HORSES AND ENGINES—CREWE.
The locomotive is like the horse. The latter, with long thin legs
and slight frame—at least made so by training—is the race horse. His
pace for a length of not more than a mile and a half is at the rate
of 25 to 31 miles an hour. The Derby race of 1867 was run by Hermit,
the winner, at the rate of 31·4 miles an hour. It was won in three
seconds less time, or at the rate of nearly thirty-two miles an hour,
in 1866. Since the Derby, Hermit has been “nowhere” in all his races.
A first-class hunter will go cross country occasionally at the rate of
about twenty miles an hour. A first-class “roadster,” with a weight
suitable for his strength, will do fifteen miles, and maintain the
pace for an hour. In the latter days of the old mail coach, the four
horses _galloped_ nearly the whole of seven miles in about thirty-two
minutes, but, as contractors used to say, ” the pace was killing.” On
one occasion there was a race between two coaches from Maidstone to
London; the distance—from Maidstone to the Bricklayers’ Arms, Dover
Road, thirty-six miles—was accomplished by the winner in two hours and
three-quarters. Perhaps there is no better road in all England to run
a _coach_ race upon—it is undulating slightly all the way; whereas a
completely level road is fatiguing to horses. A fast gig-horse, with
light weight behind him, will go twelve miles in an hour, and can
maintain that pace for at least an hour; but there are many horses in
England that, having only to draw “a sulky”—that is, a vehicle for but
one person—would easily accomplish fourteen and a half miles in an
hour, and some are able to go fifteen. The old posters of former days
could go eleven miles at the ordinary scale of pay for the post-boy.
Properly “tipped,” he would get over the ground at the rate of twelve,
or even thirteen, miles an hour. The Gretna Green pace was fifteen,
and sometimes, for the last mile or two, nearly twenty; the object
being to distance an enraged father, and to get within the toll-bar,
closed against the pursuer at the instant the pursued had passed it.
Put at this pace there was ever a risk of converting a marriage-feast
into what Mr. _Punch_ tells us all Scotchmen, with eye to main chance,
prefer to all other meals—“a gude, mautter-of-fact funeral brickfeast,
wie plenty of the whisky aut it.”
An ordinary gig horse will go at the rate of ten miles an hour, and
maintain the speed for an hour and a half. Butcher-boys’ horses are
wonderful at a spurt; but they could not maintain the pace for any
distance. The stately carriage-horses—too highly fed, dressed, and
cared for, to go at very high speed—can get over the ground at the rate
of ten miles an hour; but they could not continue for any time at that
speed. The ordinary carriage-horse, of less breed and mettle, will
draw a heavier load, and can get over his nine miles an hour without
distress. The large horses in the “unicorns”—the vans of Pickford’s
and the other great establishments of the same character—being a cross
between the cart and the carriage horse, can draw a less load than a
cart horse, but at a speed that averages fully five miles an hour;
whereas the cart horse, whilst easily drawing a load of upwards of a
ton in weight, could not go any distance, without breaking down, at a
higher rate than from three and a half to four miles an hour.
From the foregoing, it will be seen that there is a difference between
the ordinary pace of the cart horse and the pace that the race horse
can go for a short distance, of twenty-seven miles an hour—that is,
the latter can go nearly eight times as fast as the former; but the
difference of weight is more striking. A completely exact comparison
is not possible, because in one case it is weight carried, in the
other weight drawn—say eight stone against one ton and a quarter; one
to twenty-five. We believe that the highest speed at which an English
horse can draw a vehicle—but then it must be feather-weight and very
high wheels—is at the rate of about seventeen miles an hour. The late
Mr. Osbaldiston, of sporting memory, had a horse that slightly exceeded
it. The American trotting horses of greatest celebrity trot nearly
eighteen miles in an hour, and they never break into a gallop. “They
are,” said a sporting friend of ours, “taught only to trot; they don’t
know how to gallop.”
The difference between the extremes of engines in different classes is
not so great as it is with horses; it is, nevertheless, considerable.
The express engine, with its driving-wheel of diameter varying from
six feet and a half to eight feet, can carry a _light load_ of seventy
to ninety tons on a good—that is, a comparatively level—roadway, at
the rate of fully fifty miles an hour, and can maintain this pace with
perfect safety for a length of 90 to 100 miles, provided she can be
supplied with water, as can now be done by means of the trough. Were
she with a load behind her, not exceeding three or four carriages,
she could, as a matter of performance, and without reference to the
question of safety, maintain, without difficulty, a rate of sixty
miles an hour. A four-wheeled coupled engine, each of the four
wheels being of six feet diameter, and with appropriate dimensions
of heating-surface, draws easily 120 to 150 tons, at a running speed
of forty miles an hour. An engine, similar in other respects, but
with wheels of five and a half feet diameter, could run thirty-five
miles an hour with an increase of load of from thirty to fifty tons.
