A JOURNEY ON THE LOCOMOTIVE.
READER! have you ever travelled on a locomotive? We believe not; at
least there have been very few of you of the male sex, none of you
of the gentler—for there is a law on railways like that of masonry,
railway engines are “tiled” against crinoline.[71] If one of you
should, peradventure, ever succeed in bounding the barrier, you will,
like Miss Aldworth[72] a hundred years ago, be sworn to keep the
secret for life,—and we are sure you will keep it.
We, however, have been permitted to travel on the engine from London
to Stafford and back again, and not having been sworn to secrecy, we
venture to give a brief account of the journey.
It is not to be supposed that going through the air at the rate of
between forty and fifty miles an hour is disagreeable. It is not so,
unless the weather be severe and trying; but in fine, and especially
warm weather, the rapid movement creates a feeling of much pleasure and
enjoyment. It is only when amateurs do not travel on railway engines
that the real hardships of locomotive driving can be appreciated; of
late years, however, the little wooden fencing, with oval glass window
on each side, the whole technically called a “cab,” gives an amount of
protection which materially lessens hardship in inclement weather.
It may be considered, as a general rule, that there are on an average,
twelve men employed on each mile of railway in the United Kingdom.
Taking the present length of railways as 14,300 miles,[73] this would
make the number about 172,000. Of course on many of the railways,
especially on those opened in recent years, which are single lines, and
run through districts where the population is sparse and the trains
infrequent, there is nothing like that average number employed. But,
on the other hand, the unceasing increase of business, especially in
goods and mineral traffic, on all the leading railways that connect
important places together, necessitates continued increase of staff;
hence it is that the number of men directly employed is very nearly the
same per mile as it was seven or eight-and-twenty years ago.
The engine drivers and firemen constitute about a twelfth of the total
staff of railway companies.
One of the oldest railways guide books published, gives exact
directions how to arrive at Euston Station from other parts of the
town, and we are told to take special notice of the “Grand Facade at
Euston Grove.” The centre of it is the Doric portico built by Hardwich,
used by nobody, which, however, cost shareholders no less than £40,000.
No wonder, seeing that it contains not less than 75,000 cubic feet of
Yorkshire freestone, several of the blocks of which, weighed upwards of
thirteen tons each.
Passing _by_, but not through this massive portal, we arrive at the
actual station, and thence at the platform, whence, in the magnificent
language of penny-a-lining,[74] we are so shortly to be “hurled
along through the atmosphere at singularly rapid—it might almost be
said marvellously terrific speed of forty-five miles an hour.” Not
being historiographers for Mr. Frith, R.A., we do not intend to give
any account of the persons whom he truly, but not with such intense
artistic effect as in the “Derby Day,” depicts, as those who fill a
railway platform just before a train is starting. We must therefore
not say anything of the unconscious or indifferent old gentleman,
who so placidly reads his newspaper, within six inches of the two
broad-brimmed detectives, one of whom dangles the “bracelets” into
the view of the foiled and agonised culprit, compelled to convert an
intended migration into forced residence in Newgate. We must also
leave unrecorded about heaving porters, rushing guards, precipitous
newsboys, friends parting—some with lurking tears, some with tears more
open—some with scarce suppressed pleasure and fervent hope, as they
affectionately squeeze each other’s hands, that they may never meet
again, at all events on this side of Jordan; all these must we pass
by, that we may show to the engine driver and his “mate” the order,
which gives us the privilege of placing ourselves, with them, on the
footplate of the engine.
There she is—manacled with harness that Vulcan presided at the forging
of—smoke-vomiting, steam-emitting, snorting, bubbling inside, grunting,
growling—hissing too, with an intensity equal to the combined and
concentrated hissing of ten thousand offended and irritated cats,
additioned with the hissing of at least the like number of angry birds,
the hissing of one of which was enough to save from capture Roman
Capitol, ancient Rome’s strongest fortress, 365 years after Roman City
had been created.
Every passenger is seated, the door of every carriage has received its
last bang[75] at closing, even the inevitable last man has rushed in,
panting and breathless, and has been shoved with main force, by at
least a dozen sturdy porters, into a compartment. This last man is as
inevitable as the dog at Epsom Races on the Derby Day, or any other
incident of life, the absence of which is so impossible, that life
could not go on without it. There always is—there always _must_ be—a
last man; inexorable fate has so decided. Then it is that the gentleman
in the braided green coat, with—as a further mark of distinction from
other officials—a hat on, gracefully and graciously, with becoming
dignity, yet withal not pompously, in short, exactly as befits a
railway official of authority, weight, and consequence, waves a white
flag which he has just received from an official of humbler grade
standing beside him, once up, once down, and once more up again. He
waves no more; the before-mentioned humbler official receiving the flag
staff from his dignified chief, carefully folds it up, that it may be
in readiness for precisely the same ceremony at the departure of each
subsequent train; the chief (still dignified) gives a _vade-valeque_
motion of his right hand, the guard sounds his whistle, and all the
bustle, life, excitement, and animation of ten minutes by-gone have as
completely vanished, as if they had never existed.
