FIG. 2. NINE WILLANS-SIEMENS DYNAMO SETS FOR ELECTRIC TRACTION, 700 H.P. EACH.By permission ofWillans and Robinson, Ltd., Rugby
FIG. 2. NINE WILLANS-SIEMENS DYNAMO SETS FOR ELECTRIC TRACTION, 700 H.P. EACH.By permission ofWillans and Robinson, Ltd., Rugby
FIG. 2. NINE WILLANS-SIEMENS DYNAMO SETS FOR ELECTRIC TRACTION, 700 H.P. EACH.
By permission ofWillans and Robinson, Ltd., Rugby
Nothing of the kind! One portion of a moderate-sized apartment is devoted to the “fitting” of the motor locomotives, and at the other end, enclosed withina low railing, resting upon a bed of great solidity, and occupying but little space, is the machinery in duplicate, as a safeguard against breakdowns.
It consists of a vertical compound engine, supplied with steam from an adjoining boiler-house, whose cylinder is coupled direct to the fly-wheels of the revolving dynamos that are partly sunk into the flooring. These, with their electro-magnets, are so shut in, and so little can be seen of the working, that it all looks very mysterious and incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
In large power-producing machinery an iron staircase leads up to a platform above the dynamos, giving access to the loftier parts of the apparatus, which then, in its general appearance and compactness, somewhat resembles a modern marine engine. On the walls are endless dials, recording the amount of current generated, localising the exact position of the trains on the line at any given moment, and checking the quantity of current picked up by each engine. There is absolutely no smell, no outward indication of resistless power, while almost Arcadian quiet reigns in the neighbourhood of the machines.
That these small dynamos are capable of driving heavy cars filled with passengers at the rate of many miles an hour seems incredible; but faith, “the evidence of things not seen,” must come into play.
The craving for mere size, however, will be amply gratified when the great power house at Chelsea, built to supply the Metropolitan, District, and other railways, is completed (videChapter V.).
But what on earth is a kilowatt, or a volt, an ohm, or an ampère?—expressions that are rapidly becoming as familiar as the word horse-power.
Well, “horse-power” was a term invented long ago by engineers, who blandly asked one to imagine that an ordinary horse was capable of lifting a weight of 33,000 lbs. (or some 14½ tons) one foot high per minute. Now, electricity is a very exact science. There is no mere theory about it; and a unit is a definite quantity of power, known in that science as a “kilowatt hour.” Thus, a kilowatt, or 1,000 watts, is the equivalent in measured work of 1⅓ horse-power, equal to the lifting of 44,000 lbs. per minute, or the doing of so many units of work, either electric lighting, heating, machinery driving, or traction.
Electricity as a locomotive force is being presented to the public in various forms. There is the ordinary railway, like the Underground, that, cleansing itself, amending its ways, and becoming converted to the new order of traction, has been granted a new lease of life. Then there are new lines laid down, intended from the first to be electrical, with specially designed cars, diving beneath the Thames, and connecting the north and south of London. These are our metropolitan pioneer electric railways. There is also the system of railways specifically and popularly known as Tubes, most important factors in the travelling world of modern Babylon. Another division is the system known as Overhead Electric Railways; that is to say, rails laid upon iron girders supported by columns above the roadway, a notable example of which is the Liverpool Overhead Electric Railway.
Electric tramways are with us in Greater London for good and all, with their network of lines in every direction. Some are locally worked by the various BoroughCouncils; others on a comprehensive scale by the London County Council, who now strongly advocate also another system, the Shallow-Underground, by which the cars run in a kind of open trench just below the surface in the middle of the street.
Next we have endless provincial and urban council electric tramways, including some very extensive systems for feeding the enormous traffic of cities and large towns in the Midlands and North of England.
Electric Light Railways, originally intended to be worked on rails laid down upon the ordinary highway, form a special class by themselves to serve short-distance traffic in country districts; but to all intents and purposes they are rural electric trams.
Lastly, we have motor-cars, carriages, omnibuses, cabs, vans, and cycles, that with electricity as their means of propulsion, will possibly ere long supersede every other form of traffic in our streets and along our roads and lanes.
To individualise these various outcomes of electrical traction spread over the length and breadth of Great Britain is impossible. Their names and their statistics are enrolled inGarcke’s Manual of Electrical Undertakings, a work that, likeKelly’s London Directory, grows bigger and bigger every year.
I propose, therefore, only to notice some of the principal ones; and, naturally, the pioneer railway lines should have the place of honour.
“A worthy pioneer.”—Shakespeare.
IN the month of March, 1883, by the opening of the Giant’s Causeway, Portrush, and Bush Valley Railway, the sister island achieved the honour and glory of showing the way to the “predominant partner” in the matter of electrical traction enterprise; winning, however, only by a head, for in August of the same year the Brighton Beach Electric Railway was inaugurated.
Who amongst us can say they know Ireland well? To the average tourist it still remains an unexplored country. The travelling American, however, as a rule, does it from end to end. Commencing with Dublin, “doing” Killarney, and working round the magnificent west coast, he returnsviâthe North Channel, always takingen routeon the coast of Antrim the Giant’s Causeway, thundered upon by storms from the wild Atlantic. There, almost within hail of Britain, are those strange groups of basaltic columns so familiar to geological students, intensely interesting, invested with many an old and mystic Celtic legend, yet until recently difficult of access, as other striking regions in Ireland—an island abounding not only in awe-inspiring scenery, but in sequestered spots of sylvan beauty; a fair land ofmountains and hills, lakes and waterfalls, crystal streams, and splendid harbours; truly called the Emerald Isle; where the grass is greenest, and rare coniferæ flourish; where the myrtle needs no shelter, and the arbutus blooms and fruits to perfection, and flowers are everywhere, for every little enclosure in due season glows with the brightest of flax and potato blossom; and lanes and open country are gay with star-like marigolds, shamrock, violets, honeysuckle, meadowsweet, catsear, scabious, large purple bugle, and such-like lowly but welcome plants.