“Goods engines” of the most powerful class—that is, six wheels
coupled—diameter of wheel four feet, can draw from 300 to 350 tons.
This is also the diameter—in some instances it is even smaller—for the
heavy engines used to ascend severe gradients.
In England we have no heavier goods engines on the narrow gauge than
six-wheeled coupled. Their weight is about thirty-five tons. On the
London and North-Western they are only thirty-one tons. Abroad,
however, there are some few engines of much greater power. Thus, on
the Orleans Railway, there is a ten-wheeled coupled tank locomotive
with 19¾-inch cylinders, and 24 inches stroke. It is used principally
to overcome a long and heavy gradient near Auvergne. The diameter of
its wheels is three feet six inches. The “Steyerdorf,” an Austrian
tank engine, which has run about 20,000 miles in the last four years,
has ten wheels, six of which are coupled in one coupling, four others,
being “bogie” wheels, are coupled together separately. There is also
an extremely ingenious intermediate shaft by which the two separate
couplings are connected together. All the wheels are of the same
diameter—3 feet 3½ inches. The other principal dimensions are, cylinder
18¼ inches, length of stroke 25 inches. This locomotive is principally
employed upon a line with very stiff gradients and sharp curves. Its
maximum running speed does not exceed thirteen miles an hour.
The Northern of France Company has a few engines of immense power.
Passengers between Calais and Paris may have observed them occasionally
at stations. Their funnels lay horizontally on the upper surface of the
boilers until near their extremities, when they bend upwards; their
mouths are thus perpendicular, like the funnels of ordinary engines.
The weight of each of these locomotives is nearly forty-five tons,
and it is said that they can easily draw loads of 600 tons; but their
adoption is not likely to he general. They must be very injurious to
the road and very destructive of couplings, &c.
Not content with this weight, the Northern of France Company exhibited
in the Paris Exhibition a four-cylinder twelve-wheel tank engine, made
by Messrs. Gouin & Co., the weight of which, fully loaded with fuel and
water, is 58½ tons. It has 1,920 feet of heating surface.
In 1863, M. Thouvenot, a French engineer, proposed, in a pamphlet
published at Lausanne, the construction of a colossal locomotive, the
weight of which was to be 82 tons, horse power 582, heating surface
5,512 square feet, estimated consumption of fuel 250 lbs. per mile.
This engine was proposed principally with the view to the ascent of
mountains by railway; yet the weight of the train was to be less than
the weight of the engine—only seventy-four tons. The speed estimated
was twelve miles an hour. No such engine has as yet been, or is ever
likely to be, constructed.
The earliest passenger locomotive engines were all made with “inside
cylinders,” that is engines, the cylinders of which were within the
framework. The late Mr. Joseph Locke we believe first introduced
“outside” cylinder engines, that is, cylinders outside the framework,
and at once visible to the eye. The “Crampton” engines—a great
favourite in various parts of the continent, especially on the Northern
of France Railway, but never in England—all have outside cylinders.
The outside cylinder engine was very popular some twenty years ago,
but the tendency of engineers, especially since the introduction of
steel-cranks, is to revert to inside cylinders. Even at the Crewe
manufacturing shops, where formerly none but outside cylinder engines
were built, engines with inside cylinders are now constructed. The
same on the Great Eastern, and one or two other lines where outside
cylinders were at one time exclusively adopted.
As regards locomotive makers—thirty-six years ago the trade did not
exist in Great Britain. The following list comprises the names of
about thirty firms and establishments, all actively engaged in the
production of railway engines. Some can construct as many as 110 a
year (Messrs. Sharp, Brothers, and Messrs. R. Stephenson & Co.), and
there is none that cannot produce from twenty-five to thirty; their
total capacity is about 1,500 engines per annum. Messrs. Sharp,
Stewart & Co., and Beyer, Peacock & Co., of Manchester; Messrs. Robert
Stephenson & Co., and R. & W. Hawthorn, at Newcastle; Messrs. Kitson &
Co., Manning, Wardle & Co., Hudswell & Clarke, and the Hunslet Engine
Company, Leeds; the Avonside Engine Company, at Bristol; Messrs.
