Bradshaw's _Continental Railway Guide_--the square, pale-yellow,
compact, brochure which makes its appearance once a month, and which
has doubled its thickness in its brief existence of five years--is
suggestive of a multitude of thoughts concerning the silent revolution
now passing over Europe. Presidents may have _coups d'état_; kings may
put down parliaments, and emperors abrogate constitutions; Legitimists
may dream of the past, and Communists of the future; but the
_railways_ are marking out a path for themselves in Europe which will
tend to obliterate, or at least to soften, the rugged social barriers
which separate nation from nation. This will not be effected all at
once, and many enthusiasts are disappointed that the cosmopolitanism
advances so slowly; but the result is not the less certain in being
slow.
Our facetious contemporary _Punch_ once gave a railway map of England,
in which the face of the land was covered with intersecting lines at
mutual distances of only a mile or two. A railway map of Europe has
certainly not yet assumed such a labyrinthine character; still, the
lines of civilisation (for so we may well term them) are becoming
closer and closer every year. The outposts of Europe, where the
Scandinavian, the Sclavonian, the Italian, and the Spaniard
respectively rule, are scanty in their exhibition of such lines; but
as we gradually approach the scenes of commercial activity, there do
railways appear in greater and greater proximity. France strikingly
exemplifies its own theory, that 'Paris is France,' by shewing how all
its important railways spring from the metropolis in six directions.
Belgium exhibits its compact net-work of railways, by which nearly all
its principal towns are accommodated. The phlegmatic Dutchman has as
yet placed the locomotive only in that portion of Holland which lies
between the Rhine and the Zuiderzee. Rhineland, from Bâle to
Wiesbaden, is under railway dominion. North Germany, within a circle
of which Magdeburg may be taken as a centre, is railed pretty thickly;
and Vienna has become a point from which lines of great length start.
Exterior to all these are solitary lines, the pioneers of the new
order of things, pointing in directions which will one day come within
the yellow covers of Bradshaw. There is one line straggling out to
Rostock; another to Stettin and Bromberg, on its way to Danzig;
another to Warsaw, on its way to meet the czar at St Petersburg;
another to Pesth, whence it will be carried through the scenes of the
late Hungarian war; another to the neighbourhood of the Adriatic;
others from Central Germany southward to the Swiss highlands, which
bar further progress; and a very modest little group in North Italy.
It is instructive to mark the steps by which these continental
railways have been brought into existence. The English practice of
undertaking all such great works, is very little understood abroad;
there is not capital enough afloat, and the commercial audacity of the
people has not yet arrived at such a high-pressure point. Almost the
whole of the railways now under notice, have been constructed either
by the governments of the respective countries, or by companies which
require some sort of government guarantee before they can obtain their
capital.
Belgium was the first continental country to follow the railway
example of England. Very soon after King Leopold was seated securely
on his throne, he initiated measures for the construction of railways
in Belgium; and a law was passed in 1834, sanctioning that compact
system which, having Mechlin as a centre, branches out in four
directions--to Liege, Antwerp, Brussels, and Ostend; and there were
also lines sanctioned to the Prussian frontier, and the French
frontier--the whole giving a length of about 247 English miles. Three
years afterwards, a law was passed for the construction of 94
additional miles of railway--to Courtrai, Tournay, Namur, and other
towns. In the western part of Belgium, the engineering difficulties
were not of a formidable character; but towards the Prussian frontier,
the bridges, cuttings, and embankments are so extensive, as to have
rendered the works far more costly than in the average of continental
railways. The Belgian Chambers provided the money, or rather
authorised the government to borrow it, year after year. The first
portion of railway was opened in 1835, and every year from thence till
1843, witnessed the opening of additional portions; until at length,
in this last-named year, all the 341 miles mentioned above were opened
for traffic. The cost varied from L.6140 per mile (near Courtrai), to
L.38,700 per mile (near Liege); the entire cost of the whole,
including working-plant, was within L.17,000 per average mile. While
these railways were progressing, private companies were formed for the
construction of other lines, to the extent of about 200 additional
miles, most of which are now open--the Namur and Liege being opened in
1851. These various railways are said to have yielded, on an average,
about 3-1/2 per cent. on the outlay.