FIG. 3. THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.By permission ofThos. Cook and Son, Ludgate Circus
FIG. 3. THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.By permission ofThos. Cook and Son, Ludgate Circus
FIG. 3. THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.
By permission ofThos. Cook and Son, Ludgate Circus
From Portrush it is easy to reach the Causeway, though once there, one often has to wait for favourable weather before proceeding to explore its cavernous wonders by water.
The present length of the railway is 8½ miles of single line, its gauge being 3 feet. It is worked partly by steam and partly by electricity on the overhead system, the current being derived from a generating station three-quarters of a mile away, where three hydraulic turbines, fed by an adjoining waterfall, operate the dynamo. Although the railway is out of the way and on a small scale, the attractions of the Causeway and the surrounding district result in a respectable passenger traffic of over a hundred thousand per annum.
Under the sanction of the Brighton Town Council, the Magnus Volk Co., Ltd., now work the Brighton Beach Electric Tram-railway, which at its opening was regarded as a great novelty and curiosity, constituting an additional attraction and amusement to “London by the sea,” and tens of thousands must have taken a ride in its little open cars since it came into existence twenty years ago. The gauge is but 2 feet 8½ inches, the “feeders” are underground, the propelling system is electric, with a third rail, and its speed is about 12 miles an hour. Starting from the west pier, opposite the Royal Aquarium, it sets out on its one mile and a half route of single line and dips beneath the level of the Marine Parade to a level a little above the beach, passingen route, though hidden from view, many landmarks of old Brighton, such as Park Place and Gardens, Royal Crescent, Marine Square, and Lewes Crescent, and terminating at a point near Black Rock.
This was the eastern end of Old Brighton, noted for many an original character in the “twenties” and “thirties,” not the least interesting of whom were old Martha Gunn, queen of the bathing-machines, andSak Deen Mahomed, a native of the East, who introduced the art of shampooing into the town, and lived to become a centenarian, his fame being enshrined in verse by James Smith, one of the authors ofRejected Addresses, who humorously predicted his longevity as follows:—
“Sprung doubtless from Abdullah’s son,Thy miracles thy sire’s outrun,Thy cures his deaths outnumber;His coffin soars ’twixt heav’n and earth,But thou, within that narrow berth,Immortal, ne’er shall slumber.”
“Sprung doubtless from Abdullah’s son,Thy miracles thy sire’s outrun,Thy cures his deaths outnumber;His coffin soars ’twixt heav’n and earth,But thou, within that narrow berth,Immortal, ne’er shall slumber.”
“Sprung doubtless from Abdullah’s son,Thy miracles thy sire’s outrun,Thy cures his deaths outnumber;His coffin soars ’twixt heav’n and earth,But thou, within that narrow berth,Immortal, ne’er shall slumber.”
Many have been the changes in Brighton since those days. Arundel Terrace, Kemp Town, Ultima Thule in the east; Adelaide Crescent with Palmyra Square, its western boundary. From the fields to the north of that square could be seen, a mile or so off, the village of Hove, the intervening space being dotted with farms. No one could have dreamt that a great railway-station would be built there, with minor ones at Kemp Town, West Brighton, and Hove. Old residents could not have pictured a Grand Aquarium, a Western and Eastern Pier, nor the destruction of their familiar Chain Pier. They would be amazed at the spread of Brighton in every direction, the springing up of palatial hotels like the “Métropole” and “Grand,” and the increase of the population to some hundred and fifty thousand; while the coaching world, headed by the popular Sir St. Vincent Cotton, prince of amateur whips, and all the confraternity of coachmen and hackney-coach drivers, would have thought anyone a lunatic who had dared to prophesy that one day a conveyance drawn without horses or steam power would carry passengers along the Brighton beach!
For many years prior to 1890, in Gracechurch Street, at a point near its junction with Eastcheap, could be seen every day of the week numerous omnibuses arriving between nine and eleven a.m., and departing between five and eight p.m., for the suburbs over the water. These ’buses regularly plied between London and Kennington, Walworth, Camberwell, Stockwell, Clapham, and Brixton (a few journeying to Dulwich and Peckham), for the special accommodation of dwellers in those favourite localities engaged in business during the day. Wealthy “principals” of mercantile and brokers’ firms drove to and from their comfortable Surrey villas in well-equipped carriages, the junior members in smart traps or dogcarts; but the small merchants and smaller brokers, the head clerks and the rank and file who do all the hard work, had to make use of these omnibuses, and when exceptionally bad weather prevented the vehicles running, they had to get to and from their offices as best they could on foot. To the working man, living, say, at Brixton, and engaged upon a City job, the fares—4d.to 8d.—were prohibitive. The time wasted in these conveyances was great, and at the best it was an unpleasant way of travelling; overcrowding was common, and the “fight for the trams” in 1903 is as nothing compared to the frantic rush for those omnibus seats; while on wet days the sight was piteous.
It is true that City men could use the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, to reach these suburbs, but this involved a walk to Blackfriars Station, and the facing of the crush on its dangerous platforms. There were also the alternatives of crossing Blackfriars Bridge and using the London Tramway Company’s horse-cars,or of forcing one’s way over London Bridge, tramping or “bussing” it along the Borough High Street, and, emerging at the “Elephant and Castle,” there tapping the trams.