Hopkins, Gilkes & Co., Middlesboro’; the Canada Works, Birkenhead, now
the property of Mr. Thomas Brassey; the Vulcan Foundry, Warrington;
Messrs. George England & Co., New Cross, London; Messrs. James Cross
& Co., St. Helen’s; Mr. R. Brotherhood, Chippenham; Messrs. Fletcher,
Jennings & Co., Whitehaven; Messrs. Hughes & Co., Loughborough; the
Yorkshire Engine Company, near Sheffield; the Worcester Engine Company,
Worcester. The Steam-Plough Works at Leeds have recently commenced
locomotive building, and have already despatched engines for Mexico.
The Bridgewater Foundry, near Manchester, has resumed this class of
work, and is now making engines for the Brighton Railway. Messrs.
Ruston, Proctor & Co., of Lincoln, are now locomotive builders; also
the Lilleshall Company. Besides these makers, the railway companies
are themselves large constructors of locomotives. The Crewe Works
turns out 120 new engines yearly. The Great Western Company make large
numbers of engines, both at Swindon and at Wolverhampton; the Midland
Company produce many engines at Derby; the Brighton Company make
locomotives at Brighton, as do also the South-Eastern at Ashford, the
South-Western at Nine Elms, London, and the London, Chatham, and Dover
at the Longhedge Works, Battersea. So also do the Caledonian Company at
Glasgow, the North-London at Bow, and the Great Southern and Western
Company at Inchicore, near Dublin.
The largest locomotive works in Scotland are those of Messrs.
Neilson & Co., of Glasgow, and we know, from personal knowledge and
experience, that they produce excellent work. The Glasgow Locomotive
Works, Glasgow, is also a large establishment, with capacity for very
extensive business.
There are no locomotive building firms in Ireland.
The money value of the new locomotives only, turned out each year by
these establishments is close upon £4,000,000 sterling. Nearly a third
of the locomotives built are sent abroad.
In 1864, the number of locomotives on the German railways was 4,768,574
of which were manufactured abroad; Germany now not only builds her own
locomotives, but she sent 1,000 last year to other countries, such as
Switzerland, Italy, France, and Russia. The number of engines now used
on the railways of Germany is 5,250, of which 340 have to be replaced
every year, it being calculated that a locomotive seldom lasts longer
than fifteen or sixteen years. The largest of the German factories is
that of Borsig, of Berlin, which has built more than 2,000 engines
since it was first established in 1841; the two-thousandth engine
being the one that was sent to the Paris Exhibition of 1867. As the
one-thousandth locomotive of this establishment was completed in 1859,
it follows that its producing capacity is about 125 engines a year.
Of the others, the principal are that of Maffei, in Bavaria; that of
the Austrian railway companies at Vienna; Egerstorff’s, at Hanover;
Henschl’s, at Cassel; and the Carlsruhe Factory, which sent its four
hundred and fifty-ninth locomotive to the Paris Exhibition.
The great locomotive establishments of France are not more than six in
number; those of Messrs. Schneider & Co., at the Creusot Iron Works,
of Messrs. Cail & Co., Messrs. Gouin & Co., Messrs. Kœchlin & Co.,
of Mulhouse, the establishments at Five-Lilles, Graffenstadt, and
Commentry. Each of the great French railway companies make locomotives.
The capacity of construction of all the establishments in France does
not exceed 450 engines per annum. Although France is very proud of
having exported a dozen engines to England, she is herself a large
importer of them, principally from Belgium; and she requires an
expansion of at least 50 per cent. of her present locomotive production
before she can be independent, for them, of other nations.
The largest locomotive constructing and engineering factory in Belgium
is that of the “Societé, John Cockerill,” at Seraing, established
in 1834, by our countryman of that name. Mr. Cockerill did not live
to see the complete success of the establishment. The other leading
locomotive constructing firms in Belgium are those of Messrs. Nicaise
& Deleuwe, of Louvière; G. Raghens & Sons, of Malines; Messrs. Charles
L. Cavels, of Ghent; “Compagnie Belge du Materiel des Chemins de
Fer,” at Molenbeek Saint Jean; Thivenet, of Marchienne; Hanrez & Co.,
of Monceau-upon-Sambre; and A. Detombay & Co., of Marcinelle. The
locomotive producing capacity of Belgium is about 600 engines per
annum, and it can be easily extended.
