Part 14

Great difficulties have often been encountered by engineers in carrying earth embankments across low grounds, which, under a fair, green surface, concealed the remains of ancient bogs, sometimes of great depth. Thus, on the Leeds and Bradford Extension, about 600 tons of stone and earth were daily cast into an embankment near Bingley, and each morning the stuff thrown in on the preceding day was found to have disappeared. This went on for many weeks, the bank, however, gradually advancing, and forcing up on either side a spongy black ridge of moss. On the South-Western Railway a heavy embankment, about fifty feet high, crossed a piece of ground near Newham, the surface of which seemed to be perfectly sound and firm. Twenty feet, however, beneath the surface an old bog lay concealed; and the ground giving way, the fluid, pressed from beneath the embankment, raised the adjacent meadows in all directions like waves of the sea. A culvert, which permitted the flow of a brook under the bank, was forced down, the passage of the water entirely stopped, and several thousand acres of the finest land in Hampshire would have been flooded but for the exertions of the engineer, who completed a new culvert just as the other had become completely closed. The Newton-green embankment, on the Sheffield and Manchester line, gave way in like manner, and to such an extent as to spread out two or three times its original width. In this case it was found necessary to carry the line across the parts which yielded, under strong timber shores. On the Dundalk and Enniskillen line a heavy embankment twenty feet high suddenly disappeared one night in the bog of Meghernakill, nearly adjoining the river Fane. The bed of the river was forced up, and the flow of the water for the time was stopped, and the surrounding country heavily flooded. A concealed bog of even greater extent, on the Durham and Sunderland Railway, near Aycliff, was crossed by means of a double-planked road, about two miles in length. A few weeks after the line had been opened, part of the road sank one night entirely out of sight. The defect was made good merely by extending the floating surface of the road at this portion of the bog.

—_Quarterly Review_.

A RAILWAY MARRIAGE.

In Maine, a conductor—too busy, we suggest, saying “Go ahead!” to be

## particular about wedding formalities—invited his betrothed and a minister

into a car, and while the train was in motion was married; leaving that station a bachelor, at this station he was a married man! It is but one of a thousand examples of life as it goes in this fast country.

—_New York Nation_.

ATTEMPTED FRAUDS.

Feb. 29, 1849, _Central Criminal Court_.—Robert Duncan, aged 47, staymaker, Mary Duncan, his wife, who surrendered to take her trial, and Pierce Wall O’Brien, aged 30, printer, were indicted for conspiring together to obtain money from the London and North-Western Railway Company by false pretences.

From the statement of Mr. Clarkson and the evidence, it appeared that the charges made against the prisoners involved a most impudent attempt at fraud. It appears that on the 5th of September last year an accident occurred to the up mail train from York, near the Leighton Buzzard station, but, although some injury was occasioned to the train, it seemed that none of the passengers received any personal injury. On the 26th of October following, however, the company received a communication from Mr. Harrison, requiring compensation on behalf of defendant, Robert Duncan, for an injury alleged to have been sustained by his wife upon the occasion of the collision referred to, it being represented, also, that her brother, the defendant O’Brien, who was travelling with her at the time from York, had likewise received serious injury by the same accident. The company immediately sent a medical gentleman to the place described as the residence of these persons, No. 59, George Street, Southwark, and he there saw the man Robert Duncan, who represented that his wife was dangerously ill, and that the result of the accident on the railway was a premature confinement, and that her life was in danger. Mr. Porter was then introduced to the female defendant, whom he found in bed, apparently in great pain, and she confirmed her husband’s statement. In the same house the prisoner O’Brien was found in bed, and he also told the same story about the accident on the railway. It appeared that some suspicion was entertained by the company of the general character of the transaction, and they had been instituting inquiries. On the 2nd of November they received another letter from the prisoner Robert Duncan, in which he made an offer to accept £60 for the injury his wife had received, and also stating that Mr. O’Brien was willing to accept a similar amount for the damage he had sustained. At this it appeared Mr. Harrison resolved not to have anything further to do with the matter, unless he received satisfactory proof of the truth of the story told by the parties; and another solicitor was employed by the defendants, who brought an action against the company for damages for the alleged injury, and he proceeded so far as to give notice of trial. The case, however, never went before a jury in that shape, and by this time it was discovered that there was no truth in the story told by the defendants. It was proved at the period when the accident was alleged to have occurred to the female defendant, she was residing with her husband, and was in her usual health. With regard to O’Brien, there was no evidence to show that he was upon the train at the time the accident happened, but, according to the testimony of a witness named Darke, during the period when the negotiation was going on with the company, O’Brien requested him to write a letter to Mr. Harrison to the effect that he was riding in the same carriage with Mrs. Duncan and her brother at the time of the accident, and he was aware of her having been injured, and gave him a written statement to that effect, which he copied. This witness, in cross-examination, admitted that at the time he wrote the statement he was perfectly well aware it was false, and he also said that notwithstanding this, he made no difficulty in doing what O’Brien requested, and also that he should have been ready to make a solemn declaration of the truth of the statement if he had been required to do so.

