The Mixed train on this line holds an intermediate rank between the
Parliamentary and the Express, consisting as it does of first and second-
class carriages, at lower fares than the one and higher than the other,
stopping at fewer stations than the Parliamentary, and at more than the
Express; but worth notice on the present occasion, because it is by these
trains only that horses and carriages are allowed to be conveyed.
Carriages require very careful packing on a truck. At the principal stations
this may be very well left to the practised porters, but at road-side
stations it is a point which should be looked to; for it has not unfrequently
happened that the jogging, lateral motion of the railway has heated the axles
of a carriage or truck, so that at the end of the journey the wheels have
been found as fast as if they had been welded, and quite unfit to travel.
Travelling in a carriage on a truck is by no means safe: some years since
Lady Zetland and her maids were nearly burned to death, sparks from the
engine having set fire to their luggage. The maid threw herself off the
truck, and had an extraordinary escape.
The arrangements of the boxes for carrying horses are now very complete, and
when once a horse, not of a naturally nervous disposition, has been
accustomed to travel by rail, it will often be found better to take him on to
hunt at a distance than to send him overnight to a strange place with all the
disadvantages of change of food, and temptations to neglect in the way of the
groom. It is, however, a class of traffic to which few of the railway
companies have paid much attention; yet, in our opinion, capable of great
development under a system of moderate fares, and day tickets. The rates are
not always stated in the time tables, but on the London and North Western a
day ticket for a horse costs fourteen shillings for thirty miles.
Besides horses, packs of hounds, and even red deer are occasionally sent by
rail. But deer travel in their own private carriages. Hounds are generally
accompanied by the huntsman, or whip, to keep them in order. And on the
Great Western line a few years ago a huntsman was nearly stifled in this way.
The van had been made too snug and close for travelling comfortably with
twenty couple of warm fox-hounds.
If there is the slightest doubt about a horse entering the van quietly, the
best way is to blindfold him before he becomes suspicious. Among other
pursuits, horse racing has been completely revolutionised by the rail. The
posting race-horse van was a luxury in which only the wealthiest could
indulge to a limited extent, but now the owner of a string of thoroughbreds,
or a single plater, can train in the South or the North, and in four and
twenty hours reach any leading course in the kingdom; carrying with him, if
deemed needful, hay, straw, and water.
As we move slowly off toward Camden Station, by the fourth of the eighteen
passenger trains which daily depart from Euston, and emerging with light
whirl along within sight of rows of capital houses, whose gardens descend to
the edge of the cuttings, we are reminded that under the original act for
taking up Euston, it was specially provided, at the instance of Lord
Southampton, that no locomotive should be allowed to proceed further to the
south than Camden Town, lest his building land should remain neglected garden
land for ever. This promise was accepted with little reluctance by the
company, because in 1833 it was popularly considered that the ascent to reach
Camden Town could not be easily overcome by a heavily loaded locomotive.
Consequently a pair of stationary engines were erected at Camden Town, and a
pair of tall chimneys to carry off their smoke and steam.
But the objections in taste, and difficulties in science, have vanished. On
this line, as on all others, tenants are readily found for houses fringing a
cutting; locomotives run up even such ascents as the Bromsgrove Lickey,
between Worcester and Birmingham, with a load of 500 tons. So ten minutes
have been saved in time, and much expense, by doing away with the rope
traction system. The stationary engines have been sold, and are now doing
duty in a flax mill in Russia, and the two tall columns, after slumbering for
several years as monuments of prejudices and obstacles overcome, were swept
away to make room for other improvements.
It is, however, very odd, and not very creditable to human nature, that
whenever a railway is planned, the proprietors are assailed by unreasonable
demands for compensation, in cases where past experience has proved that the
works will be an advantageous, and often an ornamental addition.
In 1846 a Sheffield line was vehemently opposed by a Liverpool gentleman, on
the ground that it would materially injure the prospect from a mansion, which
had been the seat of his ancestors for centuries. The tale was well told,
and seemed most pitiful; an impression was produced on the committee that the
privacy of something like Hatfield, or Knebworth, was about to be infringed
on by the "abominable railway." A stiff cross-examination brought out the
reluctant fact, however, that this "house of my ancestors," this beautiful
Elizabethan mansion had been for many years let as a Lunatic Asylum at 36
pound per annum.
In another instance a railway director sold a pretty country seat, because
the grounds were about to be intersected by a railway embankment; two years
after the completion of the railway he wished to buy it back again, for he
found that his successor, by turfing and planting the slope, had very much
increased the original beauty of the gardens.