Switzerland has one locomotive building factory, which was recently
opened at Zurich. Italy, Spain, Russia, and Holland are not locomotive
producing countries. About 4,500 engines per annum are now constructed
in Europe, but in case of demand at least 2,000 a year more could
be produced. Canada and Australia are the only British colonies in
which they are made; in the former their first manufacture dates
back about twelve years, but it is only in the present year that a
commencement has been made of building them in Australia. The first
Australian engine was made at Sydney, and others are now in process of
construction there.
There are, according to the last Post Office returns, 814 head
postal towns in Great Britain, besides at least 4,000 sub-postal
towns, boroughs, and villages, scattered all over the kingdom.
There are in France no less than 4,361 “Bureaux de Poste et de
Distribution,” both major and minor, and, as we have already said at
page 144, Monsieur Vandal, in his _Annuaire des Postes_ for 1866,
enumerates about 19,000 postal towns in Europe and North America,
exclusive of Schindermanderscheid, Oberschindermanderscheid, and
Nederschindermanderscheid, which he has omitted to mention. With all
these the French Post Office has correspondence more or less direct;
so also has that of England. What the number of cities, towns, and
villages, may be in the other parts of the world it is impossible
to say; but this, at all events, is certain, that there is only one
town, one great town, that has been conceived for the locomotive, born
for the locomotive, wet-nursed for the locomotive, weaned for the
locomotive, breeched for the locomotive, birched for the locomotive,
apprenticed for the locomotive; its _prima lanugo_ was for the
locomotive; and, finally, _prima lanugo_ has since grown to manhood,
and, by the usual metamorphosis, has been converted into bristles,
through the locomotive.
Just thirty-three years ago, at the original planning of the Grand
Junction Railway, CREWE, which otherwise might have never been more
than a road-side station, was fixed upon as the site for the company’s
locomotive and carriage establishments. Its locality was convenient,
being 42½ miles from Liverpool, and 54½ from Birmingham. Besides, it
was at a comparatively poor and unfrequented part of the railway,
where land could be—and actually, in the first purchases, was—obtained
cheaply. Well, the line was built, the station was opened, and the
repairing shops were erected. They were (in the plural number) “_parra
metu primo_,” for it was always the late Mr. Joseph Locke’s habit
to build with as much cheapness and economy as were consistent with
efficiency and good working. The locomotive and carriage requirements
for 97½ miles of railway, with six trains a day in each direction on
week days and four on Sundays, added to which were a couple or three
goods trains each way on week days, were not great. Therefore, the
first erections at Crewe were modest and unpretending.
In process of time Crewe grew, for not only was the Grand Junction
married with the London and Birmingham, neither bride nor bridegroom,
however, retaining its former name, but each becoming “London and
North-Western.” A year or so after celebration of the marriage,
Crewe became the junction point of the railway to Manchester; thence
afterwards extended in a mystifying net-work of lines over all the
manufacturing towns of Cheshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire. On the
left there was the line to Chester, one of the railways constructed by
George Stephenson, which, in 1849, was extended, by his son Robert,
to Holyhead. The main arterial railway did not, in the first instance,
extend farther north from London, than the point where the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway bisected it at Newton Junction; but, by degrees,
it stretched out to Preston, then to Lancaster, then to Carlisle, and
therefrom all over western Scotland. So that the insignificant, almost
unknown, Crewe of 1837 had not only become, in 1849, a great centre of
traffic of every description, but it was also the workshop, the family
residence, when in health, of upwards of 220 engines and tenders, as
well as the hospital and place of receptacle for such of them as became
sick, halt, or maimed, while working the traffic of what became, at
the time of the amalgamation, the northern division of the London and
North-Western Railway. The extreme southern point of this division
was, and we believe still is, Stafford; at the commencement of the
railway—very much like Crewe—an insignificant and unimportant road-side
station. In the north, Crewe engines worked as far as Carlisle,
westward to Holyhead, and eastward along the mystifying net-work of
lines which fertilise Cheshire and its two adjacent manufacturing
counties. Upwards of one hundred engines were at work every day; and
besides keeping them all in perfect order, the establishment turned out
a new engine and tender every Monday morning, commencing on the 1st of
January, 1848.