The engine has no sooner, by the slight movement of the “regulator”
which the driver gently handles, received a first injection of steam
into her cylinders than she starts into motion as a thing of life, with
a weight behind her of not less than from 100 to 150 tons. The slow
pace at starting is gradually increased, but she has scarcely passed
the limit of the station when she is taught the lesson of life, which
even the most favoured learn—that it is with her as with man, it is
uphill work, at all events in its early stages, for in the first mile
and a quarter she has to ascend the stiffest hill in her whole journey,
“1 in 80,” Camden being just a hundred feet higher than Euston. Bury’s
“four-wheelers,” the _dii maximi_ of railway engine power in 1810,
were so weak that they could not bring a train, the weight of which
was not a quarter of one of a modern date, up the “Euston incline”
without the friendly aid of ropes worked by two fixed engines of high
power, and two very high chimneys, at Camden. But the chimneys have
long since disappeared, and the engines are doing good service in some
other place belonging to the Company’s gigantic establishments. The
engine and train emerge from the Primrose tunnel to hide themselves in
a minute or two afterwards in that of Kilburn, and as they pass the
station of that name, the reader may be reminded it was there that Dick
Turpin began his ride to York, on Black Bess, 130 years ago[76]. Had
it been mail horses of the olden time their run to Wimbledon (seven
miles from Euston) would have completed their present journey, and
they would have rested until they were harnessed to the “up mail,”
and having brought it to London, their work of twenty-four hours
would have been completed. But at seven miles from its starting point
the iron horse would not have been more than four or five minutes at
full running pace; three minutes in time and two miles in distance
bring time-honoured Harrow in sight, “on the hill,” for its church
is noticable from every point of the compass, and it was of it that
Charles II. said, during a theological discussion in his presence,
“the true visible church, as it could be seen everywhere.” Of its
school,[77] founded in 1571 by John of Lyon, but one momentary view is
obtained, and that is only as a day train darts along the valley that
leads to Watford. The three most distinguished men of modern times who
have received their education there have been Peel, Palmerston, and
Byron.[78]
The northern extremity of the long Watford tunnel, twenty miles from
London, is reached just thirty-three minutes from the time of starting;
yet it has been climbing work all the while, and the climbing work
continues still farther to Tring, eleven miles more distant from
London; but the hill is not so steep as it was at starting. Long it
is; but Tring is, nevertheless, only some 750 feet higher than Euston,
and some 350 feet higher than the top of the cross of the noblest
Protestant Church in the world—St. Paul’s. Has the engine felt it?
Not she. She has only shown that she knows the difference between a
gradient of 1 in 80 and 1 in 300, by the bound she made into higher
speed, as, escaping from the stiffer incline, she dashed on to more
level ground through the Points of Camden.
In the by-gone days of the early railway, the engine that could gain
the heights of Tring without baiting on the way was a wonder. In 1844,
when experiments were made preparatory to running express trains
between London and Birmingham in three hours, the exultation was great
when it was found that a tender could be constructed to hold water
enough to convey a light train as far as Wolverton without stopping.
Finality is an unknown element on the railway: Progress is its only
pass-word. The tender was no sooner found capable of carrying water
to Wolverton, than it was determined to extend the distance to
Blisworth. Not very long afterwards the run was increased to Rugby,
twenty miles farther. Engines and trains have for some years run these
eighty-two miles without stoppage; but of late the water-crane has been
supplemented by the water-trough, of which we shall take occasion to
speak presently.
From Tring to Leighton the ground is gone over in nearly as few minutes
as there are miles—one only conspicuous object being visible in the
intervening distance—the noble house built, not ten years ago, for the
great Rothschild, by the still greater Paxton.
