CHAT MOSS--CONSTRUCTION OF THE RAILWAY.
The appointment of principal engineer to the railway was taken into
consideration at the first meeting of the directors held at Liverpool
subsequent to the passing of the Act. The magnitude of the proposed
works, and the vast consequences involved in their experiment, were
deeply impressed upon their minds; and they resolved to secure the
services of a resident engineer of proved experience and ability. Their
attention was naturally directed to Mr. Stephenson; at the same time they
desired to have the benefit of the Messrs. Rennie's professional
assistance in superintending the works. Mr. George Rennie had an
interview with the Board on the subject, at which he proposed to
undertake the chief superintendence, making six visits in each year, and
stipulating that he should have the appointment of the resident engineer.
But the responsibility attaching to the direction in the matter of the
efficient carrying on of the works, would not admit of their being
influenced by ordinary punctilios on the occasion; and they accordingly
declined this proposal, and proceeded to appoint Mr. Stephenson their
principal engineer at a salary of 1000 pounds per annum.
He at once removed his residence to Liverpool, and made arrangements to
commence the works. He began with the "impossible thing"--to do that
which the most distinguished engineers of the day had declared that "no
man in his senses would undertake to do"--namely, to make the road over
Chat Moss! It was indeed a most formidable undertaking; and the project
of carrying a railway along, under, or over such a material as that of
which it consisted, would certainly never have occurred to an ordinary
mind. Michael Drayton supposed the Moss to have had its origin at the
Deluge. Nothing more impassable could have been imagined than that
dreary waste; and Mr. Giles only spoke the popular feeling of the day
when he declared that no carriage could stand on it "short of the
bottom." In this bog, singular to say, Mr. Roscoe, the accomplished
historian of the Medicis, buried his fortune in the hopeless attempt to
cultivate a portion of it which he had bought.
Chat Moss is an immense peat bog of about twelve square miles in extent.
Unlike the bogs or swamps of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, which consist
principally of soft mud or silt, this bog is a vast mass of spongy
vegetable pulp, the result of the growth and decay of ages. The spagni,
or bog-mosses, cover the entire area; one year's growth rising over
another,--the older growths not entirely decaying, but remaining
partially preserved by the antiseptic properties peculiar to peat. Hence
the remarkable fact that, although a semifluid mass, the surface of Chat
Moss rises above the level of the surrounding country. Like a turtle's
back, it declines from the summit in every direction, having from thirty
to forty feet gradual slope to the solid land on all sides. From the
remains of trees, chiefly alder and birch, which have been dug out of it,
and which must have previously flourished upon the surface of soil now
deeply submerged, it is probable that the sand and clay base on which the
bog rests is saucer-shaped, and so retains the entire mass in position.
In rainy weather, such is its capacity for water that it sensibly swells,
and rises in those parts where the moss is the deepest. This occurs
through the capillary attraction of the fibres of the submerged moss,
which is from 20 to 30 feet in depth, whilst the growing plants
effectually check evaporation from the surface. This peculiar character
of the Moss has presented an insuperable difficulty in the way of
reclaiming it by any system of extensive drainage--such as by sinking
shafts, and pumping up the water by steam power, as has been proposed.
Supposing a shaft of 30 feet deep to be sunk, it has been calculated that
this would only be effectual for draining a circle of about 100 yards,
the water running down an incline of about 5 to 1; for it was found in
the course of draining the bog, that a ditch 3 feet deep only served to
drain a space of less than 5 yards on each side, and two ditches of this
depth, 10 yards apart, left a portion of the Moss between them scarcely
affected by the drains.
