pacific Railroad, 3000 miles in length, formed by the daring and enterprising Americans, by means of which the prairies and the Rocky Mountains are made of no account and New York is brought within seven days of San Francisco! The engineering works on the Sömmering Railway, between Vienna and Trieste; the mighty Victoria Tubular Bridge at Montreal; the railway bridge over Niagara; the difficulties encountered and overcome in India; the bold achievements of railway engineers amid the dizzy heights and solitudes of the Andes—all these subjects must be passed over in silence, else our readers will, we fear, come to the conclusion that we have lost command of the Iron Horse altogether, allowed him to take the bit in his teeth and fairly run away.

Note 1. Many readers may find it difficult to form an adequate conception of such a vast number as 307 millions. It may help one to some idea of it to know that, if a man were to devote himself to count it, one by one,—sitting down after breakfast counting at the rate of one every moment, and working without intermission for eight hours every day, excepting Sundays,—he would not conclude his task until the thirty-fifth year.

Note 2. We would refer them particularly to Messrs W. and R. Chambers’ comprehensive and popularly written work on “Railways, Steamer, and Telegraphs;” Money’s “Rambles on Railways,” which bristles with figures and swarms with anecdote; “Stokers and Pokers,” by Sir Francis Head, a capital and very full work, though somewhat old; W.B. Adams’ “Roads and Rails,” and Bremrer’s “Industries of Scotland.”

Note 3. We had intended to devote much larger space to this most interesting line, but the nature of our book forbids it. We quit the subject regretfully; referring the reader, who may desire to know more, to an able notice of the Metropolitan Railway in “The Shops and Companies of London,” edited by Henry Mayhew.

Back to IndexNext