In 1849 the number of men and boys employed in all the shops devoted
to engines was 1,600; the weekly wages of each averaged just a pound a
week—£1,600. “Close to the entrance of the locomotive department,” says
Sir Francis Head, in his “Stokers and Pokers,” “stands, as its _primum
mobile_, the tall chimney of a steam-pump, which, besides supplying the
engine that propels the machinery of the workshops, gives an abundance
of water to the locomotives, and also to the new railway town of Crewe,
containing at present about 8,000 inhabitants. This pump raises about
eighty or ninety thousand gallons of water per day from a brook below
into filtering-beds, whence it is again raised about forty feet into a
large cistern, where it is a second time filtered through charcoal for
the supply of the town.”
“After passing through a workshop,” continues Sir Francis, “containing
thirty-four planing and slotting machines, in busy but almost silent
operation, we entered a smiths’ shop, 260 feet long, containing forty
forges all at work. At several of the anvils there were three, and
sometimes four strikers, and the quantity of sparks that more or less
were exploding from each, the number of sledge-hammers revolving in
the air, with the sinewy frames, bare throats and arms of the fine
hale men who wielded them, formed altogether a scene well worthy of
a few moments’ contemplation. As the heavy work of the department is
principally executed in this shop, in which iron is first enlisted
and then rather roughly drilled into the service of the company, it
might be conceived that the music of the forty anvils at work would
altogether be rather noisy in concert. The grave itself, however,
could scarcely be more silent than this workshop, in comparison with
the one that adjoins it, in which the boilers of the locomotives are
constructed. As for asking questions of, or receiving explanations
from, the guide who, with motionless lips, conducts the stranger
through this chamber, such an effort would be utterly hopeless; for
the deafening noise proceeding from the riveting of the bolts and
plates of so many boilers is distracting beyond description. We almost
fancied that the workmen must be aware of this effect upon a stranger,
and that on seeing us enter they welcomed our visit by a special
charivari sufficient to awaken the dead. As we hurried through the
din, we could not, however, help pausing for a moment before a boiler
of copper inside and iron outside, within which there sat crouched up,
like a negro between the decks of a slave-ship, an intelligent-looking
workman, holding with both hands a hammer against a bolt, on the upper
end of which, within a few inches of his ears, two lusty comrades on
the outside were hammering with surprising strength and quickness.
The noise which reverberated within this boiler, in addition to that
which was resounding without, formed altogether a dose which it is
astonishing the tympanum of the human ear can receive uninjured; at
all events we could not help thinking that if there should happen to
exist on earth any man ungallant enough to complain of the occasional
admonition of a female tongue, if he will only go by rail to Crewe,
and sit in that boiler for half-an-hour, he will most surely never
again complain of the chirping of that ‘cricket on his hearth,’ the
whispering curtain lectures of his _dulce domum_.”
It is impossible to follow and narrate, in a work of this description,
all the details of manufacture by which the rough masses of iron,
steel, copper, and brass become converted into the perfect locomotive.
We therefore close these extracts from Sir Francis’ pleasant book, by
what he says of the erecting-shop at Crewe, it being remembered that
production being now more than double what it was in 1849, the delivery
of an engine every three days is its usual amount, and sixteen or
eighteen times a-year there is an interval of only two working days
between the births of two engines:—
“At the farther end of the line of rails close to the north wall,
there appeared a long, low, tortuous mass of black iron-work, without
superstructure or wheels, in which the form of an engine-bed in embryo
could but very faintly be traced. A little nearer was a similar mass,
in which the outline appeared, from some cause or other, to be more
distinctly marked; nearer still, the same outline appeared upon wheels.
To the next there had been added a boiler and a fire-box, without dome,
steam escape, or funnel-pipe. Nearer still, the locomotive engine, in
its naked state, appeared in point of form complete, and workmen were
here busily engaged in covering the boiler with a garment about half
an-inch thick of hair-felt, upon which others were affixing a covering
of inch deep plank, over which was to be tightly bound a tarpaulin, the
whole to be secured by iron hoops. In the next case the dome of the
engine was undergoing a similar toilette, excepting that, instead of a
wooden upper garment, it was receiving one of copper. Lastly (it was on
a Saturday that we chanced to visit the establishment), there stood,
at the head of this list of recruits, a splendid bran-new locomotive
engine, completely finished, painted bright green (the varnish was
scarcely dry), and in every respect perfectly ready to be delivered
over on Monday morning to run its gigantic course. On other rails
within the building were tenders in similar states of progress; and, as
the eye rapidly glanced down these iron rails, the finished engine and
tender immediately before it seemed gradually and almost imperceptibly
to dissolve in proportion to its distance, until nothing was left of
each but an indistinct and almost unintelligible dreamy vision of black
iron-work.”