The three resident engineers selected by Mr. Stephenson to superintend
the construction of the line, were Joseph Locke, William Allcard, and
John Dixon. The last was appointed to that portion which lay across the
Moss, neither of the other two envying his lot. On Mr. Dixon's arrival,
about July, 1826, Mr. Locke proceeded to show him over the length he was
to take charge of, and to instal him in office. When they reached Chat
Moss, Mr. Dixon found that the line had already been staked out and the
levels taken in detail by the aid of planks laid upon the bog. The
cutting of the drains along each side of the proposed road had also been
commenced; but the soft pulpy stuff had up to this time flowed into the
drains and filled them up as fast as they were cut. Proceeding across
the Moss, on the first day's inspection, the new resident, when about
halfway over, slipped off the plank on which he walked, and sank to his
knees in the bog. Struggling only sent him the deeper, and he might have
disappeared altogether, but for the workmen, who hastened to his
assistance upon planks, and rescued him from his perilous position. Much
disheartened, he desired to return, and even thought of giving up the
job; but Mr. Locke assured him that the worst part was now past; so the
new resident plucked up heart again, and both floundered on until they
reached the further edge of the Moss, wet and plastered over with
bog-sludge. Mr. Dixon's companions endeavoured to comfort him by the
assurance that he might avoid similar perils, by walking upon "pattens,"
or boards fastened to the soles of his feet, as they had done when taking
the levels, and as the workmen did when engaged in making drains in the
softest parts of the Moss. The resident engineer was sorely puzzled in
the outset by the problem of constructing a road for heavy locomotives,
with trains of passengers and goods, upon a bog which he had found
incapable of supporting his own weight!
Mr. Stephenson's idea was, that such a road might be made to _float_ upon
the bog, simply by means of a sufficient extension of the bearing
surface. As a ship, or a raft, capable of sustaining heavy loads floated
in water, so in his opinion, might a light road be floated upon a bog,
which was of considerably greater consistency than water. Long before
the railway was thought of, Mr. Roscoe had adopted the remarkable
expedient of fitting his plough-horses with flat wooden soles or pattens,
to enable them to walk upon the Moss land which he had brought into
cultivation. These pattens were fitted on by means of a screw apparatus,
which met in front of the foot and was easily fastened. The mode by
which these pattens served to sustain the horse is capable of easy
explanation, and it will be observed that the _rationale_ likewise
explains the floating of a railway train. The foot of an ordinary
farm-horse presents a base of about five inches diameter, but if this
base be enlarged to seven inches--the circles being to each other as the
squares of the diameters--it will be found that, by this slight
enlargement of the base, a circle of nearly double the area has been
secured; and consequently the pressure of the foot upon every unit of
ground upon which the horse stands has been reduced one half. In fact,
this contrivance has an effect tantamount to setting the horse upon eight
feet instead of four.
Apply the same reasoning to the ponderous locomotive, and it will be
found, that even such a machine may be made to stand upon a bog, by means
of a similar extension of the bearing surface. Suppose the engine to be
20 feet long and 5 feet wide, thus covering a surface of 100 square feet,
and, provided the bearing has been extended by means of cross sleepers
supported on a matting of heath and branches of trees covered with a few
inches of gravel, the pressure of an engine of 20 tons will be only equal
to about 3 pounds per inch over the whole surface on which it stands.
Such was George Stephenson's idea in contriving his floating
road--something like an elongated raft across the Moss; and we shall see
that he steadily kept it in view in carrying the work into execution.
The first thing done was to form a footpath of ling or heather along the
proposed road, on which a man might walk without risk of sinking. A
single line of temporary railway was then laid down, formed of ordinary
cross-bars about 3 feet long and an inch square, with holes punched
through them at the ends and nailed down to temporary sleepers. Along
this way ran the waggons in which were conveyed the materials requisite
to form the permanent road. These waggons carried about a ton each, and
they were propelled by boys running behind them along the narrow iron
rails. The boys became so expert that they would run the 4 miles across
at the rate of 7 or 8 miles an hour without missing a step; if they had
done so, they would have sunk in many places up to their middle. A
comparatively slight extension of the bearing surface being found
sufficient to enable the bog to bear this temporary line, the
circumstance was a source of increased confidence and hope to our
engineer in proceeding with the formation of the permanent roadway
alongside.
The digging of drains had been proceeding for some time along each side
of the intended line; but they filled up almost as soon as dug, the sides
flowing in, and the bottom rising up. It was only in some of the drier
parts of the bog that a depth of three or four feet could be reached.
The surface-ground between the drains, containing the intertwined roots
of heather and long grass, was left untouched, and upon this was spread
branches of trees and hedge-cuttings. In the softest places, rude gates
or hurdles, some 8 or 9 feet long by 4 feet wide, interwoven with
heather, were laid in double thicknesses, their ends overlapping each
other; and upon this floating bed was spread a thin layer of gravel, on
which the sleepers, chairs, and rails were laid in the usual manner.
Such was the mode in which the road was formed upon the Moss.
It was found, however, after the permanent way had been thus laid, that
there was a tendency to sinking at those parts where the bog was softest.