As a matter of fact, these ingenious alternative routes were seldom made use of. At the close of business, men of all ranks want to get home as fast as they can, and from some station not far from their counting-houses. Therefore, in the days I am describing, how could any of those gentlemen clad in irreproachable frock-coats and new glossy hats, who each day of the week issued from snug offices in Austin Friars, Drapers’ Gardens, or Copthall Court, whose business was transacted over the way at the “House”; how could the brokers of Mark Lane and Mincing Lane, the underwriters at Lloyd’s, the ship-brokers and ship-owners round about Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street, the flourishing bill-brokers of Broad Street, and the smaller mercantile fry; how could any of these, if resident on the Surrey side, be expected to go to and from business by way of Blackfriars?
However, this unsatisfactory means of communication was hardly likely to escape the notice of such astute experts as Mr. J. C. Mott, doyen director of the Great Western Railway, and his far-seeing friends. They took counsel together, and, after the usual hard task ofpersuadingpeople, plans were matured, and in 1884 an enterprise was organised and incorporated as the City of London and Southwark Subway Company, to construct a line of railway from King William Street to the “Elephant and Castle,” with an intermediate station at Marshalsea Road.
This was the initial stage of the present well-known railway.
At the outset, three points had to be considered. How was the subway to be constructed? What motive power should be employed? And how was the deep level to be reached by the passengers? A subway under the Thames was no novelty. The directors of the new line were not the “first that ever burst into that silent sea” of mud and gravel at the bottom of the swift-flowing river. Brunel had been long before them with his costly Thames Tunnel, and Barlow had years ago laid upon its oozy bed the Tower Subway of iron.
It was decided that a tube, or, rather, two independent tunnels of cast-iron rings, should be driven side by side beneath the bottom of the stream, a little to the west of London Bridge, and continued on the Surrey side.
On this system the work was begun by the contractors, Siemens Brothers and Mather and Platt, and proceeded with quite out of public sight. It was accompanied with many disheartening delays and seemingly insurmountable difficulties; but they were all successfully overcome, and the tubes were brought to a temporary end at the “Swan,” Stockwell, to which charming retreat, by an Act of Parliament, 1887, an extension of the line had been sanctioned, making its length a little over three miles.
The motive power eventually selected was electricity, steam being impracticable, and the funicular or cable system considered unreliable. Access to and from the trains was to be obtained at the stations by means of capacious twin-lifts capable of holding many people at a time.
Then the problem of how best to utilise the ample “power,” generated at the Stockwell Station, for hauling the cars, had to be seriously tackled. It was not a question of a toy line like that on the Brighton beach,but of the driving at fair speed, say 15 miles an hour, of comparatively heavy coaches laden with passengers, and at frequent intervals. Altogether it was a new departure in electric traction.
How the motor locomotives were effectually to pick up the current was the puzzle which had to be solved, or the enterprise might at the last moment collapse and the subscribed capital be lost.
After an infinite amount of anxious experimenting on the part of Mr. Mott and his scientific advisers—the narrative of which, as told me by that veteran, sounded like a romance—by a happy inspirationtheway was hit upon; and all other technical difficulties overcome, the line was pronounced to be in working order (1890), after a series of trial trips, at one of which the writer had the privilege of being present.
ONE o’clock saw a large party of us, chiefly City men, amongst whom were numerous civil engineers, waiting at King William Street booking-office to descend into the bowels of the earth by one of the semicircular lifts, a novelty in point of size. Our turn having come, we duly filed into the elevator. The telescopic doors clashed upon us, and we stood for a second or two silently expectant, feeling like a batch of condemned criminals on a gigantic scaffold waiting for the hangman to draw back the fatal lever that would launch them into the other world.
Noiselessly the lift descended to an apparently fathomless depth, but in reality, I believe, some 90 or 100 feet. When released by the janitor, we found ourselves in a small, well-lighted, cool, and spotlessly clean, white-tiled station, whence was discernible a couple of small tunnels side by side, leading to unknown regions, seemingly all too narrow to accommodate even the miniature cars waiting for us at one of the narrow platforms.
Inspecting the tunnels, the classical man of our party, a wag in his way, who had hitherto made no remark, was heard to mutter something in Latin, which, on being coerced, he admitted was out of Virgil, and was translated thus: “This is the spot where the way dividesin two branches.” In vain we pointed out that the quotation was inappropriate, as the ways wereparallel. He was obdurate, so we left him to his own reflections.
To most of us accustomed to roomy Pullmans and commodious railway carriages, the cars, though comfortable, seemed cramped, especially in height. The signal given, off we started, when we noticed that the cars fitted the tube with such nicety and economy of space that, could the windows have been let down, we could easily have touched the iron plates of the tunnel. We realised, too, that although there was no smoke or smell, the railway was by no means noiseless; neither, in the opinion of several of the experts present, was the running as steady as on the “Underground.”
A hint had been given us that at some point where the line dipped and rose again the cars might come to a temporary standstill. As we rather uneasily recalled this, the speed gradually slackened, and finally the train stopped altogether, and simultaneously the incandescent lights began to pale, and at last subsided into filaments of sickly red. The situation was not a pleasant one. There we were; many of us with important engagements awaiting us later in the day; most of us with wives and children who would expect us home as usual when evening arrived, and grow anxious at our absence. There we were sealed up in a tube, for all we knew, at a point beneath the Thames. Not a sound reached us from the locomotive, or, indeed, from anywhere. Were we thus to remain indefinitely? For walk out we could not, there being no room outside the carriages. Would some memorial tablet let into the side of London Bridge, months hence, recall the fact that near it a goodly company of highly respectable citizens had perished in a living tomb?
I don’t think we talked much. It was luncheon-time; we were hungry, and we felt like the occupants of the snowed-up cars in one of Mark Twain’s stories, who gloomily eyed one another as starvation threatened, calculating upon whom, by an ingenious and complicated system of voting previously agreed to, would next fall the lot of being sacrificed for the benefit of the rest, and I believe I found myself unconsciously speculating on the plumpness of a youthful stockbroker standing by my side. But after a very few moments of suspense the train rattled on again, the lights reappeared, and presently we drew up at the Borough, the first station on the Surrey side.