It was of course impossible for France to see its little neighbour,
Belgium, advancing in its railway course, without setting a similar
movement on foot; but various circumstances have given a lingering
character to French railway enterprise. It was in 1837 that the short
railway from Paris through Versailles to St Germain--the first
passenger line in France--was opened. In the next following year, two
companies, aided by the government in certain ways, undertook the
construction of the railways from Paris to Rouen, and from Paris to
Orleans. The French government, having a strong taste for
centralisation in national matters, formed in 1842 that plan which has
since, with some modifications, been carried into execution. The plan
consisted in causing the great lines of communication to be surveyed
and marked out by government engineers, and then to be ceded to
joint-stock companies, to be constructed on certain conditions. There
were to be seven such lines radiating from Paris: to the Belgian
frontier; to one or more ports on the Channel; to the Atlantic ports;
to Bordeaux; to the Spanish frontier; to Marseille; and to Rhenish
Prussia. The government has had to concede more favourable conditions
to some of these companies than were at first intended, to get the
lines constructed at all. The first and second of the above lines of
communication are now almost fully opened; the third is finished to
Chartres; the fourth, to Nantes and Poitiers; the fifth, to
Chateauroux; the sixth, to Chalons, with another portion from Avignon
to Marseille; while the seventh, or Paris and Strasbourg Railway, is
that of which the final opening has been recently celebrated with so
much firing of guns, drinking of healths, blessing of locomotives, and
speechifyings of presidents. At the close of 1851, the length of
French railway opened was about 1800 miles; while the portion since
opened, or now in progress or projected, amounts to about as much
more. In the president's speech to the National Assembly in 1851 (of
course, _before_ the _coup d'état_), it was announced that the length
of French railway to be finished and opened in 1851 would be 516
kilomètres (about 320 miles); and in 1852, about 330 kilomètres (205
miles.)
Prussia loves centralisation little less than France in other matters;
but in railway enterprise she has allowed mercantile competition to
have freer scope. Private companies have constructed nearly all the
Prussian railways; but in cases where the traffic appeared likely to
be small, the government has rendered aid in one of three or four
modes. The government will not permit any parallel or competing lines;
and it holds the power of purchasing the railways after a lapse of
thirty years, on certain specified terms. On this principle have been
constructed the railways which radiate from Berlin in five different
directions--towards Hamburg, Hanover, Saxony, Silesia, and the Baltic;
together with minor branches springing out of them, and also the
railways which accommodate the rich Rhenish provinces belonging to
Prussia. The Prussian railways open and at work at the close of 1851
appear to have been about 1800 miles in length.
In the heterogeneous mass of states which constitute Germany, the
railways have for the most part been constructed by, and belong to,
the respective governments. Such is the case in Baden, Hanover,
Brunswick, Würtemberg, Bavaria, and many of the petty states; and such
is also the case in the imperial dominions in Austria, Hungary,
Bohemia, Moravia, and Styria. There may be some among these lines of
railway which belong to companies, but, as a general rule, they
constitute government property. If we include Prussia and the Austrian
dominions in the general name of Germany, we find the railways very
unequally distributed. An oblong quadrangular district, measuring
about 400 miles from east to west, and 200 from north to south, and
lying eastward of the Netherlands, contains a net-work of railways
which contrast remarkably with those of east, south, and central
Germany; it includes Hamburg, Berlin, Leipsic, Dresden, Magdeburg,
Brunswick, Hanover, Bremen, and a busy knot of other important towns.
Although the various German railways twist about in more tortuous
forms than those of England--for the engineers have studied economy by
going round hills rather than through them--and although they are
broken up into many different proprietorships by passing through so
many petty states, yet there may be traced certain great lines of
communication which run nearly or entirely across the whole of
Germany. Starting from Cologne, we find one line running through
Elberfeld, Minden, Hanover, Brunswick, Berlin, to Bromberg and Posen;
another from Cologne--with a short break not yet completed in
Westphalia--to Cassel, Gotha, Weimar, Leipsic, Dresden, Breslau, and
Cracow; a third from Hamburg, through Magdeburg, Leipsic, Dresden,
Prague, Presburg, and Pesth, into the heart of Hungary; a fourth from
the Baltic at Stettin, through Berlin, Leipsic, Nürnberg, Augsburg, to
the vicinity of the Lake of Constance; and a fifth from Warsaw,
through Vienna, to the vicinity of the Adriatic. Dr Lardner has
estimated, that if we include the Netherlands and the Austrian and
Prussian dominions within the German group, the German railways at the
beginning of 1851 were about 5100 miles in length, with 3000 miles
more either in progress or decided on--making a total of between 8000
and 9000 miles. Many hundred miles of railway have been opened since
the date to which this estimate refers.