In ordinary cases, where a bank subsides, the sleepers are packed up with
ballast or gravel; but in this case the ballast was dug away and removed
in order to lighten the road, and the sleepers were packed instead with
cakes of dry turf or bundles of heath. By these expedients the subsided
parts were again floated up to the level, and an approach was made
towards a satisfactory road. But the most formidable difficulties were
encountered at the centre and towards the edges of the Moss; and it
required no small degree of ingenuity and perseverance on the part of the
engineer successfully to overcome them.
The Moss, as already observed, was highest in the centre, and it there
presented a sort of hunchback with a rising and falling gradient. At
that point it was found necessary to cut deeper drains in order to
consolidate the ground between them on which the road was to be formed.
But, as at other places, the deeper the cutting the more rapid was the
flow of fluid bog into the drain, the bottom rising up almost as fast as
it was removed. To meet this emergency, numbers of empty tar-barrels
were brought from Liverpool; and as soon as a few yards of drain were
dug, the barrels were laid down end to end, firmly fixed to each other by
strong slabs laid over the joints, and nailed. They were then covered
over with clay, and thus formed an underground sewer of wood instead of
bricks. This expedient was found to answer the purpose intended, and the
road across the centre of the Moss having been so prepared, it was then
laid with the permanent materials.
The greatest difficulty was, however, experienced in forming an
embankment upon the edge of the bog at the Manchester end. Moss as dry
as it could be cut, was brought up in small waggons, by men and boys, and
emptied so as to form an embankment; but the bank had scarcely been
raised three or four feet in height, when the stuff broke through the
heathery surface of the bog and sank out of sight. More moss was brought
up and emptied with no better result; and for weeks the filling was
continued without any visible embankment having been made. It was the
duty of the resident engineer to proceed to Liverpool every fortnight to
obtain the wages for the workmen employed under him; and on these
occasions he was required to colour up, on a section drawn to a working
scale suspended against the wall of the directors' room, the amount of
excavation and embankment from time to time executed. But on many of
these occasions, Mr. Dixon had no progress whatever to show for the money
expended on the Chat Moss embankment. Sometimes, indeed, the visible
work done was _less_ than it had appeared a fortnight or a month before!
The directors now became seriously alarmed, and feared that the evil
prognostications of the eminent engineers were about to be fulfilled.
The resident engineer was even called upon to supply an estimate of the
cost of forming an embankment of solid stuff throughout, as also of the
cost of piling the roadway, and in effect constructing a four mile
viaduct of timber across the Moss, from twenty to thirty feet high from
the foundation. The expense appalled the directors, and the question
arose, whether the work was to be proceeded with or _abandoned_!
Mr. Stephenson afterwards described the alarming position of affairs at a
public dinner at Birmingham (23rd December, 1837), on the occasion of a
piece of plate being presented to his son, upon the completion of the
London and Birmingham Railway. He related the anecdote, he said, for the
purpose of impressing upon the minds of those who heard him the necessity
of perseverance.
"After working for weeks and weeks," said he, "in filling in materials to
form the road, there did not yet appear to be the least sign of our being
able to raise the solid embankment one single inch; in short we went on
filling in without the slightest apparent effect. Even my assistants
began to feel uneasy, and to doubt of the success of the scheme. The
directors, too, spoke of it as a hopeless task: and at length they became
seriously alarmed, so much so, indeed, that a board meeting was held on
Chat Moss to decide whether I should proceed any further. They had
previously taken the opinion of other engineers, who reported
unfavourably. There was no help for it, however, but to go on. An
immense outlay had been incurred; and great loss would have been
occasioned had the scheme been then abandoned, and the line taken by
another route. So the directors were _compelled_ to allow me to go on
with my plans, of the ultimate success of which I myself never for one
moment doubted."
During the progress of this part of the works, the Worsley and Trafford
men, who lived near the Moss, and plumed themselves upon their practical
knowledge of bog-work, declared the completion of the road to be utterly
impracticable. "If you knew as much about Chat Moss as we do," they
said, "you would never have entered on so rash an undertaking; and depend
upon it, all you have done and are doing will prove abortive. You must
give up the idea of a floating railway, and either fill the Moss hard
from the bottom, or deviate so as to avoid it altogether." Such were the
conclusions of science and experience.
In the midst of all these alarms and prophecies of failure, Stephenson
never lost heart, but held to his purpose. His motto was "Persevere!"
