This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler.
FIFTY YEARS OF RAILWAY LIFE IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND
by Joseph Tatlow
Director Midland Great Western Railway or Ireland and Dublin and
Kingstown Railway; a Member of Dominions Royal Commission, 1912-1917;
late Manager Midland Great Western Railway, etc.
Published in 1920 by The Railway Gazette, Queens Anne's Chambers,
Westminster, London, S.W.1.
[The Author: tatlow.jpg]
CONTENTS.
I. Introductory
II. Boyhood
III. The Midland Railway and "King Hudson"
IV. Fashions and Manners, Victorian Days
V. Early Office Life
VI. Friendship
VII. Railway Progress
VIII. Scotland, Glasgow Life, and the Caledonian Line
IX. General Railway Acts of Parliament
X. A General Manager and his Office
XI. The Railway Jubilee, and Glasgow and South-Western Officers and
Clerks
XII. TOM
XIII. Men I met and Friends I made
XIV. Terminals, Rates and Fares, and other Matters
XV. Further Railway Legislation
XVI. Belfast and the County Down Railway
XVII. Belfast and the County Down (continued)
XVIII. Railway Rates and Charges, the Block, the Brake, and Light
Railways
XIX. Golf, the Diamond King, and a Steam-boat Service
XX. The Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland
XXI. Ballinasloe Fair, Galway, and Sir George Findlay
XXII. A Railway Contest, the Parcel Post, and the Board of Trade
XXIII. "The Railway News," the International Railway Congress, and a
Trip to Spain and Portugal
XXIV. Tom Robertson, more about Light Railways, and the Inland Transit
of Cattle
XXV. Railway Amalgamation and Constantinople
XXVI. A Congress at Paris, the Progress of Irish Lines, Egypt and the
Nile
XXVII. King Edward, a Change of Chairmen, and more Railway Legislation
XXVIII. Vice-Regal Commission on Irish Railways, 1906-1910, and the
Future of Railways
XXIX. The General Managers' Conference, Gooday's Dinner, and Divers
Matters
XXX. From Manager to Director
XXXI. The Dominions' Royal Commission, the Railways of the Dominions,
and Empire Development
XXXII. Conclusion
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
The Author
George Hudson, the "Railway King"
Sir James Allport
W. J. Wainwright
Edward John Cotton
Walter Bailey
Sir Ralph Cusack, D. L.
William Dargan
The Dargan Saloon
Sir George Findlay
Sir Theodore Martin
The Gresham Salver
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY
North-West Donegal. A fine afternoon in September. The mountain ranges
were bathed in sunshine and the scarred and seamy face of stern old
Errigal seemed almost to smile. A gentle breeze stirred the air and the
surface of the lakes lay shimmering in the soft autumnal light. The blue
sky, flecked with white cloudlets, the purple of the heather, the dark
hues of the bogs, the varied greens of bracken, ferns and grass, the gold
of ripening grain, and the grey of the mountain boulders, together formed
a harmony of colour which charmed the eye and soothed the mind.
I had been travelling most of the day by railway through this delightful
country, not by an express that rushed you through the scenery with
breathless haste, but by an easy-going mixed train which called at every
station. Sometimes its speed reached twenty-five miles an hour, but
never more, and because of numerous curves and gradients--for it was a
narrow gauge and more or less a surface line--the rate of progress was
much less during the greater part of the journey.
The work of the day was over. My companion and I had dined at the
Gweedore Hotel, where we were staying for the night. With the setting
sun the breeze had died away. Perfect stillness and a silence deep,
profound and all-pervading reigned. I had been talking, as an old
pensioner will talk, of byegone times, of my experiences in a long
railway career, and my companion, himself a rising railway man, seemed
greatly interested. As we sauntered along, the conversation now and
again lapsing into a companionable silence, he suddenly said: "Why don't
you write your reminiscences? They would be very interesting, not only
to us younger railway men, but to men of your own time too." Until that
moment I had never seriously thought of putting my reminiscences on
record, but my friend's words fell on favourable ground, and now, less
than a month since that night in Donegal, I am sitting at my desk penning
these opening lines.
That my undertaking will not be an easy one I know. My memory is well
stored, but unfortunately I have never kept a diary or commonplace book
of any kind. On the contrary a love of order and neatness, carried to
absurd excess, has always led me to destroy accumulated letters or
documents, and much that would be useful now has in the past, from time
to time, been destroyed and "cast as rubbish to the void."
Most autobiographies, I suppose, are undertaken to please the writers.
That this is the case with me I frankly confess; but I hope that what I
find much pleasure in writing my readers may, at least, find some
satisfaction in reading. Vanity, perhaps, plays some part in this hope,
for, "He that is pleased with himself easily imagines that he shall
please others."
Carlyle says, "A true delineation of the smallest man, and his scene of
pilgrimage through life, is capable of interesting the greatest man; that
all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange
emblem of every man's; and that human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of
all pictures the welcomest on human walls."
I am not sure that portraits of the artist by himself, though there are
notable and noble instances to the contrary, are often successful. We
rarely "see oursels as ithers see us," and are inclined to regard our
virtues and our vices with equal equanimity, and to paint ourselves in
too alluring colours; but I will do my best to tell my tale with strict
veracity, and with all the modesty I can muster.
An autobiographer, too, exposes himself to the charge of egotism, but I
must run the risk of that, endeavouring to avoid the scathing criticism
of him who wrote:--
"The egotist . . . . . . .
Whose I's and Me's are scattered in his talk,
Thick as the pebbles on a gravel walk."
Fifty years of railway life, passed in the service of various companies,
large and small, in England, Scotland and Ireland, in divers' capacities,
from junior clerk to general manager, and ultimately to the ease and
dignity of director, if faithfully presented, may perhaps, in spite of
all drawbacks, be not entirely devoid of interest.