Railway booking-offices are not usually things of beauty, least of all those on the Metropolitan, District, and suburban lines. Here, however, was a surprise, for we found quite a picturesque stone-and-brick building on the ground-floor, a cupola surmounting the prettily designed entrance, and a small dome with lantern by way of roof. And this was a sample of all the stations along the line.
The Borough recalled the Marshalsea that once stood close by; and there opposite was St. George’s, Southwark, where Little Dorrit, accidentally locked out of the prison, was allowed by “the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was,” to take refuge in the vestry, where, years afterwards, she signed the marriage register when wedded to Arthur Clennam.
The next stoppage was at the Elephant and Castle—not the tavern of that name, where in the past on Derby Day the superabundant holiday traffic usually became hopelessly congested, but the City and South London’s new station, close to Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, Rabbits’ great boot warehouse, and Tarn’s vastemporium, that seems to occupy most of Newington Causeway. Onwards to Kennington Common, once the place of public executions for Surrey, now a well-kept miniature park. Beyond it, Kennington Oval, associated with cricket all the world over; and finally we arrived at Stockwell, the then terminus of the line, since extended to Clapham, where Tom Hood used to go to school at a house “with ugly windows ten in a row, its chimney in the rear,” a style of architecture of which many specimens still exist round and about the Common.
At Stockwell we visited the generating station, recently much extended, and provided with entirely new plant, and, wondering at and admiring all we saw, learned from the chief engineer that the contretempsen routewas due to a slight defect in the new and untried power-machinery; and thus at the point where the dip in the line was greatest, the cars stopped.
An excellent luncheon restored us all to eloquence and equanimity, extinguishing the cannibalistic feeling of half an hour ago, and, returning without any incident worth recording, we emerged once more in the City, to be greeted by the noise of the traffic that ever surges around King William the Fourth’s statue.
Those were the “green salad” days of London’s Pioneer Electric Railway Line. Now it runs without a hitch, and has been extended north as far as the historic “Angel,” thus giving a direct route between Clapham and Islington. It has powers to exchange traffic with the Great Northern and the City RailwayviâOld Street, and also to connect itself with the Baker Street and Waterloo Electric Railway at the Elephant and Castle Station; and in a new building at Finsbury Pavement it now has commodious head offices.
At the last half-yearly general meeting the chairman, Mr. C. G. Mott, in the course of his speech, stated that the Board aspired to have a thoroughly first-class terminus in the City of London, and had deposited plans with this view. They proposed to construct this station between the present Bank Station and the King William Street statue.
That the City and South London Railway is most useful and popular is shown by the number of passengers it has carried—some ninety millions since its opening—the returns for last year showing about eighteen millions, over a total route of about seven miles. For the convenience of travellers, it eventually will have subways, connecting its Lombard Street Station with the Bank Station of the Central London Railway, and it already has them from its new London Bridge Station to the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. Finally, it can boast of possessing a station below a church—a unique position, I believe. St. Mary Woolnoth’s foundations were completely removed, the vaults cleared out, and the whole replaced by huge iron girders, whereon the sacred edifice now rests, with the booking-office below.
The month of August, 1898, was unusually warm, and the heat was felt as much in the City as anywhere. Straw hats were universal; the shady side of the street, if there happened to be one, was thronged; secluded alleys and courts were resorted to by the knowing ones who could afford the time to linger there; and even highly respectable merchants were to be found sitting in shirt-sleeves at their writing-tables and wishing, with Sydney Smith, that they could “sit in their bones.”
At the junction of the Poultry with Victoria Street, shadowed by the Mansion House, from each side of the road a mysterious hoarding had just been removed, revealing an iron railing enclosing a small area with a mysterious staircase bearing the announcement that it led to the subway to the new electric railway, connecting the City with Waterloo Station. Descending a few steps, and emerging into a tunnelled incline, the perspiring pedestrian quickly found that here, if anywhere, was a refuge from the heat, the coolest place in London, and that it was well worth while, on the pretence of urgent business across the water, to pay twopence each way, merely to drink in the refreshing air wafted backwards and forwards along subway, platform, and tube.
This was the Waterloo and City Railway, a short deep-level line on the tube principle, nearly 1¾ miles long, burrowing under the Thames’ bed. At the terminus, by rather prolonged inclines and staircases, passengers could walk to the main or suburban platforms of Waterloo Station and catch the trains for Wimbledon, Hampton Court, Surbiton, etc.
Like the City and South London, this railway meets a great want. Before its opening, City men living down the London and South Western line had no alternative but to catch a South Eastern train from Cannon Street or Charing Cross; to take an omnibusviâthe Strand across to Waterloo Bridge; or to cab it by devious routesviâBlackfriars Bridge. Now they can reach Waterloo with ease, comfort, and economy.
Under agreement, the line is worked by the London and South Western Railway Company. The electrical equipment is by the famous firm of Siemens Brothers, the generating station being up a blind alley adjoining
FIG. 4. WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY’S NEW PATTERN CARBy permission of the“Tramway and Railway World” Publishing Co., London
FIG. 4. WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY’S NEW PATTERN CARBy permission of the“Tramway and Railway World” Publishing Co., London
FIG. 4. WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY’S NEW PATTERN CAR
By permission of the“Tramway and Railway World” Publishing Co., London
the dismal arched entrance to Waterloo from York Road. Each train seats 208 passengers; the average speed is 18 miles an hour, and its usefulness is proved by the fact that over two and a half million ordinary passengers were carried by it in one half-year,i.e.to December 31st, 1902 (not counting season-ticket holders), while the receipts for that period were £17,400.