"You must go on filling in," he said; "there is no other help for it.
The stuff emptied in is doing its work out of sight, and if you will but
have patience, it will soon begin to show." And so the filling in went
on; several hundreds of men and boys were employed to skin the Moss all
round for many thousand yards, by means of sharp spades, called by the
turf cutters "tommy-spades;" and the dried cakes of turf were afterwards
used to form the embankment, until at length as the stuff sank and rested
upon the bottom, the bank gradually rose above the surface, and slowly
advanced onwards, declining in height and consequently in weight, until
it became joined to the floating road already laid upon the Moss. In the
course of forming the embankment, the pressure of the bog turf tipped out
of the waggons caused a copious stream of bog-water to flow from the end
of it, in colour resembling Barclay's double stout; and when completed,
the bank looked like a long ridge of tightly pressed tobacco-leaf. The
compression of the turf may be imagined from the fact that 670,000 cubic
yards of raw moss formed only 277,000 cubic yards of embankment at the
completion of the work.
At the western, or Liverpool end of the Chat Moss, there was a like
embankment; but, as the ground there was solid, little difficulty was
experienced in forming it, beyond the loss of substance caused by the
oozing out of the water held by the moss-earth.
At another part of the Liverpool and Manchester line, Parr Moss was
crossed by an embankment about 1.5 mile in extent. In the immediate
neighbourhood was found a large excess of cutting, which it would have
been necessary to "put out in spoil-banks" (according to the technical
phrase); but the surplus clay, stone, and shale, were tipped, waggon
after waggon, into Parr Moss, until a solid but concealed embankment,
from fifteen to twenty-five feet high, was formed, although to the eye it
appears to be laid upon the level of the adjoining surface, as at Chat
Moss.
The road across Chat Moss was finished by the 1st January, 1830, when the
first experimental train of passengers passed over it, drawn by the
"Rocket;" and it turned out that, instead of being the most expensive
part of the line, it was about the cheapest. The total cost of forming
the line over the Moss was 28,000 pounds, whereas Mr. Giles's estimate
was 270,000 pounds! It also proved to be one of the best portions of the
railway. Being a floating road, it was smooth and easy to run upon, just
as Dr. Arnott's water-bed is soft and easy to lie upon--the pressure
being equal at all points. There was, and still is, a sort of
springiness in the road over the Moss, such as is felt in passing along a
suspended bridge; and those who looked along the line as a train passed
over it, said they could observe a waviness, such as precedes and follows
a skater upon ice.
During the progress of these works the most ridiculous rumours were set
afloat. The drivers of the stage-coaches who feared for their calling,
brought the alarming intelligence into Manchester from time to time, that
"Chat Moss was blown up!" "Hundreds of men and horses had sunk; and the
works were completely abandoned!" The engineer himself was declared to
have been swallowed up in the Serbonian bog; and "railways were at an end
for ever!"
In the construction of the railway, Mr. Stephenson's capacity for
organising and directing the labours of a large number of workmen of all
kinds eminently displayed itself. A vast quantity of ballast-waggons had
to be constructed, and implements and materials collected, before the
army of necessary labourers could be efficiently employed at the various
points of the line. There were not at that time, as there are now, large
contractors possessed of railway plant, capable of executing earth-works
on a large scale. The first railway engineer had not only to contrive
the plant, but to organise and direct the labour. The labourers
themselves had to be trained to their work; and it was on the Liverpool
and Manchester line that Mr. Stephenson organised the staff of that
mighty band of railway navvies, whose handiworks will be the wonder and
admiration of succeeding generations. Looking at their gigantic traces,
the men of some future age may be found to declare of the engineer and of
his workmen, that "there were giants in those days."
Although the works of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway are of a much
less formidable character than those of many lines that have since been
constructed, they were then regarded as of the most stupendous
description. In deed, the like of them had not before been executed in
England. It had been our engineer's original intention carry the railway
from the north end of Liverpool, round the red-sandstone ridge on which
the upper part of the town is built, and also round the higher rise of
the coal formation at Rainhill, by following the natural levels. But the
opposition of the landowners having forced the line more to the south, it
was rendered necessary to cut through the hills, and go over the high
grounds instead of round them. The first consequence of this alteration
in the plans was the necessity for constructing a tunnel under the town
of Liverpool 1.5 mile in length; the second, a long and deep cutting
through the red-sandstone rock at Olive Mount; and the third and most
serious of all, was the necessity for surmounting the Whiston and Sutton
hills by inclined planes of 1 in 96. The line was also, by the same
forced deviation, prevented passing through the Lancashire coal-field,
and the engineer was compelled to carry it across the Sankey valley, at a
point where the waters of the brook had dug out an excessively deep
channel through the marl-beds of the district.
