THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE.--CAMDEN.
Considering how many fine feelings and good feelings adorn the
interior of the human heart, it is curious to observe with what
facility we can put them all to sleep, or, if they won’t sleep,
stupify ourselves, at any moment when it becomes inconvenient to
us to listen to their friendly admonitions. All the while mailing,
coaching, and posting were in fashion, every man’s countenance
beamed--every person’s tongue gabbled freely as it described not
only “_the splendid rate_” (say ten miles an hour) at which he had
travelled, but the celerity with which no sooner had the words
“_First turn-out!_” been exclaimed by the scout, who vanished as
soon as he had uttered them, than four horses in shining harness had
appeared half hobbling half trotting from under the archway of the
Red Lion, the Crown, or the Three Bells, before which the traveller
had from a canter been almost suddenly pulled up, to receive various
bows, scrapes, and curtsies from the landlord and his rosy-faced
cap-beribboned wife. But, although we could all accurately describe
our own enjoyments, and, like Johnson, expatiate on “the delightful
sensations” we experienced in what we called _fast travelling_,
who among us ever cared to ascertain, or even for a single moment
to think of, the various arrangements necessary for watering,
feeding, cleaning, and shoulder-healing all the poor horses whose
“brilliant” performances we had so much admired? Whether they slept
on straw or on stones--indeed, whether they slept at all--what was
their diet--what, if any, were their enjoyments--what were their
sufferings--and, lastly, how and where they eventually died--it would
have been deemed exceedingly vulgar to inquire; and so, after with
palpitating flanks and panting nostrils they had once been unhooked
from our splinter-bars,
“Where they went, and how they fared,
No man knew, and no man cared!”
In a similar way we now chloroform all kindly feelings of inquiry
respecting the treatment of the poor engine-drivers, firemen, and
even of the engine that has safely conveyed us through tunnels and
through storms at the rate of thirty, forty, and occasionally even
fifty miles an hour--
“Oh no! we never mention them!”
and in fact scarcely do we deign to look at them. Indeed even while
in the train, and most especially after we had left it, we should
feel bored to death by being asked to reflect for a moment on any
point or any person connected with it. We have therefore, we feel, to
apologise at least to some of our readers for intruding upon them,
in bringing “betwixt the wind and their nobility” the following
uninteresting details.
As soon as an engine has safely dragged a passenger-train to the top
of the incline at Camden Station, at which point the coupling-chains
which connect it with its load are instantly unhooked, it is enabled
by the switchman to get from the main line upon a pair of almost
parallel side rails, along which, while the tickets are being
collected, it may be seen and heard retrograding and hissing past
its train. After a difficult and intricate passage from one set of
rails to another, advancing or “shunting” backwards as occasion
may require, it proceeds to the fire-pit, over which it stops. The
fireman here opens the door of his furnace, which by a very curious
process is made to void the red-hot contents of its stomach into
the pit purposely constructed to receive them, where the fire is
instantly extinguished by cold water ready laid on by the side.
Before, however, dropping their fire, the drivers are directed
occasionally to blow off their steam to clean; and we may further
add that once a-week the boiler of every engine is washed out to get
rid of sediment or scale, the operation being registered in a book
kept in the office. After dropping his fire, the driver, carefully
taking his fire-bars with him, conducts his engine into an immense
shed or engine-stable 400 feet in length by 90 in breadth, generally
half full of locomotives, where he examines it all over, reporting
in a book what repairs are wanting, or, if none (which is not often
the case), he reports it “_correct_.” He then takes his lamps to
the lamp-house to be cleaned and trimmed by workmen solely employed
to do so, after which he fetches them away himself. Being now off
duty, he and his satellite fireman go either to their homes or to a
sort of club-room containing a fire to keep them warm, a series of
cupboards to hold their clothes, and wooden benches on which they may
sit, sleep, or ruminate until their services are again required; and
here it is pleasing to see these fine fellows in various attitudes
enjoying rest and stillness after the incessant noise, excitement,
and occasional tempests of wind and rain, to which--we will say
nothing of greater dangers--they have been exposed.
The duties which the engine-driver has to perform are not only of
vital importance, but of a nature which peculiarly illustrates the
calm, unpretending, bull-dog courage, indigenous to the moist healthy
climate of the British Isles. Even in bright sunshine, to stand--like
the figure-head of a ship--foremost on a train of enormous weight,
which, with fearful momentum, is rushing forward faster than any
race-horse can gallop, requires a cool head and a calm heart; but to
proceed at this pace in dark or foggy weather into tunnels, along
embankments, and through deep cuttings, where it is impossible
to foresee any obstruction, is an amount of responsibility which
scarcely any other situation in life can exceed; for not only is a
driver severely, and occasionally without mercy, punished for any
negligence he himself may commit, but he is invariably sentenced
personally to suffer on the spot for any accident that from the
negligence of others may suddenly befall the road along which he
travels, but over which he has not the smallest control. The greatest
hardship he has to endure, however, is from cold, especially that
produced in winter by evaporation from his drenched clothes passing
rapidly through the air. Indeed, when a gale of wind and rain from
the north-west, triumphantly sweeping over the surface of the earth
at its ordinary rate of say sixty miles an hour, suddenly meets the
driver of the London and North-Western, who has not only to withstand
such an antagonist, but to dash through him, and in spite of him to
proceed in an opposite direction at the rate of say forty miles an
hour--the conflict between the wet Englishman and Æolus, tilting by
each other at the combined speed of a hundred miles an hour, forms a
tournament of extraordinary interest.