During the busy hours of morning and evening the large trains are used and always fill up rapidly, but in the slack times of midday single motor-cars, each carrying 50 passengers, are sufficient to cope with the traffic. The cars are rather stuffy, and, like the train cars, are narrow and low. At each end is a small partitioned-off “cab,” where sits a motor-man. No tickets are issued from the booking-office; but, as in an omnibus, the conductor comes round and collects the fares, giving a punched voucher in return, which is retained by the traveller.
There are few overhead, or, rather, elevated, railways in the world. Somehow they do not seem to be popular, and the tendency, in England at least, is rather towards burrowing like the mole, than soaring above the street level.
In Germany there is a wonderful instance of electrically driven overhead line between Elberfeld and Barmen, on the mono-rail principle, the trains hanging from tracks suspended high above rivers and public roads. At the great Beckton gas works there has been in use since 1894 an iron-built miniature railway elevated on pillars, and it is a curious sight to witness busy little engines incessantly hauling coal trucks from the pier to the retort houses. An ingenious example of theelevated principle is to be seen at the Victoria Station, Manchester, where a railway on a very reduced scale conveys passengers’ luggage from one platform to another, and idlers are never tired of watching it. The track, a double one, is suspended from the roof and runs between platforms five and six. The motive power is electricity, and the motor is placed between the wheels and the track, and it lifts and lowers a basket which holds about 15 cwt. of luggage.
A wonderful instance of averyelevated railway existed at Beachy Head while the new lighthouse was being built 600 feet distant from the base of the cliff, at that point 400 feet high. It conveyed material to the site, the descending load drawing up the ascending empty “skip” on the overhead suspension principle.
Our New York cousins have, in their elevated steam railway, long been familiarised with the system, but for Londoners it possesses the fatal objection that the occupants of the cars as they pass along can look into the front windows of the houses and spy upon the occupants. Running along docks, however, elevated railways are not objectionable; and the earliest example, in this or any other country, of electricity applied to overhead traction is at Liverpool.
Extending along the Mersey—that noble river whose tidal movement is said to be four times the outfall of the Mississippi—for a distance of 6½ miles are the Liverpool Docks, in importance undoubtedly the first in the world, but, until the Overhead Railway was opened, exasperatingly inaccessible to business men whose time was valuable, and bewildering to strangers by reason of their immensity.
Along the line of dock, it is true, ran broad-wheeled omnibuses built to run on the low-level dock railway,but so slow, in consequence of the pressure of traffic and the necessity for frequent shuntings for the passage of goods trains, that to reach the farthest dock usually occupied over an hour. To improve upon this it was proposed, as far back as 1852, to construct a high-level railway; but nothing practical came of it until 1888, when the Liverpool Overhead Railway Company took over the parliamentary powers obtained by the Dock Board, and setting steadily to work, created their line for passengers only, and, from the first, achieved a great success, the number of travellers amounting to many millions annually.
On the 4th of February, 1893, the railway was appropriately opened by the ex-Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, whose devotion to the science of electricity is well known. Pressing a button at the base of a silver inkstand (subsequently presented to the Marquis as a memento), the engines that generated the electric current were set in motion, and by special train his lordship was conveyed over the seven miles of line, and afterwards entertained at a banquet by the Mayor, when, in an excellent speech, he dilated upon the prospect of electricity becoming the motive power of the age.
In the following month the railway was opened for public traffic, and, with its thirteen stations, its five minutes’ service, and its cheap fares, practically extinguished the omnibuses, light or heavy.
From the Overhead Railway a splendid view is obtained of the busiest locality perhaps in the empire. Below are the railway trucks packed close with imported merchandise of all kinds: cotton from America and the East; grain from the ends of the earth; beef, bacon, cheese, butter, flour, and fruit from the New World; wool and tallow from Australia and Argentina. Waggons
FIG. 5. THE LIVERPOOL OVERHEAD ELECTRIC RAILWAYBy permission of theLiverpool Overhead Electric Railway Co.
FIG. 5. THE LIVERPOOL OVERHEAD ELECTRIC RAILWAYBy permission of theLiverpool Overhead Electric Railway Co.
FIG. 5. THE LIVERPOOL OVERHEAD ELECTRIC RAILWAY
By permission of theLiverpool Overhead Electric Railway Co.
and carts filled with Manchester goods, hardware, machinery, chemicals, and every imaginable kind of manufactured goods are alongside the big liners that come into port, discharge their cargoes, load up, and are out in the Mersey and off to sea again in a few days. Truly Liverpool is a wonderful place, and although her greatness as a seaport has been threatened by the opening of the Ship Canal to Manchester, it will be a long day before she surrenders her claim to be the chief marine approach to Great Britain.
“Behold they shall come with speed swiftly.”—Isaiahv. 26.
AONE-RAIL railway! What kind of novelty can that be, emanating no doubt from the prolific brain of some enthusiastic engineer possessed with an idea, a fad, a craze—call it what you will! We are accustomed to highly respectable trains running in an orthodox manner on double rails. A projected, many-railed track we have also heard of to carry ships bodily across the Isthmus of Panama. But the idea of a single-rail “Flying Dutchman” or “Wild Irishman” seems chimerical.
It is not so, however, and the system has been solemnly and deliberately sanctioned by Act of Parliament.
Nowadays one need not be astonished at anything. Take cycling, for instance. Long ago, when velocipedes—three or four-wheeled, uncanny machines—were mere toys wherewith youths loved to dislocate their joints on the lower terraces of the Crystal Palace, no one dreamt that bicycles, outraging all the laws of gravitation and practically mono-wheeled, would ere long be used on road and field and moor, on mountain-side, on steppe and desert, over barren Asiatic tundras and snow-cladYukon plains—in short, wherever adventurous mankind has penetrated.