The principal difficulty was experienced in pushing on the works
connected with the formation of the tunnel under Liverpool, 2200 yards in
length. The blasting and hewing of the rock were vigorously carried on
night and day; and the engineer's practical experience in the collieries
here proved of great use to him. Many obstacles had to be encountered
and overcome in the formation of the tunnel, the rock varying in hardness
and texture at different parts. In some places the miners were deluged
by water, which surged from the soft blue shale found at the lowest level
of the tunnel. In other places, beds of wet sand were cut through; and
there careful propping and pinning were necessary to prevent the roof
from tumbling in, until the masonry to support it could be erected. On
one occasion, while the engineer was absent from Liverpool, a mass of
loose moss-earth and sand fell from the roof, which had been
insufficiently propped. The miners withdrew from the work; and on
Stephenson's return, he found them in a refractory state, refusing to
re-enter the tunnel. He induced them, however, by his example, to return
to their labours; and when the roof had been secured, the work went on
again as before. When there was danger, he was always ready to share it
with the men; and gathering confidence from his fearlessness, they
proceeded vigorously with the undertaking, boring and mining their way
towards the light.
[Picture: Olive Mount Cutting]
The Olive Mount cutting was the first extensive stone cutting executed on
any railway, and to this day it is one of the most formidable. It is
about two miles long, and in some parts 80 feet deep. It is a narrow
ravine or defile cut out of the solid rock; and not less than 480,000
cubic yards of stone were removed from it. Mr. Vignolles, afterwards
describing it, said it looked as if it had been dug out by giants.
The crossing of so many roads and streams involved the necessity for
constructing an unusual number of bridges. There were not fewer than 63,
under or over the railway, on the 30 miles between Liverpool and
Manchester. Up to this time, bridges had been applied generally to high
roads where inclined approaches were of comparatively small importance,
and in determining the rise of his arch the engineer selected any headway
he thought proper. Every consideration was indeed made subsidiary to
constructing the bridge itself, and the completion of one large structure
of this sort was regarded as an epoch in engineering history. Yet here,
in the course of a few years, no fewer than 63 bridges were constructed
on one line of railway! Mr. Stephenson early found that the ordinary
arch was inapplicable in certain cases, where the headway was limited,
and yet the level of the railway must be preserved. In such cases he
employed simple cast-iron beams, by which he safely bridged gaps of
moderate width, economizing headway, and introducing the use of a new
material of the greatest possible value to the railway engineer. The
bridges of masonry upon the line were of many kinds; several of them
askew bridges, and others, such as those at Newton and over the Irwell at
Manchester, straight and of considerable dimensions; but the principal
piece of masonry was the Sankey viaduct.
[Picture: Sankey Viaduct]
This fine work is principally of brick, with stone facings. It consists
of nine arches of fifty feet span each. The massive piers are supported
on two hundred piles driven deep into the soil; and they rise to a great
height,--the coping of the parapet being seventy feet above the level of
the valley, in which flow the Sankey brook and canal. Its total cost was
about 45,000 pounds.
By the end of 1828 the directors found they had expended 460,000 pounds
on the works, and that they were still far from completion. They looked
at the loss of interest on this large investment, and began to grumble at
the delay. They desired to see their capital becoming productive; and in
the spring of 1829 they urged the engineer to push on the works with
increased vigour. Mr. Cropper, one of the directors, who took an active
interest in their progress, said to Stephenson one day, "Now, George,
thou must get on with the railway, and have it finished without further
delay; thou must really have it ready for opening by the first day of
January next." "Consider the heavy character of the works, sir, and how
much we have been delayed by the want of money, not to speak of the
wetness of the weather: it is impossible." "Impossible!" rejoined
Cropper; "I wish I could get Napoleon to thee--he would tell thee there
is no such word as 'impossible' in the vocabulary." "Tush!" exclaimed
Stephenson, with warmth; "don't speak to me about Napoleon! Give me men,
money, and materials, and I will do what Napoleon couldn't do--drive a
railway from Liverpool to Manchester over Chat Moss!"
