The Rev. F. S. Williams, in an article in the _Contemporary Review_,
entitled “Railway Revolutions,” remarks:—“We need not go back so far as
the time when third-class passengers had to stand in a sort of cattle-pen
placed on wheels; it is only a few years since the Parliamentary trains
were run in bare fulfilment of the obligations of Parliament, and when a
journey by one of them could never be looked upon as anything better than
a necessary evil. To start in the darkness of a winter’s morning to
catch the only third-class train that ran; to sit, after a slender
breakfast, in a vehicle the windows of which were compounded of the
largest amount of wood and the smallest amount of glass, and which were
carefully adjusted to exactly those positions in which the fewest
travellers could see out of them; to stop at every roadside station,
however insignificant; and to accomplish a journey of 200 miles in about
ten hours—such were the ordinary conditions which Parliament in its
bounty provided for the people. Occasionally, moreover, the monotony of
progress was interrupted by the shunting of the train into a siding,
where it might wait for more respectable passenger trains and fast goods
to pass.”
“We remember,” says a writer, “once standing on the platform at
Darlington when the Parliamentary train arrived. It was detained for a
considerable time to allow a more favoured train to pass, and, on the
remonstrance of several of the passengers at the unexpected detention,
they were coolly informed, “Ye mun bide till yer betters gaw past, ye are
only the nigger train.”
“If there is one part of my public life,” recently said Mr. Allport
(Midland Railway) to the writer, “in which I look back with more
satisfaction than anything else, it is with reference to the boon we
conferred on third-class passengers. When the rich man travels, or if he
lies in bed all day, his capital remains undiminished, and perhaps his
income flows in all the same. But when a poor man travels he has not
only to pay his fare, but to sink his capital, for his time is his
capital; and if he now consumes only five hours instead of ten in making
a journey, he has saved five hours of time for useful labour—useful to
himself, to his family, and to society. And I think with even more
pleasure of the comfort in travelling we have been able to confer upon
women and children. But it took,” he added, “five-and-twenty years’ work
to get it done.”