But thus gossiping, we have reached Camden Station, and must take advantage
of an unusual halt to look into the arrangements for building waggons and
trucks, and conveying coals, merchandise, goods, and all live stock included
between pigs and bullocks.
Not without difficulty did Mr. Robert Stephenson succeed in inducing the
directors to purchase thirty acres of land here; it was only by urging, that,
if unused, the surplus could be sold at a profit, that he carried out his
views. Genius can foresee results which, to ordinary capacities, are dark
and incomprehensible. Since 1845 it has been found necessary to take in an
additional plot of three more acres, all now fully occupied.
In no respect were the calculations of parties engaged in the construction of
railways more at fault than with regard to the station accommodation needed
for goods traffic, which, on the principal lines, has added full twenty-five
per cent. to the original estimates. George Stephenson calculated the cost
of getting over Chat Moss at 40,000 pounds; his opponent proved that it would
cost four hundred thousand: but it was executed at exactly the sum Stephenson
set down, while the capital involved in providing Station Room for
merchandise at Liverpool and at Manchester, has probably exceeded the
original estimate for the whole line.
On this railway the increase of the goods traffic has been of very recent
date. At a very early period after the opening of the line, the merchandise
department became the monopoly of the great carriers, who found it answer
their purpose to divide the profits afforded by the discount allowed to
carriers by the railway company, without seeking to develop an increase of
occupation. Under this system, while carriers grew rich, the goods traffic
remained stationary. But when the amalgamation with the Grand Junction,
which had always been its own carrier, took place, a great reduction in rates
was made, as well as arrangements for encouraging the conveyance of every
kind of saleable article. The company became a common carrier, but employing
Messrs. Pickford, and Chaplin and Horne to collect goods.
The result was a marvellous increase, which has been progressing ever since.
A regular trade is now carried on between London and the most remote parts of
the kingdom in every conceivable thing that will bear moving. Sheep have
been sent from Perth to London, and Covent Garden has supplied tons of the
finer description of vegetables to the citizens of Glasgow; every Saturday
five tons of the best fish in season are despatched from Billingsgate to
Birmingham, and milk is conveyed in padlocked tins, from and beyond Harrow,
at the rate of about one penny per gallon. In articles which are imported
into both Liverpool and London, there is a constant interchange, according to
the state of the market; thus a penny per pound difference may bring a
hundred chests of congou up, or send as many of hyson down the line. All
graziers within a day of the rail are able to compete in the London market,
the probability of any extraordinary demand increases the number of beasts
arriving weekly at Camden Station from the average of 500 to 2000, and the
sheep from 2000 to 6000; and these animals can be brought from the furthest
grazing grounds in the kingdom without any loss of weight, and in much better
condition than the fat oxen were formerly driven to Smithfield from the rich
pastures round Aylesbury, or the Valley of the Thames.
Camden station, under the alterations effected in 1848-9, has a double line,
for goods waggons only, 2,500 feet in length, entirely clear of the main
line. The length of single lines, exclusive of the main line, exceeds twelve
miles.
To describe it in detail would be a very unsatisfactory task; because, in the
first place, it can ill be understood without a map, and in the next, changes
are constantly taking place, and still greater changes will be forced on the
company by the increase of goods traffic, which, great as it is, is only in
its infancy. Even now freights are paid to the London and North Western for
all the way to China. But, as an agricultural implement of commerce, the
locomotive has been comparatively as little used as the stationary engine,
although hundreds of trades of a semi-rural character are drawing toward the
railway lines, and away from the country towns, which were formerly the
centre of rural commerce, because standing on the highways or near canals.
But such a revolution can only be effected slowly.
At Camden will be found a large yard for the reception of the Midland
Counties' coal, the introduction of which has had a considerable effect in
bringing down the price of sea-borne coal.
The cattle pens have lately been altered and enlarged. Just before Christmas
this place is almost as amusing and exciting as a Spanish bull-fight;
although, as a general rule, the silence of a place where, during every
quarter of an hour, of day and night, so enormous a business is being carried
on, is very surprising.
Twenty-four steam waggon horses, or engines, for heavy loads are kept in a
circular engine-house, or stable, 160 feet in diameter, with an iron roof.
This form renders every engine accessible at a moment's notice. The steam
race-horses for the passenger work are kept in an oblong building opposite
the carters. The demand being more regular, there is no need for the
expensive circular arrangement of stables for this class of engines. In a
large boiler-house, boiling water and red-hot coke are kept ready night and
day, so that on the occasion of any sudden demand no time need be lost in
getting up steam. There is besides a waggon-building department, a shop for
executing such trifling repairs in the locomotives as need no reference to
the great workshop at Wolverton. The passenger carriages are most of them
built at Euston station, by Mr. Wright.