The works made rapid progress in the course of the year 1829. Double
sets of labourers were employed on Chat Moss and at other points, by
night and day, the night shifts working by torch and fire light; and at
length, the work advancing at all points, the directors saw their way to
the satisfactory completion of the undertaking.
It may well be supposed that Mr. Stephenson's time was fully occupied in
superintending the extensive, and for the most part novel works,
connected with the railway, and that even his extraordinary powers of
labour and endurance were taxed to the utmost during the four years that
they were in progress. Almost every detail in the plans was directed and
arranged by himself. Every bridge, from the simplest to the most
complicated, including the then novel structure of the "skew bridge,"
iron girders, siphons, fixed engines, and the machinery for working the
tunnel at the Liverpool end, had to be thought out by his own head, and
reduced to definite plans under his own eyes. Besides all this, he had
to design the working plant in anticipation of the opening of the
railway. He must be prepared with waggons, trucks, and carriages,
himself superintending their manufacture. The permanent road,
turntables, switches, and crossings,--in short, the entire structure and
machinery of the line, from the turning of the first sod to the running
of the first train of carriages upon the railway,--were executed under
his immediate supervision. And it was in the midst of this vast
accumulation of work and responsibility that the battle of the locomotive
engine had to be fought,--a battle, not merely against material
difficulties, but against the still more trying obstructions of
deeply-rooted mistrust and prejudice on the part of a considerable
minority of the directors.
He had no staff of experienced assistants,--not even a staff of
draughtsmen in his office,--but only a few pupils learning their
business; and he was frequently without even their help. The time of his
engineering inspectors was fully occupied in the actual superintendence
of the works at different parts of the line; and he took care to direct
all their more important operations in person. The principal draughtsman
was Mr. Thomas Gooch, a pupil he had brought with him from Newcastle. "I
may say," writes Mr. Gooch, "that nearly the whole of the working and
other drawings, as well as the various land-plans for the railway, were
drawn by my own hand. They were done at the Company's office in Clayton
Square during the day, from instructions supplied in the evenings by Mr.
Stephenson, either by word of mouth, or by little rough hand-sketches on
letter-paper. The evenings were also generally devoted to my duties as
secretary, in writing (mostly from his own dictation) his letters and
reports, or in making calculations and estimates. The mornings before
breakfast were not unfrequently spent by me in visiting and lending a
helping hand in the tunnel and other works near Liverpool,--the untiring
zeal and perseverance of George Stephenson never for an instant flagging
and inspiring with a like enthusiasm all who were engaged under him in
carrying forward the works." {189}
The usual routine of his life at this time--if routine it might be
called--was, to rise early, by sunrise in summer and before it in winter,
and thus "break the back of the day's work" by mid-day. While the tunnel
under Liverpool was in progress, one of his first duties in a morning
before breakfast was to go over the various shafts, clothed in a suitable
dress, and inspect their progress at different points; on other days he
would visit the extensive workshops at Edgehill, where most of the
"plant" for the line was in course of manufacture. Then, returning to
his house, in Upper Parliament Street, Windsor, after a hurried
breakfast, he would ride along the works to inspect their progress, and
push them on with greater energy where needful. On other days he would
prepare for the much less congenial engagement of meeting the Board,
which was often a cause of great anxiety and pain to him; for it was
difficult to satisfy men of all tempers, and some of these not of the
most generous sort. On such occasions he might be seen with his
right-hand thumb thrust through the topmost button-hole of his
coat-breast, vehemently hitching his right shoulder, as was his habit
when labouring under any considerable excitement. Occasionally he would
take an early ride before breakfast, to inspect the progress of the
Sankey viaduct. He had a favourite horse, brought by him from Newcastle,
called "Bobby,"--so tractable that, with his rider on his back, he would
walk up to a locomotive with the steam blowing off, and put his nose
against it without shying. "Bobby," saddled and bridled, was brought to
Mr. Stephenson's door betimes in the morning; and mounting him, he would
ride the fifteen miles to Sankey, putting up at a little public house
which then stood upon the banks of the canal. There he had his breakfast
of "crowdie," which he made with his own hands. It consisted of oatmeal
stirred into a basin of hot water,--a sort of porridge,--which was supped
with cold sweet milk. After this frugal breakfast, he would go upon the
works, and remain there, riding from point to point for the greater part
of the day. When he returned before mid-day, he examined the pay-sheets
in the different departments, sent in by the assistant engineers, or by
the foremen of the workshops. To all these he gave his most careful
personal attention, requiring when necessary a full explanation of the
items.