The mono-rail train, like a bicycle, runs on one linear track, but, unlike that hopelessly collapsible machine, requires no balancing, and cannot capsize, and under proper conditions is the safest known method of travelling at very great speed.
“Faire prose sans le savoir” is a familiar aphorism of Molière, but perhaps it would astonish most of us to be calmly told by modern engineers that all our lives we have,without knowing it, been travelling on mono-railways! They assert that although it is true that the ordinary engine with its coaches rests on apairof rails, the fact that the space between the rails is cut away is immaterial, as it is rendered a single track by the rigidity of the carriage axles, and if these were loose, of course the train would overturn.
Nature has no example of mono-railwayism (to coin an expression), unless it be the gossamer or shooting spider, that upon a single invisible thread spun from its body ascends to aerial heights on a kind of self-manufactured mono-rail, Dame Nature being too lavish and too wise, in the perfect freedom she accords to birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, to restrict their movements to one undeviating path.
In the moral world there have always been mono-railists, men of one fixed idea, from which they could not, or would not, budge—apostles of an ambition, a creed, a theory, a political conviction. The world has had its Alexander the Great, its Napoleon, Buddha, St. Paul, Mahomet, Martin Luther, Ignatius Loyola, Wycliffe, its Palissy, George Stephenson, Mungo Park, John Bright, and Cobden.
It has been left to the inventive mechanical genius ofthe nineteenth century to develop the mono-rail system. Doubtless those inscrutable people, the Chinese, knew of it, and applied it in some way long ago; and perhaps the yet more mysterious dwellers in ancient Egypt—whence all wisdom seems to have descended—utilised it after some unknown fashion.
Blondin, in his marvellous feat of trundling a wheel-barrow containing a man along the high-level rope, used a hempen mono-rail; and the wire cables stretching across the Thames at the reconstructed bridges at Kew and Vauxhall, acting as travelling ways to convey the excavated soil from the coffer-dams in large iron “skips” or buckets, were another species of mono-rail; while at home in brickfields, and in mines, and on plantations in distant lands, miniature railways have been used for years to carry clay, ore, and produce, over plain and hill and dale.
In India a peculiar kind of tramway truck has been in use for some time, with two or three flanged wheels which run on a single rail, and a large balance-wheel on one side of the truck to prevent it toppling over. Produce of all kinds can easily be drawn upon it by a couple of coolies, and its efficiency on country roads has been highly spoken of.
Germany presents us with a recent and curious example of the application of the principle to locomotion. In the Wupper Valley near Dusseldorf and Cologne there are two towns, Barmen and Elberfeld, about eight miles apart, mutually engaged in chemical and textile industries, and this separation of the sister-towns was an obvious disadvantage to both. But now they are joined by a wonderful railway, constructed on an elevated line running six miles of its course above the River Wupper, a tributary of the Rhine, some sixty to ahundred feet wide. The carriages are suspended, and work upon a single rail, a development of the travelling cable-way system. This rail is rigidly fastened to an iron framework of girders, and supports the cars hanging therefrom by means of two steel “bogies” with two wheels. Thus they can pass round sharp curves without slackening speed and with the greatest safety, its motive power, electricity, being applied by two motors on each carriage which drive both wheels with equal force at a speed fixed at thirty-one miles an hour, and attainable fifteen seconds after starting.
As elevated railways of this type are somewhat costly, and a simpler and cheaper form would be a desideratum, a short line across country was built as an experiment at Cologne-Deutz. The stays, measuring from 9·6 feet to 28·5 feet, were made either of wood, or of iron tubes, and met at the top in a cap, from which was jointed the sheet-iron supports that carried the mono-rail. By means of this jointed connection, the strain was always of a central character, and, therefore, more easily borne. At intervals of about 660 feet a couple of stays were firmly braced together, in order to give stability to the overhead structure and to take up the longitudinal thrust. In consequence, even with light locomotives, the traction power was very high, and on the line at Deutz it was found that a locomotive drawing two carriages full of passengers could ascend a gradient of 1 in 6 with perfect safety.
But a means of adapting a mono-rail to every condition had some time before been thought out. In 1883-4 Charles Lartigue, the eminent French engineer, developing the principle conceived by the great Telford, constructed some small lines in Tunis and Algeria for carrying esparto grass. The cars were drawn by animalsin a special form of mono-rail, the model upon which Mr. F. B. Behr,ASS. INST. C.E.—who modestly disclaims all originality in the matter—has worked for years, greatly improving in practical details the original design, and constructing for the first time mono-rail trains that have been successful in the carriage of both goods and passengers by steam and electricity.
FIG. 6. PLAN OF A BEHR MONO-RAILWAY CARBy permission of Mr. F. B. Behr, Ass. Inst. C.E.
FIG. 6. PLAN OF A BEHR MONO-RAILWAY CARBy permission of Mr. F. B. Behr, Ass. Inst. C.E.
FIG. 6. PLAN OF A BEHR MONO-RAILWAY CAR
By permission of Mr. F. B. Behr, Ass. Inst. C.E.
The Lartigue single-rail system, as perfected by Mr. Behr, is as follows, but of necessity my description is a mere outline.
Dismissing all preconceived ideas of rails laid down upon the ground, we must imagine a heavy double-headed steel rail firmly bolted on to the summit of a girder supported by trestles, the whole rigidly framed upon massive sleepers. We thus have a permanent way somewhat resembling a continuous A-shaped metal viaduct, raised about five feet from the surface, or a succession of iron barriers—such as road-menders make use of to divert the traffic—set ends on, securedto each other and to the ground. Now take an ordinary railway car with seats arranged as in an omnibus, but with two additional rows back to back in the centre. Remove the axles and wheels, extending the sides and ends of the car almost down to the ground level, thus providing beneath the flooring an enclosure with ample room for the locomotive machinery. All along the bottom of this enclosure is an opening or space, about five feet high—extending between the middle rows of seats—that fits the A-shaped viaduct, so that the car is suspended, or, as it were, sits upon the mono-rail, whereon roll six vertical grooved wheels that, when set in motion by the electric current, propel the cars. Thus we have a train apparently without wheels, these together with the apparatus being completely hidden away between and beneath the passengers’ seats. On each side of the A-shaped trestle are fixed two guide-rails fitting close into horizontal grooved wheels effectually checking all oscillation. In front is the bogie locomotive motor with a pointed bow, the stern of the car also being pointed, so that the entire arrangement resembles when seen from above a great stickless rocket with a sharp and flexible snout.