The carrying department is very conveniently situated close to the Regent's
Canal, so as to have easy communication with inland as well as sea
navigation. A series of sheds occupy an area of 135,000 superficial feet,
and the platforms to receive goods from railway trucks on one side and from
waggons on the other, occupy 30,000 feet. These platforms and sheds are
provided with 110 cranes, for loading and unloading, with a power varying
from one ton and a half to twenty tons. By these appliances, work of the
most miscellaneous character goes on all day, and part of the night.
The railway trucks and waggons are moved about by horses: it is amusing to
see the activity with which the heavy brutes often bring a waggon up at a
trot, jump out of the way just at the right moment, and allow the waggon to
roll up to the right spot by its own momentum.
The horses are lodged in stables in the underground vaults, which we cannot
commend, as they are dark, damp, full of draughts, and yet ill ventilated;
but it was necessary to use these vaults, and difficult to find stabling for
such a number of horses close at hand.
The carrying department at Camden is very miscellaneous, and moves
everything, from the contents of a nursery ground to a full grown locomotive,
but they do not impress a stranger so much as the arrangements at Manchester
and Liverpool. The annual consumption of gas at Camden exceeds six million
cubic feet.
Under the railway system the certainty and rapidity with which merchandise
can be transmitted, changes and simplifies more and more every year the
operations of trade. For instance, Southampton is the great port for that
part of our Indian, South American, and Mediterranean trade which is
conducted by steamers. When a junction has been effected between the London
and North Western and the South Western, costly packages of silk, muslin,
gold tissue, jewellery, may be sent under lock from the Glasgow manufacturers
to the quay alongside at Southampton in a few hours, without sign of damage
or pilferage, and at the last moment before the departure of the steamer. The
communication between the docks on the Thames and Camden Town, will enable a
grocer in Manchester to have a hogshead of sugar or tobacco sent in answer to
a letter by return of post, at a saving in expense which may be imagined from
the fact, that it costs more to cart a butt of sherry from the London Docks
to Camden Town, than to send it by rail all the way to Manchester.
To provide for the enormous and annually increasing traffic in passengers and
merchandise, there are:--
1 State carriage. 260 Horse boxes.
555 Locomotives and tenders. 132 Sheep vans.
494 First-class mails. 7385 Goods waggons.
420 Second-class carriages. 14 Trolleys.
342 Third-class. 1155 Cribb rails.
25 Post-offices. 5150 Sheets.
242 Carriages,--trucks for 162 Cart horses.
letters and newspapers. 41 Parcel carts.
201 Guards' brakes.
Making a grand total rolling stock of 10,663.
The passenger carriages afford eleven miles of seat room, and would
accommodate 40,196 individuals, or the whole population of two such towns as
Northampton.
The loading surface of the goods equals eleven acres, and would convey 40,000
tons.
If the tires of all the company's wheels were welded into one ring, they
would form a circle of seventy-two miles.
To keep this rolling stock up in number and efficiency, there are two
establishments, one at Camden Town, and one at Wolverton.
Camden Town is the great coach house of the line, where goods waggons are
built and repaired in one division, where sound locomotives, carriages and
trucks are kept ready for use in another.
The waggon building department of Camden is worth visiting, especially by
railway shareholders.
Every one is interested in railways being worked economically, for economy
gives low rates and increased profits, which both increase trade and multiply
railways. Hitherto the details of carrying, especially as to the
construction of waggons and trucks, have been much neglected.
On one line running north, it is said that the loss in cheese stolen by the
railway servants, amounts to as much as the whole sum paid for carrying
agricultural produce, and on the line on which we are travelling, breakages
have sometimes amounted to 1,200 pounds a-month.
The fact is, that railway carriers have been content to use rude square boxes
on wheels, covered when loaded, if covered at all, with a tarpaulin, without
any precautions for draining off the wet, to which it was constantly exposed
when out of use,--without "buffers" or other protecting springs, so that the
wear and tear of the waggon and its load, from inevitable shocks, was very
great.
The imperfect protection of a tarpaulin was, and is, a great temptation to
pilferage. These sources of expense, in wear and tear of conveyances, loss
of tarpaulin coverings, each worth 6 pounds 6s., breakage, pilferage of
goods, combine to sum up a formidable discount from the profits of railway
carrying, and, in the case of certain goods, lead the owners to prefer the
slower transit of a canal boat. Even iron suffers in market value from
exposure to the weather; porcelain and glass are liable to perpetual smashes,
on waggons without buffers, in spite of the most careful packing; while tea,
sugar, cheese, and all untraceable eatables are pilfered to an enormous
extent, besides more valuable goods.