A verdict of “Not Guilty” was taken as to the female prisoner, on the ground that she was acting under the control of her husband. The jury returned a verdict of “Guilty” against the two male defendants.

Mr. Clarkson said he was instructed to state that, at the period of the catastrophe on board the Cricket steam-boat, the prisoners obtained a sum of £70 from the company to which that vessel belonged, by the false pretence that they had received injury upon the occasion.

The Recorder sentenced Duncan to be imprisoned for twelve, and O’Brien for six months.

_Annual Register_.

A BRIDE’S LOST LUGGAGE.

The trouble which is bestowed by railway companies to cause the restitution of lost property is incalculable. Some years ago, a young lady lost a portmanteau from the rest of her luggage—a pardonable oversight, for she was a bride starting on a honeymoon trip. The bridegroom—never on such occasions an accountable being—had not noticed the misfortune. When the loss was discovered, and application made respecting it, the lady spoke positively of having seen it at the station whence they started, then again at a station where they had to change carriages; she saw it also when they left the railway; it was all safe, she averred, at the hotel where they stopped for a few days. She was also certain that it was among the rest of the “things” when they again started for a watering-place; but, when they arrived there, it was missing. It contained a new riding habit, value fifteen pounds. The search that was instituted for this portmanteau recalled that of Telemachus for Ulysses; the railway officials sent one of their clerks with a _carte blanche_ to trace the bride’s journey to the end of the last mile, till some tidings of the strayed trunk could be traced. He went to every station, to every coach-office in connection with every station, to every town, to every hotel, and to every lodging that the happy couple had visited. His expenses actually amounted to fifteen pounds. He came back without success. At length the treasure was found; but where? At the by-station on another line, whence the bride had started from home a maiden. Yet she had positively declared, without doubt or reservation, that she had, “with her own eyes,” seen the trunk on the various stages of her tour; this can only be accounted for by the peculiar flustration of a young lady just plunged into the vortex of matrimony. The husband paid the whole of the costs.

THIRD-CLASS PASSENGERS.

The conveyance of passengers at cheap fares was from the commencement of railways a great public concern, and it was soon found necessary that the legislature should take action in the matter. Accordingly, by the Regulation of Railways Act, 1844, all passenger railways were required to run one train every day from end to end of their line, carrying third-class passengers at a rate not exceeding one penny a mile, stopping at all stations, starting at hours approved by the Board of Trade, travelling at least twelve miles an hour, and with carriages protected from weather. This enactment greatly encouraged the poorer classes in railway travelling; but the companies were slow to carry out the new regulations cheerfully. The trains were timed at most inconvenient hours; to undertake a journey of any considerable length in one day at third-class fare was almost out of the question. In fact, a short-sighted policy of doing almost everything to discourage third-class travelling was adopted by the Companies.

A traveller having started on a long journey, thinking to be able to travel all the way third-class, would find at some stage of the route that he had arrived, only a few minutes perhaps, after the departure of the cheap train to his destination, with no alternative but to wait for hours or proceed by the express and pay accordingly. Moreover, the third-class carriages were provided with the very minimum of comfort. It was not seen by the railway executive of that time that the policy adopted was actually prejudicial to their own interests.

_Our Railways_, by Joseph Parsloe.

IMPROVEMENT IN THIRD-CLASS TRAVELLING.

The Rev. F. S. Williams, in an article in the _Contemporary Review_, entitled “Railway Revolutions,” remarks:—“We need not go back so far as the time when third-class passengers had to stand in a sort of cattle-pen placed on wheels; it is only a few years since the Parliamentary trains were run in bare fulfilment of the obligations of Parliament, and when a journey by one of them could never be looked upon as anything better than a necessary evil. To start in the darkness of a winter’s morning to catch the only third-class train that ran; to sit, after a slender breakfast, in a vehicle the windows of which were compounded of the largest amount of wood and the smallest amount of glass, and which were carefully adjusted to exactly those positions in which the fewest travellers could see out of them; to stop at every roadside station, however insignificant; and to accomplish a journey of 200 miles in about ten hours—such were the ordinary conditions which Parliament in its bounty provided for the people. Occasionally, moreover, the monotony of progress was interrupted by the shunting of the train into a siding, where it might wait for more respectable passenger trains and fast goods to pass.”