As the train flies through Leighton Station, the engineman’s watch
tells that he has completed his forty miles in his appointed time,
fifty-six minutes from that at which he left London. Well that he is
quick of glance, for before the watch is replaced in its pocket, the
engine and train enter in the Linsdale Tunnel. It is the worst on
the line, for though short—only 284 yards in length—you are half-way
through it before the first gleam of daylight is caught streaming
in at its opposite entrance. “I have got the distant signal all
right, Jack, put some coal on”—says the engineman to his fireman, and
the furnace door has scarcely been opened for three shovels full,
before the iron-clad is dashing through Bletchley Station—46½ miles
from London,—twenty years ago, a small road-side station; now, a
first-class and intricate junction, whence a branch juts off to the
right to Bedford, and thence to Cambridge; another on the left to
Oxford. It is thus that the two Universities are brought into railway
connection, and the rival seats of learning and of boat racing are only
three-and-a-half hours apart from each other. Might not Cam do well by
an occasional training visit to the banks and stream of Isis?
Bletchley is also intricate, because it is here that the third line
of railway, ordered by the London and North-Western Company in 1858,
commences, and is continued except through the Watford Tunnel (at
either end of which it is very ingeniously connected with the original
up-line of railway) on to Camden Station. This third line is solely for
up goods, cattle, and mineral traffic, and the relative speed of such
trains and those for passengers can be seen and appreciated, as the
latter pass alongside the former for a minute or two, and then leave
them behind at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour—twenty _versus_
forty-five.
Time was when Wolverton was looked upon as the most dangerous part
of the whole line between London and Liverpool. It was, therefore, a
halting place not only for all passenger trains, but goods trains came
to a stand there also. At Wolverton likewise were the main locomotive
repairing shops of the original London and Birmingham Company; and
when the company was amalgamated with the Grand Junction and other
companies, the locomotive establishment became that for the southern
division of the London and North-Western Company, the two northern
points of which are, Birmingham, looking westward, and Stafford,
looking slightly to the eastward. In process of time the repairing
shops have been doubled, trebled, nearly quadrupled. In 1840 Wolverton
had a population of 2,000, all of whom were company’s servants or
their families. In 1849 it was double that number, and now, in 1867,
it is 6,000. But of this number about 1,700 are on the wing with
their families. These are the men who have hitherto been employed in
the locomotive works, which (as stated at page 199) have just been
transferred to Crewe. These men and their families, however, will not
leave a void in the population, as their places will be supplied from
the carriage portion of the Crewe establishment, and from the carriage
works of the company, until now located at Saltley, near Birmingham.
The chief owners of land at Wolverton are the trustees of the Radcliffe
Library Estate at Oxford; and, although they have erected upon the
property a church, to which is attached a churchyard (already beginning
to show a great many mounds), they have always been unwilling to
dispose of land for building purposes to the extent required by the
company. The consequence has been that part of the town or village of
Wolverton has had to be built nearly a mile away from it!—at a place
called Stantonbury, to the great inconvenience and discomfort of all
the men who have to take up their quarters in that locality.
Besides the Radcliffe Episcopalian Church, there is one built mainly by
subscriptions from the shareholders of the company. Conjointly they are
capable of seating about a thousand people, and the schools connected
with them have nearly 600 children in daily attendance. Besides
these two churches, there are other places of worship, equal to the
accommodation of about 1,100 people.
Of the Infant School Sir Francis Head gives a description, which is
as accurate for now as it was for eighteen years ago:—“At the western
extremity of the building, on entering the infant-school, which is
under the superintendence of an intelligent-looking young person of
about nineteen years of age, we were struck by the regular segments
in which the little creatures were standing in groups around a tiny
monitor occupying the centre of each chord. We soon, however, detected
that this regularity of their attitudes was caused by the insertion in
the floor of various chords of hoop iron, the outer rims of which they
all touched with their toes. A finer set of children we have seldom
beheld; but what particularly attracted our attention was three rows
of beautiful babies, sitting as solemn as judges on three steps one
above another, the lowest being a step higher than the floor of the
room. They were learning the first hard lesson of this world—namely,
to sit still; and certainly the occupation seemed to he particularly
well adapted to their outlines; indeed, their pinafores were so round,
and their cheeks so red, that altogether they resembled three rows
of white dumplings, with a rosy-faced apple on each. The picture was
most interesting; and we studied their cheerful features until we
almost fancied that we could analyse and distinguish which were little
fire-flies, which small stokers, which tiny pokers, infant artificers,
&c.”
In the early days of Wolverton, a reading-room, and a library,
containing some 700 volumes, supplied the mental occupation and
recreation then afforded to its residents. Now there is a Science and
Art Institute, an off-shoot from South Kensington, which contributed
£500 towards the erection of the building. Its library possesses nearly
3,000 volumes, almost all of which are contributions. The chief person
in this work of kindness and goodness is Miss Burdett Coutts, that
pre-eminently good lady whose name has but to be mentioned to ensure
for it universal respect and admiration.
