In all the utilities of Railway travelling, England is supreme. Speed,
represented by from thirty to sixty miles an hour, “just (to quote the
words of Lubin Log) as the passenger pleases;” punctuality, that admits
of the setting of watches by arrivals and departures; and safety,
exemplified by the loss of no human life from any other cause than the
carelessness of the sufferer, during the past two years, are proofs of
British supremacy in locomotion. Yet—by a strange perversity not easily
accounted for in a country known all over the rest of the world as the
Kingdom of Comfort—the point apparently aimed at is to render the
transit of the human frame as uncomfortable an operation as possible.
Every elegance and luxury is bestowed upon waiting-rooms where extreme
punctuality renders it unnecessary for people to wait; and upon
refreshment-rooms in which travellers are allowed ten minutes to scald
themselves with boiling coffee, or to choke themselves with impossible
pork-pies; but carriages in which travellers have to be cramped up,
often for hours, and sometimes for whole days, are apparently contrived
to inflict as much torture as practicable. In order to force those who
cannot afford it into the first-class, second and third-class carriages
are only one and two degrees removed from cattle pens. And that these
should not be too delicious, the humbler order of passengers will not
easily forget that a director once proposed to hire a number of
chimney-sweeps to render—what, with the best company, are nothing better
than locomotive hutches—perfectly untenable.
They manage these things better abroad. There a detestable
class-feeling—a contemptible purse-worship, which rigidly separates
people according to their pecuniary circumstances; which metes out the
smallest privilege or comfort at a price—does not exist to prevent the
managers of railways from making the journeys of their customers and
supporters as pleasant as possible. On the French railroads, (setting
aside the question that the fares are much lower,) the second-class
carriages are comfortably cushioned, having pretty silk blinds to keep
out the sun; windows that really are capable of being pulled up and
down, besides hooks for hats,—a great convenience on a journey. For the
blinds, indeed, an enterprising blind-maker in France agreed to furnish
them to one railway company, gratis, on condition that they used no
other for a certain number of years, and allowed him to make them the
medium of his advertisements. Talk of advertising vans—can they be
compared to the brilliant notion of advertising railways—trains of
puffs, wafting the genius of inventors faster than the wind! We throw
out the hint to the “advertising world” in this country.
In winter, even in an English first-class carriage, there is no
protection against frost and damp; but in nearly all the foreign
railways, no sooner does the winter set in than the first-class
traveller finds the bottom of his carriage provided with a long tin case
full of hot water. In the cold months, masses of woollen cloth and
railway wrappers, are seen shaking in the corners of first-class English
carriages with shivering, comfortless, human beings inside them,
despairing of any sort of warmth whatever.
Comfort in railway travelling is, however brought to the highest
perfection in Germany. An esteemed correspondent at Vienna writes to us
on this subject in the following terms:—On the “_Wiener-Neustäder
Eisenbahn_,” (the Vienna and Neustadt Railway), the carriages of the
first, second, and third-class may each be said to resemble a spacious
room, furnished with seats, something like a concert-room, and having a
broad passage down the middle. Thus one may get up, walk towards a
friend a dozen seats off; or, if you require more air or a change of
position, you will find the backs of the seats shift so as to enable you
to turn round, and sit down the other way without inconvenience to any
one. I need not say that on this railway there is no struggle for “that
corner place with your back to the engine,” which is a desirable object
throughout our three kingdoms,—for every place is a corner place, having
light and air, and you may sit which way you please.
Attached to each carriage, and going the whole length of the train, is a
broad wooden plank, along which the guards are constantly walking, so
that the slightest thing amiss could scarcely occur without their
perceiving it immediately. Just before the arrival of the train at any
station, one of these functionaries—for there are several—quietly opens
the door and, instead of calling out “I say, you sir!” or “Come, marm,
your ticket, I carn’t be a waitin’ here all day,” as we have heard in
England, walks without any hurry or bustle down the division from one
end to the other, repeating, in a clear and ordinary tone of voice the
name of the station which is being approached, and requiring the tickets
of such passengers as are going to alight there. With such an
arrangement—giving ample time for the gathering together of coats,
canes, umbrellas, reticules, and so forth—even Martha Struggles herself
might have got through a journey unscathed and “unflustered.”
The admirable arrangement displayed in America, as well as in Germany,
for receiving tickets without that delay which has been so much
complained of in England, cannot be sufficiently applauded. When however
delay is unavoidable, to receive the mails, or from some other cause, no
sooner does the train stop, than a waiter, or sometimes a pretty
waitress—who is more likely to find customers—trips up the steps with a
tray laden with iced water and lemonade, glasses of light wine or
_maitrank_,(a kind of Burridge-cup,) biscuits, cakes, and other edible
nick-nacks, so that the passenger may take some slight refection without
getting down.
In the railway from Bonn to Cologne, on the Rhine, they have pushed
convenience yet farther, having provided the first-class carriages with
tables, so that during the journey, one pressed for time may write
letters with the greatest ease; pens and a portable inkstand being all
that is necessary for that purpose. Paper may be had at the station.
It has been also suggested on several of the continental railways, that
such travellers as chose to pay for the space, might have a regular bed;
a great convenience for ladies or invalids, unable to bear the fatigue
of a journey of many hours by night.
These hints might be followed with very great advantage to the
shareholders in particular and to the public in general, by the
directors of British lines.