As the sister isle was the first to adopt electricity to a railway (videChapter II.), so was she the pioneer of mono-railism. In County Kerry, Munster, near the Shannon’s mouth, stands the little town of Listowel, and 9½ miles distant is Ballybunion. To connect these a mono-railway for passenger and goods traffic was opened on March 1st, 1888, and has worked ever since without any difficulty. The trains are drawn by a steam locomotive divided in two, one on each side of the mono-rail—a kind of twin-screw arrangement—and with their smoke-stacks and giant lantern between them,present a strange and rather comical appearance, while the track meandering at its own sweet will across country without fencing of any kind, adds to the novelty of the little line.
Its great safety has been amply demonstrated by the only mishap that has occurred to it. Some miscreant had deliberately removed the fastenings from over thirty yards of the line at a critical point where a reverse curve began, and close to a bridge. At full speed, a train carrying 200 passengers came up to the loosened rail, which gave way, breaking the coupling chains and, luckily, bringing into action the automatic Westinghouse brake. The permanent way was ruined by the shock, but the fall absorbed the force of the reaction, and deposited the carriages quietly on the ground without injury to anyone, and without even breaking a window. On an ordinary line the train would have been thrown off the metals into the river with terrible consequences. Shortly after the line was opened, the Lartigue system was adopted in France, from Tours to Pannissieres in the Loire Department.
The Ballybunion and Listowel Railway is the indirect father of a modified form of mono-rail which is expected to appear this year at the Crystal Palace. It is called the Electric Mid-Railway, the invention of Mr. W. R. Smith, and as the line is to connect the existing railway station with various points in the grounds, it should be well patronised at the modest penny fare which is to be charged. Being an entire novelty, it has a specially good chance of success in this particular situation. The single rail is placed below the carriage, the weight of which is balanced upon it after the fashion of a bicycle. On each side of this single track runs a trestle carrying a rail on a level with the centre of gravity of each carriage. Thisrail serves the necessary purpose of supporting the carriage and of also preventing derailing.
A similar device had been suggested—and possibly has been carried into effect on the New York and Washington D. C. Line—when it was proposed to elevate a track above the earth on a single line of upright beams, the trains to be kept steady by an auxiliary rail on either side, but which would only come into play on rounding curves.
In Belgium, Mr. Behr, who throughout his labours there received the personal encouragement and patronage of King Leopold II., successfully built an experimental high-speed mono-rail line at Tervueren in the neighbourhood of Brussels, as an annexe to the Exhibition of 1897. To find suitable ground was the great difficulty. The line had to cross ten public roads, and in the absence of compulsory powers, leases for the land had to be arranged with grasping occupiers and owners. The soil was bad, big cuttings and embankment were unavoidable, and finally the line consisted of nothing but steep, up-and-down gradients. In fact, all the conditions were most unfavourable, notwithstanding which, the result of the experiment was conclusive in showing that with the mono-rail and perfected electrical traction, very high speed, double that of existing passenger express trains, could be attained with absolute safety, a principle which Mr. Behr had for a long time past been particularly impressed with, but which he maintains is not possible on the ordinary two-rail track, even with electricity as a motive power.
In November, 1901, Mr. Behr went to Berlin, and investigated the experiments carried out during fortydays by a number of engineering experts on a military track laid down between the German capital and Zossen. It was hoped that a speed of 160 miles an hour would be attained and maintained, and, as a matter of fact, starting from a low speed, the train gradually reached that of 87 miles; then, for a moment only, 95 miles; and for an instant of time, 100 miles per hour; but it was at once discernible that the ordinary two-rail permanent way, though straight, could not bear the terrific strain imposed upon it; the rails bent at many places, while the hundred-miles-an-hour rate had so destructive an effect as to render impracticable any attempt to create a higher record. The air resistance was found to be considerable. With a square-fronted instead of a pointed coach, it was appreciable, and the suction behind the train resembled the pressure of the water at the stern of a mail steamer, and was calculated to equal two-thirds of the “bow” resistance. These experiments went to prove that for excessive velocity an ordinary railway was absolutely unsafe.
A year before this, a steam locomotive train had been tried in America by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Company, on the Adams principle of reducing the atmospheric resistance to a minimum. It consisted of six cars, a tender, and an engine of fifty-seven tons. The entire train was sheathed down to within eight inches of the track. There were no projections, and all the windows were flush; the cars were coupled close together, and the rear one was run off to a point, the train resembling one long sinuous and flexible carriage.
With this comparatively light engine it is said that the forty miles between Baltimore and Washington were covered in thirty-seven and a half minutes. But it was claimed that with a more powerful locomotive the traincould have been easily run at the rate of one mile in thirty-five seconds, or nearly two miles a minute.
These speeds appear tremendous, but custom would soon reconcile us to them. Our forefathers thought fifteen miles an hour terrific; and one of the objections to Stephenson’s ideas was, that at such a speed, not to mention a twenty-or twenty-five-mile rate, no human being could draw breath.