The institute has an enrolment of 350 members, a large number of whom
attend the evening class, and it is a pleasurable fact to state that
the pupils have been successful, more than on the average, in the
science examinations which are annually held there. As at Crewe, the
Government makes it free grants of patent specifications; many of these
are closely studied, and all are highly appreciated by the students.
The directors and principal officers of the company, always mindful of
the best interests of its staff, and ever keeping a paternal, but not
obtrusive eye upon it, have recently erected a model lodging-house,
solely for the convenience of single young men. Fifty of them are
now accommodated in it; each has a separate bed-room, and the whole
establishment is superintended by a very carefully selected manager,
who is responsible, not only for the good conduct of the lodgers whilst
under its roof, but also for their comfort. The system works well, and
it will be extended.
In 1840, and for some few years afterwards, passengers ran a risk
at Wolverton to which, happily, or, as we venture to think, very
unhappily, they are no longer exposed—that is passengers who travelled
chiefly in first-class carriages, and in the express trains of that
period were accustomed to alight for ten railway minutes (_anglice_
five) at the celebrated refreshment rooms, the fame of which was
world-wide. It was not only that the soup was hot, and the coffee
“super-heated,” but it was admitted by those who, by the process
of blowing the former, and pouring the latter into saucers, were
able to get a mouthful or two, it was admitted we say, that each of
these beverages was excellent. But there was an attraction at these
refreshment rooms that rose superior to all the hot soup, the hot
coffee, the hot tea, the buns, the Banbury cakes, the pork pies, the
brandy, whiskey, gin, and “rich compounds,” the ample statistics of
which will be found in our foot-note.[79] Need we say that we refer to
the charming young ladies, in whom were concentrated all the beauty
and grace that should be corporated in modern Hebes. Our excellent
friends, Messrs. Spiers & Pond, of well-earned and well-deserved
“Buffet” celebrity, have worthily followed in the footsteps of the
great inventress of the railway refreshment room, as it should be;
and happy we are to record the fact, that go where we may, we are
sure to see, under the magic words announcing that they are the
caterers, sweet faces, worthy types of English beauty, all the more
worthy because with them is combined the modest demeanour, emblem of
purity, without which all is absent that adorns woman and renders
her enchanting. Messrs. Spiers & Pond have—as the late Mrs. Hibbert
had—but one rule for “tainted angels”—their expulsion.
At moments, however—they were only moments—female grace was at fault
at the Wolverton refreshment rooms. The late Douglas Jerrold (father
of one of the workman’s most real and truest friends—Blanchard by
Christian name) had in his play of the “_Housekeeper_” one of the
characters, a drunken wine-porter, who appears on the scene for only
a few minutes, and all the language he gives utterance to is advice
to his daughter and her companion, never to go anywhere without a
cork-screw. No doubt this is good paternal advice, such as any good
father of a family might give, but it is the use only of the instrument
with which we are concerned. Wolverton had many stringent rules, and
one of them was that “draught bitter” should not be “drunk on the
premises”; pale ale, therefore, could only be furnished by means of the
cork-screw. Now, we appeal to any father, husband, brother, cousin,
or lover (the two latter often synonymous,—see all the dictionaries,
classical and vulgate); Did you ever see a young lady draw, with
grace, a cork out of a bottle in the old-fashioned way, that is, by
placing it within the ample folds of her dress (all the more ample
if crinoline were concealed behind it), and then tugging until the
cork is extracted; if the cork be an easy, obedient, willing cork,
the operation is not difficult, and woman’s want of grace is but
for the moment, but it became momentous, to say nothing of bursting
of tapes and wrenching of hooks and eyes, red face and perhaps
disappointment, if main force must be resorted to. At all events, the
late Mrs. Hibbert (known at Wolverton and elsewhere as Generalissima)
appreciated the difficulty, and with woman’s tact transferred, by a
wave of her sovereign sceptre, the beer bottle drawing department of
the establishment to the hands of the young gentlemen with all the
buttons, and thus released the young ladies from the duty. She never,
however, could, to the day of her death, make up her mind that the
young ladies ought to be relieved from ginger beer and soda water.
But before we quit for ever (scriptorially) the subject of bitter
beer—of Bass, Ind, and Allsopp; of immortal Burton, that squeezes quart
bottles into pints, pints into thimblefuls, of which three-fourths are
froth; and of tap-tub measurement that, by a talisman, converts an
imperial pint of the amber fluid into four half-pint _glasses_, let us
ask permission to philosophise for a moment—for a moment only. Woman!