In 1849 the coach repairing business of the northern division of the
company, as well as the locomotive establishments, were at Crewe, but
by a recent arrangement all the locomotive staff and material which
existed at Wolverton (for it was, until the transfer, both the engine
and the carriage repairing establishment of the southern division of
the London and North-Western Company) have been removed to Crewe.
Wolverton has received the carriage repairing establishment of Crewe,
and henceforward its duties will be limited to this service. As regards
waggons and all the rolling stock relating to the goods department, a
separate establishment has been formed at Earlestown, near the junction
station of that name, 187 miles from London. By this arrangement Crewe
will shortly be able to turn out some thirty or forty more engines a
year, bringing the regular number of engines manufactured up to three a
week,—of the money value of fully £7,000.
Let us now give some details of the growth of Crewe in the last
nineteen years. In 1849, as has just been stated, 1,600 men and boys
were employed there, averaging £1 a week each in wages. At present
the number of workmen of all kinds employed, including the locomotive
works, the steel works (of which anon), rail making, and “the steam
shed,” is about 4,350. It is never at present under 4,300. The wages
due to “the hands” each week is £5,050, so that the average per person
employed has increased from £1 a week in 1849, to £1. 3s. 3d. at
present. In 1849 there were 360 miles “worked” by Crewe. Now the number
is 1,328. In 1849 there were about 100 “Crewe engines” in steam daily;
now there are from 800 to 850, varying according to the amount of work
that has to be gone through.
Among the additional buildings which have very recently been erected
is a new repairing shop, capable of accommodating thirty-two engines.
It is fitted up with travelling cranes, worked by cord, on the
principle invented and employed by Mr. Ramsbottom. Full and interesting
particulars of this, and the other machinery now adopted at Crewe, will
be found in the _Engineer_ newspaper of February 9th and 16th, 1866,
and in _Engineering_ of the 25th of October, 1867.
In addition to the cranes just referred to, one has recently been
supplied to the new iron foundry, in which are placed two very large
cupolas required for the heaviest castings. This crane is capable of
sustaining a weight of thirty tons; a smaller one lifts ten tons. There
are also two hydraulic cranes, similar to those invented by Bessemer,
for hoisting ingots out of the converting pit at the steel works; also
a hoist worked by hydraulic machinery for lifting metal, coke, &c.,
from the ground floor to the firing stage of the cupolas. In the same
range are a brass foundry, millwrights’ shop, carpenters’ shop and
saw-mill, the whole covering an area of about 112,000 superficial feet.
Before quitting the subject of locomotive repairs, it must be stated
that there are—what on other railways would be called large shops—minor
establishments at Carlisle, at Camden, at Edge Hill, near Liverpool,
at Longsight, near Manchester, and at Preston. The very heavy repairs,
however, which all engines require from time to time are done
exclusively at Crewe.
But, besides locomotive work at Crewe on the foregoing gigantic scale,
and in all its infinities, the London and North-Western Company decided
in 1863 to commence the manufacture not only of rails on the ordinary
system, but also upon the new and marvellous process known as the
“Bessemer Process,” so called after the name of the distinguished
gentleman who is its inventor. Thanks to this process, of which, owing
to the scope and character of our work, we can only say a few words,
a most important saving in the items of maintenance and renewals, is
about to be effected on railways. The Bessemer works at Crewe were
opened in September, 1864. The number of men exclusively employed at
them is 378, and their wages are £444 a week. In the article of steel
rails alone, the works turn out at the rate of 6,000 tons a year,
and this is exclusive of the number of steel tires, axles, &c., also
manufactured there. This number is increasing daily, owing to the
increased economy effected by their introduction.[70] The amount of
iron rails also manufactured is about 14,000 tons a year. As renewals
of rails are required on those parts of the system where the traffic
is heavy and the trains are frequent, iron will be superseded by steel
rails. It is probable that, eventually, the latter only will be found
on the London and North-Western system. This, however, is not likely
to be the case for some years to come. In the meantime, the iron rails
constructed at Crewe, being so much superior in quality to those
manufactured by the iron masters, will carry the traffic on the less
frequented portions of the line, and will cost less for maintenance and
renewal than steel rails at their present prices. The cost of their
production will, however, no doubt, he greatly diminished in the course
of the next three or four years. Mr. Bessemer’s royalties, unless he
obtain renewal of his patents, will cease about that period.