Since then we have quietly acquiesced in and equally welcomed a style of travelling varying from 35 to an average of 58 miles an hour, and even consider it no great feat to run a special viceregal train from Euston to Holyhead—263½ miles—in five hours without stopping, and are not astonished to read of last year’s record run of the mail express from Boulogne to Paris—168 miles—at an average speed of 68 miles an hour!
Still, 120 miles every sixty minutes without stopping is a large order, and in practice would give some remarkable results. For instance, a resident at Putney could be whisked from the station nearest to him, and thence to a point adjoining his office—say in Seething Lane, some seven miles off—in less than five minutes. Brighton could be reached from town in twenty-five minutes; Dover, in forty; Edinburgh, in three hours twenty minutes. Inverness—663 miles away—could be arrived at from Euston in six hours twenty minutes, instead of the fifteen hours thirty-five minutes of the ordinary express; and Paris—allowing one hour thirty minutes for the Channel passage—in three hours forty-two minutes.
Now, the contention of the advocates of the monorail principle is, that only by that system can very highspeed be safely attained; and when one comes to closely examine the cars in which this hundred-and-ten-miles-per-hour travelling is achieved, confidence is at once inspired, because of their low centre of gravity and consequent unlikeliness of derailment.
There remains only one question—Cui bono?What useful purpose can be served by being able to get from Liverpool to Manchester in twenty minutes instead of over an hour? On an emergency, such as a sudden necessity for the services of a medical specialist, a matter of life or death perhaps, or on the occasion of any crisis in domestic or mercantile life when the instant presence of some one distant individual is imperative, it might be of immense service. But in the usual course of business, do not existing railways bring merchant and broker, importer and manufacturer, face to face quickly enough, and are not telephones and telegraphs and the post sufficient to carry through big transactions between the centre of the cotton trade and the great city on the banks of the Mersey? Public opinion, which demands increasing speed in every phase of life, especially in travelling, declares they are not sufficient; for we live in an impatient age when every hour of detention on a transatlantic passage is begrudged.
Therefore it is not to be wondered at that in 1900-1, after the most exhaustive inquiries and criticisms, the royal assent was given August 17th, 1901, to the Manchester and Liverpool Electric Express Railway, which was duly authorised by Act of Parliament. It must be premised that the line, like our London Tube, does not provide for goods traffic; that the time occupied by the journey being so short, neither luggage-van, lavatory, or refreshment buffet is required, and that all trains consist of a single car, couplings being a source of danger at sogreat a rate of speed. But as the trains run every ten minutes, and carry about forty persons each time, a large passenger traffic is provided for.
Well—a broker has been telephoned for by his client, a wealthy cotton-spinner in Manchester, anxious to consult with him personally; so he at once leaves the flags of the Exchange, and after an eight minutes’ walk arrives at the Express Railway Station, near the entrance gate of the Blue Coat Hospital in School Lane. He considers that in getting into and out of the lift he has lost two minutes, but he just catches his car and starts for a run of 34½ miles to Manchester, and since it is his first experience of lightning travelling, he notices everything connected with the new line. There are many curves, he finds, all necessary in order to avoid conflict with the vested interests of other railway companies; the gradients, he observes, at points about three-quarters of a mile from the Liverpool and Manchester stations, are steep—1 in 25, and 1 in 30—but of service in accelerating and breaking the trains.
Unlike the Listowel mono-rail line, the Manchester and Liverpool express is fenced from end to end with an unclimbable barrier, and as there are no level-crossings and no means of access, there is no possibility of trespassing. Also, for the security of the workmen employed in maintaining the track as on an ordinary railway—the system of “packing” the sleepers and inspecting the various parts being common to all railways—a clear space of three feet is left between the passing trains, and strong posts, ten feet apart, are fixed along the centre of the space for the labourers to hold on by when an express rushes by. Collisions, our broker quickly perceives, are impossible, there being no switches, and notwithstanding the multitude of passengers (sometwenty thousand per day) there are never more than two cars on the line at a time, and there are no stoppages between the two termini.
For signalling purposes, the line is divided into four sections of about five miles each, and as the train passes by, its electric motor automatically operates the signal and immediately “blocks” the section behind it, so that the train following cannot advance until its leader has cleared the five-mile division.
The driver and conductor are both together in the front part of the train, so that the conductor has ample time to look out for the signals, to apply the brakes, and assist his mate. The brakes are of the Westinghouse pattern, and the two combined can stop the cars in about 800 yards, even at the speed of 110 miles an hour. These can be aided by Mr. Behr’s ingenious device, which Sir William H. Preece considers quite practicable, viz. louvres or shutters, which, when opened, materially increase the air resistance.
Past Toxteth Park, Garston, Halewood, Widnes (whose only rival in sheer ugliness is perhaps London’s Stratford-by-Bow), and exactly half-way, Warrington, conspicuous for the inkiness of its river Mersey, and noted for its glass, wire, and chemical industries; famed for its network of waterways, especially for the great but evil-smelling ship-canal; noted in history—when but a hamlet, with a clear trout-yielding stream—as the camping-ground of the young Pretender when on his march to Derby in 1745; and associated with Mrs. Gaskell (whose “Cranford” is identified with Knutsford, a neighbouring village), the two Bishops Claughton, Viscount Cross, Luke Fildes,R.A., and “Warrington” Wood, the sculptor.
Close by, in the parish of Great Sankey, is the power-generatingstation of the railway, the current obtained being 15,000 volts on the triphase alternating system, converted in five sub-stations placed along the line, into a continuous 650 volt current. Every car has four traction motors arranged in pairs, each with a full-speed capacity of 160 h.p., equal to 110 miles an hour. The cars are comfortably upholstered; the seats are separated and placed back to back in the middle, those along the sides facing inwards, as in the Twopenny Tube. The lighting is, of course, excellent, and the ventilation perfect, though to prevent accident the windows are fixed, and the doors, while the train is in motion, are automatically locked.