You are never more charming, more feminine, more enchanting than when
you are domestic. A magic circle of fascination then surrounds you. You
are in your real mission, and being real, you are angelic. But, woman,
be true to yourself; be domestic to the fullest extent that brightest
imagination can picture or truth realise. But, sex most dear, most
loveable of all things human that can be loved, hear the advice of one
who believes you were sent on earth for the holy purpose of refining
man, and of purifying him—never, oh, never be seen using a cork-screw!
Sir Francis Head, in a passage which we purposely omit because we want
to have our own say, in our own way, on the subject, informs us that by
1849 four of the young ladies had managed to make excellent marriages.
Sir Francis has greatly understated the number. It is quite true that
the daily occupations of the young ladies, even without drawing the
corks of beer bottles, were arduous and unceasing. Nevertheless, as
with all busily occupied people, a time can be found for everything.
Not four, but four times four of them found sixteen eligible husbands,
and at the present time we know two of them, one not fat, but “fair and
forty,” the other with slight disadvantage in point of age—forty-four
(she confesses to forty[80])—but in every other respect at least as
eligible, who have had each to exhibit the sable signs of sorrow,
void, and bereavement, within the last eighteen months. Let us just
pause for a moment, to shed a “pensive tear” to the memory of the
two dear departed, just as in the days of our boyhood our sympathies
were requested in memory of the celebrated bonnie lassie of “Kelvin
Grove,” by the father of a lady of present times, who is worshipped
by millions, and has been possessed of only by four. (May he of the
strong shield endure for ever!) Our tear is shed; and now, like the
military bands that accompany the remains of a departed comrade to the
grave with the _Dead March in Saul_, and return to barracks with joyous
and festive music, do we proclaim, by sound of wedding trumpet and
cornet-à-piston, the probability that, ere long, each of the charming
widows will make a second matrimonial venture. We can, in fact, go one
step farther. One of the ladies has already purchased the grey silk
dress, absolutely necessary on such occasion; the second has not gone
so far as actual purchase, but she knows where to put her hand upon
one at a moment’s notice. The dress-maker has already been consulted
about the trimmings.[81]
It may probably be observed by any person who has been so venturous
as to read the first hundred or so of our pages, that we are given to
statistics. This is so, and it has also been alleged of us that we
readily detect errors in them when prepared by others. Without taking
to ourselves more than a decorous quantity of flattering unction,
we believe we shall be able to show, in a work preparing for early
publication, that, as regards Post Office statistics, at all events,
none have been issued by the department for the last fifteen years that
are not abounding in most egregious blunders, and that the logical
dogmas of “contrariety, sub-contrariety, and contradiction” were never
carried to greater extent than in these documents. Our statistics and
contradictions are, at the present moment, however, of a different
character. They refer to what, in the palmy days of Wolverton as a seat
of learning and refreshment, formed an important part of the population
of the colony; at least they are described as so being, both in an
article of the _Quarterly Review_ upon the London and North-Western
Railway of 1849, and in Sir Francis Head’s “Stokers and Pokers,”
published in the identical same year, and almost in the identical same
month. Nevertheless the former names seventy-five pigs and piglings
as members of the refreshment establishment; but Sir Francis disputes
the figures, raises it ten higher, and not only insists that they were
eighty-five in number, but that each was converted, in his or her turn
every year, into pork pies and sausage roly-polies. But whichever
amount be the correct one, let the pork pies and sausage roly-polies
rest in peace. The indigestions of which they were, in their day, the
_teterimæ causæ_, have long since passed away. Let no rude attempt be
made to re-produce them.
Thanks to increased lines of railway at Wolverton, both “main” and
“siding,” thanks also to signalling so improved in principle, and
so minute in action—signalling which embraces the visible “arm” by
day, the visible tri-coloured lamp at night, the audible “fog,” and
never-failing, ever truthful Electricity—express and other trains
can, and do dart past the fifty-two mile post placed at the eastern
extremity of the station with celerity and certainty, the same as at
any other part of the system.