Our Bradshaw leaves us little to notice on the continent beyond the
groups of railways included under the above four systems. The Dutch
have given a curious serpentine line of railway, about 150 miles in
length, from Rotterdam through Schiedam, Delft, The Hague, Leyden,
Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, to Arnhem--an economical mode of
linking most of the chief towns together. Holstein, the recent field
of struggle between the Danes and the Germans, has its humble quota of
about 100 miles of railway, from Altona to Glückstadt, Rendsburg, and
Kiel, connecting the German Ocean with the Baltic in a very convenient
way. Russia has a railway in its Polish dominions from Warsaw to
Cracow; a short bit from St Petersburg to Tsarkoé-soélo; portions of
the projected great lines from St Petersburg to Moscow and to Warsaw,
and a horse railway connecting the Don with the Volga. Italy has a few
bits of railway--perhaps quite as much as we could yet expect in so
strangely governed a country; one from Venice through Padua, Vicenza,
and Verona, to Mantua; another from Treviglio to Milan, Monza, and
Como; a Piedmontese line from Genoa to Alessandria and Turin; a Tuscan
web which connects Florence, Sienna, Pistoja, Lucca, Pisa, and
Leghorn, in a roundabout way; and a few miles of Neapolitan railway,
to connect Naples with Pompeii, Portici, Castel-a-mare, and Capua.
Rome, behindhand in most things, is behindhand in railways.
Switzerland has its little railway of twenty-five miles, from Zurich
to Baden. Spain has its two small lines, from Madrid to Aranjuez, and
from Barcelona to Mataro. Turkey and Greece, in the south-east;
Portugal, in the south-west; Sweden and Norway,[1] in the bleak north,
have yet to become members of the great European railway system.
In comparing all these continental railways with those of our own
country, we find many instructive differences. In the first place, the
engineering, as we lately remarked, is much less daring; there is not
so much capital at command, and the engineers, therefore, bend to
difficulties instead of cutting through them. Still, there are not
wanting engineering works of great magnitude. One such is the great
railway bridge over the Vistula, near Bromberg, the first stone of
which was laid with much form by the king of Prussia some short time
back, and which will form one link in the chain from Berlin to
Königsberg. Another is the double railway bridge over the Elbe at
Dresden, opened in April 1852, having a railway on its eastern half,
and an ordinary roadway on its western. The stupendous Cologne Bridge
will be for the future to talk about: at present, not a single railway
bridge, we believe, crosses the Rhine; so that Western Europe is, in
fact, not yet connected by the iron pathway with Eastern. Among the
many thousand miles of continental railway, there must, of course, be
numerous constructions of great skill and magnitude; but the ratio is
small compared with those of England.
Another feature, is the great prevalence of single lines of rail. In
England, there is so much wrangling against single lines, and so great
a tendency among directors to think that there _ought_ to be traffic
enough for more, that double lines prevail almost everywhere. In the
German railways, double lines are laid down only in places of great
traffic--single lines being the rule, and the others the exception.
Where there are only three or four departures per day, which is the
case on most German railways, one line, with carefully-managed
sidings, is amply sufficient. 'Express trains,' and 'first-class
trains,' and 'special trains,' and anything which disturbs the steady
jog-trot mode of proceeding, are very little known in Germany; the
general speed, including stoppages, is about twenty miles an hour.
Although the first-class fares are only a fraction above 1-1/2d. per
mile, and the second-class just over 1d., yet the Germans travel so
cheaply, and mix among each other with so little exclusiveness, that
it is said only 3-1/2 per cent. of the whole number of passengers
travel by first-class, and 74 per cent. by third-class; the ratios in
England being 14 and 46 per cent. respectively. One apparent effect of
these very low fares is, that although the railways are for the most
part cheaply constructed, the net profits are not supposed to exceed 3
per cent. on an average; but if the fares were higher, perhaps the
number of passengers would be so reduced as to lessen the net profit.
Whatever else may be the superiority of English railways over those of
the continent, assuredly it is not apparent in the _carriages_. The
public press has made an onslaught on the English railway carriages
for twenty years, but with very little success. Let those whose bones
ache with the ill-conditioned wooden seats of our second-class
carriages, think wishfully of the cushioned seats, and the
easily-opened windows shielded with sun-blinds, and the useful
hat-hooks found in many of the French second-class carriages; let
those who shiver under English arrangements, think of the hot-water
tin cases beneath the feet of the first-class French passengers; and
let those who wish to be usefully employed while travelling, think of
the little table, and the pen and ink, provided in some of the
Prussian carriages. The truth is, we spend money on magnificent
stations which ought to be expended on carriages. The cramped-up
position of passengers on English railways is much reprobated by
foreigners. In America, and in many parts of the continent, it is
customary to have carriages long, broad, and high, with an avenue down
the middle, and short seats for two persons each on either side of the
avenue; every person looks towards the engine, and there is a
plentiful supply of window on both sides. In America, these short
seats are not only cushioned, but each seat has its two elbows and its
cushioned back.