It was hoped that railway transit would put an end to the dishonesty which
was carried on wholesale on the canals; but, where open trucks are used, this
expectation has been only partly realised, for the temptation of opportunity
has been too strong, for even the superior class of men employed on railways.
In order to meet these evils, Mr. Henson, who has the charge of the waggon-
building department at Camden, has built and patented a covered waggon with
buffers, which unites with great strength, safety, capacity, and smoothness
of motion. The scientific manner in which these waggons are framed, gives
them strength in proportion to their weight. The buffers with which they are
fitted, and the roof, protecting from the weather, render them altogether
durable, and therefore economical; while the construction, as will be seen
from our vignette, renders pilferage, unless by collusion with the
respectable party who overlooks the unloading, almost impossible.
A diminution of the cost for repairs of rolling stock (on an average equal to
12 pounds per ann.), and of the cost for compensation to customers for
breakage and pilferage, should be a leading object with every sensible
railway director. Indeed these losses, with deadweight, and lawyer's bills,
are the deadly enemies of railway directors.
Further improvements in these waggons have been effected by the use of
corrugated iron, which is light and strong at the same time; and the iron
waggons have been again improved by employing iron covered with a thin
coating of glass, under a new patent, which renders rust impossible and paint
unnecessary. The simple contrivance by which the door and moveable roof is
locked and unlocked by one motion, is worthy of the notice of practical men.
600 of these lock-up waggons, with springs and buffers, are in use on the
London and North Western Railway.
Mr. Henson has also succeeded in establishing a traffic in gunpowder, by
inventing a carriage of sheet iron, lined with wood, in which four-and-a-half
tons of gunpowder can be conveyed without fear of explosion either from
concussion or external combustion.
The shops at Camden have room for building or repairing 100 waggons. They
are to be seen in every stage of progress.
The great object is to combine strength with lightness. If the strength
being the same, the saving of a ton can be effected in a waggon, it will
amount to from thirty to ninety tons in an ordinary goods train. An
important consideration, for deadweight is the great enemy of the railway,
and ninety tons of useless weight is equivalent to a loss of 90 pounds in
sending a goods train a journey to Birmingham. British oak is the favourite
wood for the frames of railway waggons; teak, if of equal quality, is dearer,
and the inferior is heavier, without being so strong. If in any of the many
countries with which we trade a wood can be discovered as good and as cheap
as English oak, the railways which are constantly extending their carrying
stock, can afford a steady demand.
About the passenger carriages, which every one can see and examine for
himself, there is not much to be said. On the Continent, where they cannot
afford to use mahogany, they use sheet-iron and papier-machee for the panels;
in England, mahogany chiefly in the first class. When we began, stage
coaches were imitated; there are some of the old cramped style still to be
seen on the Richmond line; then came enormous cages--pleasant in summer,
fearfully cold in winter, without fires, which have not been introduced in
England, although they are found in the north of Europe and America. A
medium size has now come into favour, of which some fine specimens are to be
seen in the Hyde Park Exhibition.
On the Great Northern line some second-class carriages have been introduced,
varnished, without paint, and very well they look. Economy again, and the
increase of branches, have led to the use of composite carriages for first
and second-class passengers all on one body. These, which were in use years
ago on the northern coal lines, are now revived and improved.
The Camden station has received an entirely new feature by the completion of
the line to the docks and to Fenchurch Street, with stations at Islington,
Hackney, and Bow. Already an immense omnibus traffic has been obtained--a
sort of traffic which produces the same effect on engines as on horses. They
are worn out rapidly by the continual stoppages. But horses show wear and
tear directly, whereas iron and brass cannot speak except through increased
expenses and diminished dividends.
Leaving Camden, at which trains stop only on arriving, we swiftly pass
Kilburn, where an omnibus station is to be established for the benefit of the
rising population of citizens, to Willesden, where the junction line through
Acton to the South Western is to commence. Willesden has been rendered
classic ground, for the Hero-worshippers who take highwaymen within the
circle of their miscellaneous sympathies, by Mr. Harrison Ainsworth's "Jack
Sheppard,"--the "cage" where this ruffian was more than once confined still
remains in its original insecurity.
Sudbury affords nothing to detain us. The next station is within a mile of
Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its beacon-like church spire. Rich pasture lies
around, famous for finishing off bullocks fed in the north. Harrow school is
almost as much one of the institutions of England as Oxford and Cambridge
Universities. It is one of the great public schools, which, if they do not
make the ripest scholars, make "men" of our aristocracy. This school was
founded by one John Lyon, a farmer of the parish, who died in 1592.
[HARROW-ON-THE-HILL: ill2.jpg]
Attached to it there are four exhibitions of 20 pounds each, and two
scholarships of 50 pounds each.