But how are the 14,000 men, women, and children, who now constitute the
population of modern Crewe, lodged and otherwise provided for? When,
in 1849, they numbered 8,000 they were lodged in 514 houses, a number
which we expect the Registrar-General would have put his finger upon
and objected to—nearly 16 persons in each small habitation. Now, the
number of houses is about 2,000, of which 720 belong to the company.
They are built along commodious and pleasant streets; well lighted with
gas; well Macadamised or paved. As signs of civilisation, there are
gay and lively shops, brightly lighted up on winter evenings, replete
with modern fashions for the ladies, and, for the rougher sex, there is
everything at hand for everyday work, and for Sundays. All the usual
signs of civilisation prevail within town boundaries. There are dancing
masters and dancing mistresses, music masters, and music teachers of
the gentler sex, barrel organs and German bands, occasional theatrical
performances by the _artistes_ of the “circuit,” balls, dances,
flirtations, marriages and their usual consequences, and, to wind up,
there are four lawyers, seven policemen, a weekly newspaper called
the _Crewe and Nantwich Guardian_, and two undertakers! The gentleman
who has so kindly furnished us with most of the information herein
given respecting modern Crewe, wishes it specially to be noted, that
“the undertakers do not make this their sole business, but are also
drapers,” a request that we have great pleasure in complying with,
adding thereto a hope on our own parts, that the worthy drapers may
long find it more profitable to wait upon Crewe living, than to follow
it, when dead, to its last resting-place.
In a work published at the commencement of this year by Messrs. Tinsley
Brothers, entitled “Some Habits and Customs of the Working Classes,
written by a Journeyman Engineer,” the writer alleges that working
men cannot write letters for the reason that “they were very good
scholars once, only they have forgotten all their education,”—hence
it is, continues the author, “they usually regard letter writing as
a soul-depressing business fit only for the gloom and involuntary
confinement of a wet Sunday.” But this is not the case at Crewe, for we
find, by a postal return presented to Parliament in August last, that
the Post Office distributes 6,350 letters every week. Of course this
number is exclusive of the legion beyond number that the locomotive
department receives and sends out “on company’s service.” The service
correspondence of the traffic and of the stores departments must also
be very considerable. All these letters are conveyed solely by the
company’s trains.
Crewe is now even better off, as regards its water supply, than it was
in 1849. The whole of it comes, at present, from Whitmore, close by the
station of that name, eleven miles from Crewe, where it is pumped out
of the red sand-stone into a reservoir. Now, it happens, fortunately,
that Whitmore is 580 feet higher than Crewe, so that the water
gravitates in pipes laid along the railway, and it is so pure at its
journey’s end that it requires no filtering whatever. The consequence
is, that not only is there an abundant supply for Crewe Works, but
every house in the town is also well furnished. Recently, considerable
additional demand has been made on the water supply of the town, owing
to the opening of some large and convenient modern baths. These
consist of a capacious swimming bath, the cost for which is 2d. each
bather. A first-class warm bath at these baths costs sixpence, a second
fourpence; but at the baths inferior in point of style and elegance,
the price is only 1½d.
Formerly a medical man was appointed to attend the workmen and their
families in sickness, or when accidents occurred. Of late years the
doctor is no longer provided by the company, as far as sickness is
concerned, as the system was found to cause much dissatisfaction, many
of the workmen being connected with societies which provided special
medical attendance for the members. For accidents, however, an hospital
has been erected, the expenses of which are partly defrayed by the
railway company, and the medical man appointed by the company still
attends to the surgical cases of the men themselves, for which each man
pays one half-penny a-week.
The town was governed in 1849 by a council of fifteen members,
two-thirds of whom were nominated by the workmen, and one-third by the
directors. Now the government is vested in a Local Board of Health
consisting, as in the previous arrangement, of fifteen members, who are
elected altogether by the ratepayers. The time has not yet arrived,
in the opinion of the leading persons in the town, for applying for a
Charter of Incorporation; at all events, nothing is thought about it at
present.
We have left to the last a brief description of the arrangements which
have been made for Divine service, religious instruction, and for moral
cultivation and improvement. In 1849 there was only one church at
Crewe. It was capable of accommodating about 800 persons. In 1867 the
original church had been enlarged, and had become capable of receiving
1,200. In 1865 Mr. George Duncombe, of London, presented an iron church
for the use of the inhabitants—a noble act, for which God will for
ever bless him and his. But the Parish Church and the iron church
having proved inadequate for the number of members of the Established
Church who present themselves to hear God’s word, the site for the
construction of another church has been secured, and the work will be
commenced before the close of the present year.