Still the engine speeds onwards, untired, at undiminished pace. She and
her train are near to Blisworth, 62½ miles from London, and it is four
miles south of this station that she is allowed her first draught of
water. Of solid food she has still enough, for of the four to five tons
of coal with which she started on her journey, she has not consumed
more than a ton and a-half. Not far from Roade Station, on each side
of the railway, is a reservoir of pure water, and at this part of the
line the gradient is as nearly as possible level. Within the rails,
both “down” and “up” sides, are placed two narrow troughs, each about a
quarter of a mile long. By means of syphons the water is conveyed from
the reservoirs to the troughs, and just as the engine approaches, a
small inclined plane with wooden sides, such as the inclines by which
luggage is dashed from packet-piers to steamers, is lowered from the
front of the engine. The inclined plane brought in contact with the
water compels it, contrary to all hydraulic principles, to ascend along
it, until the water is deposited in the tank of the tender. As the
engine approaches the end of the trough, the inclined plane is, by the
simplest possible means, drawn up, and the engine has a fresh supply of
water that would enable her to go fully as long again as the distance
she has already completed.
These reservoirs are now found so useful that there is a pair of them
on the London side of Watford, another between Warrington and Newton
Junction, and a third on the London side of Conway, as near as can be
half-way between Holyhead and Chester.
Four miles from Blisworth, on the right, stands Northampton, famed for
its production of shoes, unequalled, as regards numbers, in any other
part of the kingdom, and for its obstinate persistence (in the blind
and unenlightened period of railway history) in refusing to allow the
London and Birmingham Line to come within a less distance than 25,000
yards between it and its shoddy-shoebility. Independently of the injury
which this obstinacy has ever since inflicted upon the town, it cost
the railway company a loss in money of more than a million sterling, a
lengthened and inferior section of railway, a tunnel 2,423 yards long
(only 217 less than a mile and a-half), which, during its construction,
ruined four contractors and caused the deaths of upwards of a hundred
working men. Finally, the obstinacy of Northampton delayed the opening
through of the railway from London to Birmingham for fully two years.
No wonder, then, that its present generation of men is ashamed of
the deed. Some go so far as to deny it altogether; others are more
scrupulous, and only palliate it with excuses of which quibbling and
petty ingenuity are the joint parents. “There is nothing like leather;”
the only question is—its application.
In the centre of circulate movement there is one mathematical point
which, although not absolutely still, approaches a state more akin
to quiescence than to motion. Such is Weedon, not absolutely dead,
but next door to it—“deadly lively”—sixty-nine miles from London. It
is considered the centre spot of England, and it was, apparently for
this reason, seriously suggested in the time of the great war, “when
George III. was king,” that His Majesty should take up his residence at
this tranquil spot, to be out of harm’s way, in case of invasion. The
intention, however, was not carried out, and Weedon has ever since been
lost to a fame and importance which even the passage of the London and
North-Western line has failed to give it. It is almost the only town
in the civilised world which the presence of the railway has failed
to render even lively. No need then, for our engine and train to stop
there, so they proceed on with undiminished speed through the rich
pastures and glowing corn-fields of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire.
Arrived at Crick, seventy-five miles from London, they are within a
mile of the great Kilsby Tunnel just referred to; and its northern
extremity has not been left behind more than a mile and a-half, when
the elaborate system of signals necessary for the protection of the
next station comes in sight. The first of them is passed at speed; but
gradually, as the engine and train approach the second, the driver
slightly lowers his regulator, and the guards, both at the fore and
hinder parts of the train, take their breaks in hand; so does the
fireman, at his powerful break on the engine. The second signal is
passed; white takes the place of green at the third, if all be right;
but if not, and there be any sudden obstruction at or near the station,
vivid red lamps by night, bright red arms by day, appear from half a
dozen places almost with the electric flash and speed of lightning.
Two sharp, shrill, and sudden whistles from the engine tell the guards
that danger is a-head—that is, should they not themselves have seen
it; an unlikely circumstance, for they are as keenly alert in their
break-vans as driver and fireman are on their engine. In a moment three
powerful men are applying, with utmost energy, the immense break-power
at their command—so powerful that the passengers often feel a
concussion that awakes the dormant, and almost hurls them against their
opposite neighbours, and the train is pulled up within a space varying
from 200 to 400 yards.
But if “red upon green” be not the order, steam is gradually shut off
before the third signal is passed, the breaks are applied gradually and
steadily, the train comes to walking pace, and, as the engine glides
into the station, the driver looks at his watch, and sees by it that it
is exactly two hours, less one minute, since he quitted London. He is
correct to time to the moment; but if he were not so, he would, even
if he were blameless, hear of it from two sources certainly—his own
foreman and the railway guard; and if it were a postal train, through
the inspector of that department. To the first-named official, at all
events, he would have to give ample explanations.