The grand celebrity of the school rests upon the education of those who are
not on the foundation. The sons of noblemen and wealthy gentlemen, who in
this as in many other instances, have treated those for whose benefit the
school was founded, as the young cuckoo treats the hedge sparrow. Among its
illustrious scholars Harrow numbers Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel.
An old saw runs: "Eton fops, Harrow gentlemen, Winchester scholars, and
Westminster blackguards."
Since the palmy days when Dr. Drury was master and Byron and Peel were
pupils, Harrow has declined to insignificance, and been by the abilities of
Dr. Wordsworth raised again. The term of Harrow gentlemen still deservedly
survives, Harrow being still the gate through which the rich son of a parvenu
family may most safely pass on his way to Oxford, if his father desires, as
all fathers do in this country, that his son should amalgamate with the
landed aristocracy.
At Pinner, the next station, we pass out of Middlesex into Hertfordshire.
Watford, a principal station, is within a mile of the town of that name, on
the river Colne. Here Henry VI. encamped with his army before the battle of
St. Albans. Cassiobury Park, a favourite spot for picnics, is close to the
station. It was the opposition of the late proprietor, the Earl of Essex,
that forced upon the engineer of the line the formidable tunnel, which was
once considered an astonishing railway work,--now nothing is astonishing in
engineering.
[VIADUCT OVER THE RIVER COLNE: ill3.jpg]
Near King's Langley we pass the Booksellers' Provident Retreat, erected on
ground given by Mr. Dickenson, the great paper maker, who has seven mills on
the neighbouring streams, and reach Boxmoor, only noticeable as the first
station opened on the line.
[LOOKING FROM THE HILL ABOVE BOX MOOR STATION TOWARDS BERKHAMSTED: ill4.jpg]
The next station is Berkhamsted. Cowper the poet was born here, his father
was rector of the parish. Berkhamsted Castle is part of the hereditary
property of the Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. At this castle William
the Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings, met the Abbot of St. Albans with
a party of chiefs and prelates, who had prepared to oppose the Norman, and
disarmed their hostility by swearing to rule according to the ancient laws
and customs of the country. Having, of course, broken his oath, he bestowed
the castle on his half-brother, Robert Moreton, Earl of Cornwall. King John
strengthened the castle, which was afterwards besieged by the Dauphin of
France. When Edward III. created the Black Prince Duke of Cornwall, the
castle and manor of Berkhamsted were bestowed upon him "to hold to him, and
the heirs of him, and the eldest sons of the kings of England, and the dukes
of the said place;" and under these words through civil wars and revolutions,
and changes from Plantagenet to Tudor, from Tudor to Stuart, with the
interregnum of a republic, an abdication, and the installation of the
Brunswick dynasty. The castle is now vested in Albert Prince of Wales.
[BERKHAMSTED STATION: ill5.jpg]
The Chiltern Hills, including the Chiltern Hundreds, the only office under
the crown always open to the acceptance of all without distinction of
parties, lies within a short distance of Berkhamsted. Ashdridge Park,
formerly the seat of the Duke of Bridgewater, the originator and author, with
the aid of Brindley and Telford, of our great canal system, lies about a mile
to the eastward. The scenery of the park and gardens are fine. The house is
modern.
Tring station, a mile and a half from the town, may be reached from London,
31.5 miles, in less than an hour by the express train, and the traveller
arrives in as wild a district as any in England. Three miles north of Tring
lies the town of Ivinghoe, possessing a large cruciform church, worthy of a
visit from the students of "Christian architecture," with an old sculptured
timber roof, and containing a tomb with a Norman French
inscription,--according to some the tomb of Henry de Blois, Bishop of
Winchester, brother of King Stephen. At the Rose and Crown we are informed
venison is to be had in perfection at moderate charges during the season. The
station is the highest point on the line, being 420 feet above the sea, 300
above Camden Town, and 52 above Birmingham.
In the course of the Tring excavation in the gravel deposits above the chalk,
the tusk and teeth of an elephant were found, and in crossing the Icknield or
Roman Way, about thirty-three miles, were sixteen human skeletons, and
several specimens of Roman pottery: two unique urns are now in the possession
of the Antiquarian Society.
Two miles from Tring we pass from Hertfordshire into Buckinghamshire. It
remains a disputed point whether the name of the county is derived from
bucken or boccen, a deer, according to Spelman, or with Lysons, boc, a
charter, or with Camden from bucken, beech trees, which, as in his time,
still abound and flourish. Unfortunately the state of agriculture does not
allow the pastors of the country to take the ease and rest that was enjoyed
by the celebrated Mr. Tityrus before the repeal of the Roman corn laws, an
ease which has cost many an unfortunate schoolboy a flogging.
Our next halt, Cheddington, is noticeable only because it stands on the fork,
of which a short branch, nine miles in length, leads to Aylesbury.