Besides the Episcopalian churches, there are fourteen places of worship
for other denominations—equal to the accommodation of over 4,000
persons. The Town Hall and Mechanics’ Institution is supported by about
400 members. It contains a large reading room, a gymnasium, and a
library, which now numbers upwards of 3,000 volumes. In addition, there
are several commodious and well lighted class-rooms in which evening
classes are held for the higher education of those pupils who are
unable to attend the ordinary schools in the day time. The number of
such pupils exceeds 150. The drawing class is a branch of the Chester
School of Art. The pupils are examined annually by the Government
Examiners. There is also a science and art class, a tributary of the
South Kensington system.
The Mechanics’ Institution receives a free grant of patent
specifications from Government. These are greatly esteemed by the
pupils, who have made much use of them during the last few years.
The ordinary schools established by the company, and attached to the
Episcopalian Church, have recently been enlarged. The daily attendance
of children at them is about 700. The schools belonging to the other
denominations of worship are attended daily by over a thousand children.
Crewe boasts of a handsome and substantial market hall, which covers an
area of 14,000 superficial feet. Saturday is market day. There was no
private manufactory of any description in the town until 1865, when Mr.
Compton, of London, established a factory for making up the clothing
worn by the company’s servants. Upwards of 250 persons are now employed
in it.
At the head of the mighty establishments at Crewe—establishments in
which, including men and materials, there is a weekly expenditure of
about £20,000—over a million a year—is one man who, if he had been
in Egypt, with works not a quarter the size and not half so ably
carried out, would have been at least a Bey, more probably a Pacha, in
Austria a Count of the Holy Empire; in any other country in the world,
except England, with crosses and decorations, the ribbons of which
would easily make a charming bonnet of existing dimensions. But in
England the earnest, persevering, never-tiring JOHN RAMSBOTTOM is John
Ramsbottom—no more. It is true that he has European and Transatlantic
reputation, and that he is Fellow and Honorary Fellow of innumerable
societies, thus abnegating in his person the latter half of the
aphorism that says:—
“Worth makes the man, the want of it the fellow.”
For without the worth he never would have been the fellow. Probably had
Mr. Ramsbottom been a Member of Parliament, he might have hereditary
honours by this time. But ere long there will be fresh agitation for
distribution of seats, notwithstanding the anger of the _Quarterly
Review_ of October, 1867, at the “Conservative Surrender.” Then will
be the time for Crewe to put forward its claims to have its bone, its
sinew, its muscle, its manly vigour, and Titanic power represented. Who
more worthy to represent it than the present semi-sovereign prince who
sways, with nearly omnipotent power, 157½ miles from the supreme and
sovereign authority at Euston? Add Barrow-in-Furness, and then “King
Iron” would make his thunder heard in St. Stephens!
Crewe, although pre-eminently the great locomotive city of the
empire, is far from being the only one. Next in importance to it is
Swindon, at which are located all the great engineering works of the
Great Western Company; it is seventy-eight miles from London, on the
main line, which leads on the left to Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and
the whole extreme South-Western parts of England; on the right to
Gloucester, and thence to South Wales. The Great Eastern locomotive
works are at Stratford, four miles from London; those of the Great
Northern at Doncaster, 157 miles. The Midland, the latest addition
to the number of railways having their termini in London, have their
shops at Derby, 120 miles from London. Crossing the Thames, we find
the South-Western locomotive shops at Nine Elms, within half-a-mile
of those of the London, Chatham and Dover, at Long Hedge, Battersea.
The London, Brighton and South Coast works are at Brighton, fifty-two
miles from London. Finally, those of the South-Eastern are at Ashford,
the junction point whence, besides the main line to Folkstone and
Dover, one branch runs to the left to accommodate Canterbury, Deal,
Margate, and Ramsgate, another to the right extends to St. Leonards and
Hastings; Ashford is sixty-seven miles from London. The largest railway
company in England, the terminus of which is not in London, is the
North-Eastern; in mileage it ranks third, being only exceeded by the
London and North-Western and the Great Western. Its locomotive shops
are at York; those of the Caledonian Company are near Glasgow. The two
railway companies of longest dimensions in Ireland, the Great Southern
and Western and the Midland Great Western, have their workshops
respectively at Inchicore and at Broadstone; both these places are
suburbs of Dublin. There are more than 20,000 skilled workmen and their
apprentices employed in the engine repairing and constructing factories
belonging to the railway companies of the United Kingdom.