After a late dinner, which occupied very short time and was always of a
plain and frugal description, he disposed of his correspondence, or
prepared sketches of drawings, and gave instructions as to their
completion. He would occasionally refresh himself for this evening work
by a short doze, which, however, he would never admit had exceeded the
limits of "winking," to use his own term. Mr. Frederick Swanwick, who
officiated as his secretary, after the appointment of Mr. Gooch as
Resident Engineer to the Bolton and Leigh Railway, has informed us that
he then remarked--what in after years he could better appreciate--the
clear, terse, and vigorous style of Mr. Stephenson's dictation. There
was nothing superfluous in it; but it was close, direct, and to the
point,--in short, thoroughly businesslike. And if, in passing through
the pen of the amanuensis, his meaning happened in any way to be
distorted or modified, it did not fail to escape his detection, though he
was always tolerant of any liberties taken with his own form of
expression, so long as the words written down conveyed his real meaning.
His letters and reports written, and his sketches of drawings made and
explained, the remainder of the evening was usually devoted to
conversation with his wife and those of his pupils who lived under his
roof, and constituted, as it were, part of the family. He then delighted
to test the knowledge of his young companions, and to question them upon
the principles of mechanics. If they were not quite "up to the mark" on
any point, there was no escaping detection by evasive or specious
explanations. These always brought out the verdict, "Ah! you know nought
about it now; but think it over again, and tell me when you understand
it." If there were even partial success in the reply, it was at once
acknowledged, and a full explanation given, to which the master would add
illustrative examples for the purpose of impressing the principle more
deeply upon the pupil's mind.
It was not so much his object and purpose to "cram" the minds of the
young men committed to his charge with the _results_ of knowledge, as to
stimulate them to educate themselves--to induce them to develop their
mental and moral powers by the exercise of their own free energies, and
thus acquire that habit of self-thinking and self-reliance which is the
spring of all true manly action. In a word, he sought to bring out and
invigorate the _character_ of his pupils. He felt that he himself had
been made stronger and better through his encounters with difficulty; and
he would not have the road of knowledge made too smooth and easy for
them. "Learn for yourselves,--think for yourselves," he would
say:--"make yourselves masters of principles,--persevere,--be
industrious,--and there is then no fear of you." And not the least
emphatic proof of the soundness of this system of education, as conducted
by Mr. Stephenson, was afforded by the after history of these pupils
themselves. There was not one of those trained under his eye who did not
rise to eminent usefulness and distinction as an engineer. He sent them
forth into the world braced with the spirit of manly self-help--inspired
by his own noble example; and they repeated in their after career the
lessons of earnest effort and persistent industry which his daily life
had taught them.
Stephenson's evenings at home were not, however, exclusively devoted
either to business or to the graver exercises above referred to. He
would often indulge in cheerful conversation and anecdote, falling back
from time to time upon the struggles and difficulties of his early life.
The not unfrequent winding up of his story addressed to the young men
about him, was, "Ah! ye young fellows don't know what _wark_ is in these
days!" Mr. Swanwick takes pleasure in recalling to mind how seldom, if
ever, a cross or captious word, or an angry look, marred the enjoyment of
those evenings. The presence of Mrs. Stephenson gave them an additional
charm: amiable, kind-hearted, and intelligent, she shared quietly in the
pleasure of the party; and the atmosphere of comfort which always
pervaded her home contributed in no small degree to render it a centre of
cheerful, hopeful intercourse, and of earnest, honest industry. She was
a wife who well deserved, what she through life retained, the strong and
unremitting affection of her husband.
When Mr. Stephenson retired for the night, it was not always that he
permitted himself to sink into slumber. Like Brindley, he worked out
many a difficult problem in bed; and for hours he would turn over in his
mind and study how to overcome some obstacle, or to mature some project,
on which his thoughts were bent. Some remark inadvertently dropped by
him at the breakfast-table in the morning, served to show that he had
been stealing some hours from the past night in reflection and study.
Yet he would rise at his accustomed early hour, and there was no
abatement of his usual energy in carrying on the business of the day.