As the engine is proceeding, the driver, who has not very many
inches of standing-room, remains upon its narrow platform, while
his fireman, on about the same space, stands close beside him on
the tender. We tried the position. Everything, however, proved to
be so hard, excepting the engine, which was both hard and hot, that
we found it necessary to travel with one foot on the tender and the
other on the engine, and, as the motion of each was very different,
we felt as if each leg were galloping at a different stride.
Nevertheless the Company’s drivers and firemen usually travel from
100 to 120 miles per day, performing six of these trips per week;
nay, a few run 166 miles per day--for which they are paid eight days’
wages for six trips.
But to return to the engine which we just left in the engine-house.
As soon as the driver has carefully examined it, and has recorded in
a book the report we have described, the “foreman of the fitters”
comes to it, and examines it all over again; and if anything is found
out of order which, on reference to the book, the driver has not
reported, the latter is reported by the former for his negligence.
A third examination is made by Mr. Walker, the chief superintending
engineer of the station, a highly intelligent and valuable servant
of the Company, who has charge of the repairs of the locomotive
department between Camden and Tring. If HE detects any defect that
has escaped the notice not only of the driver, but of the foreman of
the fitters, woe betide them both!
While the engine, with several workmen screwing and hammering at it,
is undergoing the necessary repairs, we will consider for a moment a
subject to which Englishmen always attach considerable importance,
namely, its victuals and drink, or, in other words, its coke and
water. There is at Camden Station a coke-factory composed of eighteen
ovens, nine on each side, in which coal after being burnt for about
fifty hours gives nearly two-thirds of its quantity of coke. These
ovens produce about 20 tons of coke per day; but, as 50 tons per
day are required for the Camden Station alone, the remaining 30
tons are brought by rail all the way from Newcastle. Indeed, with
the exception of fifty ovens at Peterborough, the whole of the coke
required annually for the London and North-Western Railway, amounting
to 112,500 tons, of an average value of 1_l._ per ton, comes from the
Northern Coal-fields. For some time there were continual quarrels
between the coke suppliers and receivers, the former declaring that
the Company’s waggons had been despatched from the North as soon as
loaded, and the latter complaining that they had been unnecessarily
delayed. A robin-redbreast settled the dispute, for, on unloading one
of the waggons immediately on its arrival at Camden Station, her tiny
nest with three eggs in it minutely explained that the waggon had
_not_ been despatched as soon as loaded.
In order to obtain an ample supply of water for their engines, the
Company at considerable expense sank at Camden an Artesian well 10
feet in diameter and 140 feet deep. The produce of this well, pumped
by a high-pressure steam-engine of 27-horsepower into two immense
cisterns 110 feet above the rails at Euston Square, supplies all the
Camden Station, all the Company’s houses adjoining, the whole of
the Euston Station, as well as the Victoria and Euston Hotels, with
most beautiful clear water; and yet--though every man who drinks it
or who shaves with it admires it, and though every lady who makes
tea with it certifies that it is particularly well adapted for
that purpose--strange to say, it disagrees so dreadfully with the
stomachs of the locomotive engines--(who would ever suspect _them_
to be more delicate than our own?)--that the Company have been
obliged, at great inconvenience and cost, to obtain water for them
elsewhere. The boilers of the locomotives were not only chemically
liable to be incrusted with a deposition of the unusual quantity of
soda contained in the Artesian-well water at Camden Station; but,
not even waiting for this inconvenience, the engine without metaphor
spit it out--ejecting it from the boiler with the steam through the
funnel-pipe, a well-known misfortune termed by engineers “_priming_.”
As much time would be required for each travelling engine to get up
its steam _ab initio_, a coke-furnace has been constructed at Camden
Station to hasten the operation. Here nine men during the day, and
the same number throughout the night, are continually employed to
heat coke, which by means of iron shovels is to be delivered red-hot
into the engines’ furnaces.
These preparations having been made, the driver’s duties are as
follows:--
On leaving the shed in the morning the engine, after having been
heated at the coke-furnace, is conducted on to a great turn-table 40
feet in diameter, which twists it towards a set of rails leading to
the water-crane, where it imbibes at one draught about a thousand
gallons of cold water, which, under ordinary circumstances, will
enable it to draw its train about 40 miles; although in slippery
weather, when the wheels revolve _on_, instead of _along_, the rails,
it of course would not carry it so far. It then proceeds to the
coke-shed, an enclosure 210 feet by 45 feet, capable of holding 1500
tons, for its proper supply of coke, namely, 1 ton--a goods-engine
usually devouring 2½ tons.
The driver, leaving his engine in charge of his fireman, now proceeds
to the office, where he signs his name in a book, the object being
that it may be observed whether or not he is perfectly sober. From
the chief clerk he receives his coke and time ticket, upon which, at
every station, he has to record whatever time he may have lost up
to that point; and when his chronometer is wound up, and set to the
proper time, he is then considered to be ready for his journey.
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 newborn 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 on 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 almost
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 waggons overrode each other until the uppermost one
was found piled 40 feet above the rails!
At Camden Station there are every day five spare or pilot engines,
with their steam up, ready for assisting a train up the incline, or
for any special purposes that may be required.
The average cost of the locomotive engines and tenders, which, for
the rails between London and Birmingham, are usually purchased by the
Company from makers at Manchester, Warrington, and Liverpool, is--
Cylinder 15-inch diameter £1,950 0 0
„ 16 „ 2,113 10 0
„ 18 „ 2,500 0 0
The tenders cost 500_l._ each.