At Rugby, driver and fireman are allowed four minutes to “water the
engine,” which means, giving her a fresh supply of that most precious
aliment, going carefully round and _under_ her to see and to feel that
no part is unusually heated, and to supply with oil, from cans with
the stork-like necks we see in the hands of all drivers and firemen,
those parts of the engine and machinery which cannot be supplied during
transit. In the course of these four minutes, if the train carry
the mails, a postal operation is manifested which suddenly converts
the platform, previously comparatively tranquil, into a scene of
intense animation. Piles of mail-bags are hurled out from the vans
and travelling post offices with indescribable celerity. The guards
and porters of the department perform this part of the business, but
from the moment the bags are on the platform post office drudgery in
respect of them ceases, and it then becomes the duty of the railway
porters to attend to their further manipulation. This duty, however,
is deferred until the bags awaiting on the platform the arrival of the
train are lodged, by post office mandate, in van or sorting office;
a sharp “All right” is heard to issue from the inside of the latter,
the railway passengers who have left their carriages have returned to
them, the porters have ceased crying, “Take your seats for north,” and
have replaced it by, “Any more passengers for the Scotch express?”
all doors are closed—banged,—“Are you all right behind?” The wave of
a white flag by day, a white lamp by night, is railway language for
“Yes,”—a sharp decisive whistle from the foremost guard,—whether the
sound be heard above the hissing of the escaping steam or the motion
only be perceived it matters not, the engine driver understands
it,—up goes his regulator, on goes his steam, the fireman (who has
freed his break as soon as the engine is ready for starting) looks to
the rear of the train as it begins to move from the station. If the
engine don’t “slip,” the regulator, further raised, admits more steam
to the cylinder; should it slip, steam is altogether shut off for a
moment, and then let on again. The engine has got over the slippery
point on the rails,—slippery either from the ordinary foulness of the
atmosphere, or more probably, from some of the oil which has fallen
from the engine to the rails. She is now getting to her speed; the
guards, who have not jumped from the platform until after the train
is in motion, shut themselves within their vans, they see that their
breaks are all right and begin arranging their parcels; the _sisyphi_
of the sorting post fall to again at their always-beginning and
never-ending labours; such passengers as can sleep, sleep, such as
can’t don’t. And so the engine and her train, leaving the railway
to Coventry, Birmingham, and the “Black Country” to the left, and
that to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, and all the east coast cities
of northern England, to the right, pass onwards towards and through
Nuneaton, a junction station which sends a branch to the left towards
Coventry, and thence to Leamington, and one to the right to Leicester,
where it connects with the system of the Midland Railway Company;
a halt at Tamworth (necessary because it is a great postal centre,
although of comparative insignificance as regards the railway) takes
place thirty-three minutes after departure from Rugby, the intervening
distance being twenty-four miles,—thence to Stafford, 133½ miles from
London, accomplished in three hours fifteen minutes, entitles not only
the engine, but those who are placed to control her, to rest and repose
for a certain period.
A sister engine, which has been all ready-coaled and watered fully
half an hour before the time appointed for the train’s arrival, is
attached thereto, and she proceeds onwards, reaching (if it be the
Limited Mail) Crewe, 25 miles distant, in 30 minutes; Carlisle, 299
miles from London, in 9 hours; Edinburgh, 401 miles, in 10½ hours;
Perth, 449 miles, in 12 hours 20 minutes. Here begins the beautiful and
picturesque Highland railway[82], the most northern of all our railways
at the present time. Of it a few words. Its main line, extending
from Perth through Inverness to Bonar Bridge, is of the total length
of 204 miles. Thus London and the northern extremity of the Highland
Railway are 653 miles apart, and the whole distance is accomplished by
the Limited Mail in 22 hours and 20 minutes. Including branches, the
Highland Railway is 250 miles in extent. Between Inverness and Perth it
passes over several summits of considerable height, the highest, 1,500
feet above the level of the sea, being on the borders of Inverness and
Perthshire. The next highest is at Dana, where the level is 1,000 above
that of the sea, and about 40 miles to the south of this, and again
at Dunkeld, the elevations are 400 feet each. The summits are gained
by the line winding in and out amongst the hills, and by gradients of
1 in 70 (75 feet to the mile) and 1 in 80 (66 feet in the mile). At
Speyside, near Keith, there is a rise for three miles of 1 in 60 (88
feet in the mile). The cuttings and embankments are, of course, on a
large scale, and owing to the great elevation and exposed position of
the line, the strong winds in the winter time sweep the snow from the
hills and deposit it in the cuttings, thus making very heavy drifts.
The snow ploughs invented by Mr. William Strandley, the Locomotive
Superintendent of the company, are said to be very successful in
removing these drifts from off the railway.