Another English annoyance, is the _ticket-taking_. If all the wrath
which is poured out on the heads of the railway directors during this
formality could take effect, they would be among the most miserable
and unfortunate of mortals. Arrived at Euston Station, we will say, by
the last train from the north--some sleepy, some hungry, and all
tired--the passengers are anxious to wend their several ways as
quickly as possible; instead of this, the train is brought to a
stand-still, the man with his bull's-eye lantern pokes his head into
one doorway after another, and all are kept waiting until all the
tickets are collected. One passenger may have dropped his ticket, and
then comes a search among the hat-boxes and carpet-bags beneath the
seats; another may have underpaid his fare, or overridden the power of
his ticket, and then occurs the fuss of paying up the difference; a
third may be sleeping weariedly in the further corner of the carriage,
and then comes the process of waking him, followed, perhaps, by a
search for the ticket in an incalculable number of pockets. All this
is nicely ill-managed! The larger size of many of the continental
carriages, and the avenue through the centre, enable the ticket-taker
to enter the carriage easily while the train is yet in motion, and to
collect the tickets by the time of arrival at the station. On one of
the Austrian railways, the carriages have an exterior gangway
extending the whole length of the train, by which a guard can obtain
easy access to all the passengers: shortly before arriving at a
station, he enters the carriages, calls out the name of the station
about to be approached, and takes the tickets of those who are to
alight at that station. There is one oddity about the railway
management abroad. In England, a railway smoker commits a high crime
and misdemeanour, for which he is frowned at by his neighbours, and
threatened by the guard; but on the continent, not only do the
passengers smoke abundantly, but we were once rather struck at seeing
a ticket-taker enter the carriage with a meerschaum in his mouth; one
passenger, whose pipe was out, asked the customary German question:
'Haben sie feuer?' and the official gave him a light accordingly. We
believe, however, that there is a wish at head-quarters to keep down
this habit of smoking on the continental railways.
There are two sources of embarrassment which the Englishman is spared
in his own country, but which press upon him in full force while
travelling by rail abroad--namely, the different kinds of distance
measurement, and the different kinds of money employed. Accustomed to
English charges varying from three farthings to threepence per mile,
he is frequently thrown out of his reckoning by the absence of miles
abroad. The French kilomètre and the German meile are not English
miles; the former equals 1093 yards, and is therefore a troublesome
fraction of an English mile; while the German meile is as long as
about four and a half English miles.
But this, however, is a minor inconvenience; for our 'Continental
Bradshaw' gives most of the measurements in English miles. Not so in
respect to the current coinage abroad. Although there was a 'railway
congress' held a few years ago, to determine on a plan for
facilitating the intercourse between country and country, yet this
plan did not go so far as to assimilate the moneys of the different
states; the tourist speedily discovers that this is the case, and he
becomes perplexed with a multiplicity of cares. So long as he is in
France or Belgium, the _franc_ (9-1/2d.), with its multiples and
submultiples, are easily managed; but when he gets beyond the Rhine,
his troubles begin. If in Holland, he has to manage with the _guilder_
(1s. 8d.) and its fractional parts in _cents_. If in the neighbourhood
of Hamburg, he has to pay by means of the _mark_ (14-1/2d.), and
certain strange-looking _schillings_ or _skillings_, of which sixteen
equal one mark. Going south and east into Prussia, he finds the ruling
coin to be the _thaler_ (3s.), divisible into thirty _groschen_. and
each of these into twelve _pfennige_; but if he be hovering in
the frontiers of Prussia and Saxony, he will find that the
_neu-groschen_ of the latter country is worth a little more than the
_silber-groschen_ of the former, and that there is some difficulty in
getting rid of either in the country of the other. Getting further
south, to the regions belonging to or adjoining Austria, he will find
his thalers and groschen no longer welcome; he has to attend to the
_florin_ (2s.), and its divisions into sixty _kreutzers_. If he
travels north-east, to the few miles of railway yet existing in
Poland, he will have to pay in _rubles_ (3s. 3d.) and _kopecks_, which
rank at 100 to the ruble. On the little Zurich and Baden Railway, the
only one yet in Switzerland, our traveller meets again with his old
acquaintance the _franc_; but this is worth 14-1/2d., instead of
9-1/2d., and, moreover, it is divided into ten _batzen_, each of which
is worth ten _rappen_. If he crosses the Alps to Austrian Italy, he
finds that his fare is reckoned in Austrian _lire_ (about 8d.) In many
cases, the different states take money from _through_ passengers in
the coin of either country; but the traveller who makes frequent
stoppages, soon finds the embarrassment of the different moneys. A
railway has lately been completed from Dresden to Prague--the capitals
of the two kingdoms of Saxony and Bohemia--along the banks of the
Elbe; it is no great distance, and yet the fees north of the frontier
are charged in _thalers_ and _neu-groschen_, while those south of it
are in _florins_ and _kreutzers_.
There have been very busy and important railway enterprises agreed
upon or discussed within the last year or two, in various parts of the
continent, which augur favourably for the future of Europe. We shall
shortly pass these in review, to shew what may possibly be the aspect
presented by the 'Continental Bradshaw' in 1862.