A large and attentive audience assembled yesterday evening to hear Mr.
FAIRWEATHER'S discourse on the highly interesting and instructive
subject of the progress made in the matter of Railway Travelling in
the course of the last fifty years.
The lecturer commenced by reminding his audience that, in the days of
their fathers and grandfathers, fifty years ago, towards the close of
the Nineteenth Century, the wretched Public had to content themselves
with a miserable conveyance called a Pullman Car, that they in those
days considered a triumph of elegant and convenient locomotion,
because they could get tucked away on a shelf at night as a sort of
apology for a bed, and be served with a mutton-chop by day, as a
makeshift for lunch, and this they considered wonderful, because they
were being dragged over their road at the marvellous, soul-thrilling
pace of sixty miles an hour. (_Loud laughter._) What would the poor
benighted travellers of those days say to their present Grand Circular
Express, that ran from London to York in two-and-twenty minutes, and
ran up to the most northern point in Scotland, then down the Western
Coast to Land's End, and back again to London all along the Channel
Shore, doing the entire circuit in four hours and a quarter, and this
while you reclined on the rich red velvet cushions of the lofty and
sumptuously decorated third-class carriage at a one-and-ninepenny
fare? No wonder that people took monthly tickets, and went round, and
round, and round the two kingdoms; living, in fact, in the train, and
being thus perpetually on the move. Look at the advantages offered by
the Company, on their new extra-triple width line. A Brass Band, a
Theatrical Company, a Doctor, Dancing-Master, Teacher of Elocution,
Solicitor, Dentist, and Police Magistrate, accompanied every train,
which was, moreover, provided with Turkish Shower and Swimming Baths,
Billiard-rooms, Circulating Library, and offered attractive advantages
to families wishing, either at their doctor's orders or for the mere
sake of the run on its own account, continual change of air, complete
sets of handsomely furnished apartments not fitted up with sleeping
shelves--(_laughter_)--but supplied with regular six foot
four-posters, such as would have delighted the eyes of their great
grandfathers a hundred years ago. The law, too, recently passed, which
consigned a Director to penal servitude, in the event of a train being
ten minutes after its time, which had been passed owing to the
persistent unpunctuality of the South-Eastern Company, had worked
admirably, and to it, no doubt, they owed the present orderly
management of all the lines in the three kingdoms. What would be the
next development of Railway travelling he could not venture to
predict, but he thought that if, in the next fifty years, they made as
much progress as they had in the fifty years just expired, he was of
opinion, that though the shareholders might possibly receive a smaller
dividend even than that they were drawing to-day--(_loud
laughter_)--the Railway, as an institution in the country, could not
be regarded but as being in a highly flourishing condition.
A vote of thanks having been passed to the Lecturer for his lively and
instructive discourse, which he briefly acknowledged, the proceedings
terminated.
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