But, although the Highland Railway is now the most northern[83] in the
United Kingdom, it will probably cease to be entitled to be so called
before the end of the present year, for it is expected that by that
time the “Sutherland Railway” will be opened for traffic. This line
is to extend from Bonar Bridge to Golspie, a distance of twenty-seven
miles; not all northwards, for, for the first three miles, it goes
westward, and enters the county of Sutherland by crossing the river
Oykel, which is spanned by an elegant iron-girder viaduct. It then
turns northward to Lairg, where it inclines to the east, and continues
in that direction until it reaches Golspie. The whole of the land
occupied by the line from the river Oykel to Golspie is owned by His
Grace the Duke of Sutherland, whose magnificent Highland residence,
Dunrobin Castle, stands on the sea-shore, within a short distance of
the latter place. The gradients are somewhat severe. From the Oykel
there is an ascent of 1 in 72 to 75 for about eight miles to the
summit, which is upwards of 500 feet above the sea-level. There are
several heavy rock-cuttings. The scenery at some parts of the line
is almost equal to the finest of the many picturesque views on the
Highland Railway, by which company its traffic is to be worked. When
completed, a passenger landing at Dover can go a distance of 768 miles
to Golspie without even leaving the railway; or if he come upon English
land, close to its end in Cornwall, he can go by rail from Penzance to
within fifty of John of Groat’s land. If he will insist upon coming
through London, his distance will be 1,007 miles; but if he leave the
line towards the Metropolis, at Bristol, and go from there through
Birmingham, he will shorten the journey by 130 miles. He will save some
money, but not much time, by changing.
M. Vandal, the _Directeur Général des Postes Françaises_, says, in his
_Annuaire_ for the current year, that there is not a railway run from
Dover to any part of the United Kingdom equal to the railway run from
Calais to Nice, 863 miles. That is true at the present time to the
extent of 122 miles. In a couple of months—that is when the Sutherland
line is opened—it will be true to the extent of ninety-five miles; and,
even if, as is expected, a railway be constructed which is to extend
both to Wick and to sleepy[84] Thurso[85], the tables will not be
turned. The route from Calais to Nice will still be sixty-five miles
longer than from Dover to John o’ Groat’s Land.
The engine of the down trains from London, having rested at Stafford
its appointed time, is again coaled and watered, and if she have
brought the Scotch Mail, she takes her place at the head of the
up-train, at 1·18 a.m., or an hour and twenty minutes after she had
finished her downward journey. In precisely eight hours from the time
she has left Euston she has completed her day’s work, and in doing
so she has gone over 267 miles of ground, and has conveyed some 120
tons dead weight of matter, besides her own weight, at a running
speed of nearly forty-five miles an hour. She will perform the same
double journey on the morrow, and then she will rest for a “shed-day;”
out again for duty on the following day. She will work that and the
succeeding day, then a rest as before, then work again for two days,
and so on, taking shed-days, and times required for slight repairs, and
occasionally for heavy ones and renewals. An engine is considered to
do good service that is actually running on 250 days in a year. Quite
enough, when it is remembered that she consists of 5,416 pieces, which
must be put together like watch-work.
The watch, however, is not exposed to rough usage, fly-away speed, and
exposure to weather the intensity of which may vary from 40 degrees
below freezing point to 120 degrees of heat in the sun. We have seen
the same engine at work in Canada at these identical temperatures
within an interval of four months only. No wonder then that when
her day’s work is done she requires repose, quite as much as it is
necessary for the horse of every day life. Her joints have become
relaxed with labour, her bolts have become loosened, her rubbing
surfaces, notwithstanding the oil the engine driver poured upon
them, have become heated and are often unequally expanded, strained,
and twisted; her grate bars and fire-box have become choked with
clinkers, and her tubes charged with coke. _Hey presto!_ the engine
cleaners—the groom and hostlers of the iron horse—take her in hand,
they clean out her fire-box, they scrape its grate bars; and, under the
superintendence of superior workmen, they tighten all bolts and rivets,
grease all moving parts, thoroughly cleanse her outside as well as
in,—and the engine, thus washed, cooled down, refreshed, and purified,
is, after an interval of five or six hours, again ready (if required)
for whatever giant duty it maybe necessary to employ her upon. But, let
it always be remembered and borne in mind, she must not be over worked;
she is infinitely more delicate and sensitive in this respect than the
horse is.
[Illustration: MAP OF
INDIA
SHEWING THE LINES OF RAILWAY
_IN THE YEAR 1867_.]