Sir Francis Head remarks:—“The gigantic power of the locomotive engines
hourly committed to the charge of these drivers was lately strangely
exemplified in the large engine stable at the Camden Station. A
passenger engine, whose furnace-fire had but shortly been lighted, was
standing in this huge building surrounded by a number of artificers, who,
in presence of the chief superintendent, were working in various
directions around it. While they were all busily occupied, the fire in
the furnace—by burning up faster than was expected—suddenly imparted to
the engine the breath of life; and no sooner had the minimum of steam
necessary to move it been thus created, than this infant Hercules not
only walked _off_, but without the smallest embarrassment walked
_through_ the 14-inch brick wall of the great building which contained
it, to the terror of the superintendent and workmen, who expected every
instant that the roof above their heads would fall in and extinguish
them. In consequence of the spindle of the regulator having got out of
its socket the very same accident occurred shortly afterwards with
another engine, which, in like manner, walked through another portion of
this 14-inch wall of the stable that contained it, just as a
thorough-bred horse would have walked out of the door. And if such be
the irresistible power of the locomotive engine when feebly walking in
its new-born state, unattended or unassisted even by its tender, is it
not appalling to reflect what must be its momentum when, in the full
vigour of its life, it is flying down a steep gradient at the rate of 50
miles an hour, backed up by, say, 30 passenger carriages, each weighing
on an average 5½ tons? If ordinary houses could suddenly be placed in
its path, it would, passengers and all, run through them as a musket-ball
goes through a keg of butter; but what would be the result if, at this
full speed, the engine by any accident were to be diverted against a mass
of solid rock, such as sometimes is to be seen at the entrance of a
tunnel, it is impossible to calculate or even to conjecture. It is
stated by the company’s superintendent, who witnessed the occurrence,
that some time ago an ordinary accident happening to a luggage train near
Loughborough, the wagons overrode each other until the uppermost one was
found piled 40 feet above the rails!”