“We remember,” says a writer, “once standing on the platform at Darlington when the Parliamentary train arrived. It was detained for a considerable time to allow a more favoured train to pass, and, on the remonstrance of several of the passengers at the unexpected detention, they were coolly informed, “Ye mun bide till yer betters gaw past, ye are only the nigger train.”

“If there is one part of my public life,” recently said Mr. Allport (Midland Railway) to the writer, “in which I look back with more satisfaction than anything else, it is with reference to the boon we conferred on third-class passengers. When the rich man travels, or if he lies in bed all day, his capital remains undiminished, and perhaps his income flows in all the same. But when a poor man travels he has not only to pay his fare, but to sink his capital, for his time is his capital; and if he now consumes only five hours instead of ten in making a journey, he has saved five hours of time for useful labour—useful to himself, to his family, and to society. And I think with even more pleasure of the comfort in travelling we have been able to confer upon women and children. But it took,” he added, “five-and-twenty years’ work to get it done.”

A GREAT DISCOVERY.

Confound that Pope Gregory who changed the style! He, or some one else, has robbed the month of February, in ordinary years, of no less than three days, for Mr. George Sutton, the solicitor, has discovered and established by the last Brighton Act of Parliament that February has _really thirty-one days_, while that good-for-nothing Pope led us to believe it had only twenty-eight. The language of the 45th clause of the Act or of the bill which went into the Lords is:—

“That so much of the said Consolidation Act as enacts that the ordinary meetings of the company, subsequent to the first ordinary meeting thereof, shall be held half-yearly on the 31st day of July, and _thirty-first day of February_ in each year, or within one month before or after these days shall be, and the same is hereby repealed.”

The next clause enacts, we suppose by reason of “the 31st of February” being an inconvenient day, that the meetings shall be held on the 31st of January and the 31st of July, a month before or a month after.

On account of the great value of an addition of three days to our years, and, therefore, an annual addition to our lives of three days, we beg to propose that a handsome testimonial be given to Mr. George Sutton, the eminent solicitor of the Brighton Railway Company, the author of the Act and the discoverer of the Pope’s wicked conduct. We further propose that it be given him on “the 31st day of February” next year, and that his salary be paid on that day, and no other, every year.

—_Herepath’s Journal_, June 24th, 1854.

A DREADED EVIL.

When the old Sheffield and Rotherham line was contemplated, “A hundred and twenty inhabitants of Rotherham, headed by their vicar, petitioned against the bill, because they thought the canal and turnpike furnished sufficient accommodation between the two towns, and because they dreaded an incursion of the idle, drunken, and dissolute portion of the Sheffield people as a consequence of increasing the facilities of transit.” For a time the opposition was successful but eventually the Lord’s Committee yielded to the perseverance of the promoters of the bill.

_Sheffield and Rotherham Independent_.

REMARKABLE ADVENTURE.

A young lady some years ago thus related an adventure she met with in travelling. “After I had taken my seat one morning at Paddington, in an empty carriage, I was joined, just as the train was moving off, by a strange-looking young man, with remarkably long flowing hair. He was, of course, a little hurried, but he seemed besides to be so disturbed and wild that I was quite alarmed, for fear of his not being in his right mind, nor did his subsequent conduct at all reassure me. Our train was an express, and he inquired eagerly, at once, which was the first station we were advertised to stop. I consulted my Bradshaw and furnished him with the required information. It was Reading. The young man looked at his watch.

“‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I have but half-an-hour between me and, it may be, ruin. Excuse, therefore, my abruptness. You have, I perceive, a pair of scissors in your workbag. Oblige me, if you please, by cutting off all my hair.’

“‘Sir,’ said I, ‘it is impossible.’

“‘Madam,’ he urged, and a look of severe determination crossed his features; ‘I am a desperate man. Beware how you refuse me what I ask. Cut my hair off—short, close to the roots—immediately; and here is a newspaper to hold the ambrosial curls.’

“I thought he was mad, of course; and believing that it would be dangerous to thwart him, I cut off all his hair to the last lock.

“‘Now, madam,’ said he, unlocking a small portmanteau, ‘you will further oblige me by looking out of the window, as I am about to change my clothes.’

“Of course I looked out of the window for a very considerable time, and when he observed, ‘Madam, I need no longer put you to any inconvenience,’ I did not recognise the young man in the least.

“Instead of his former rather gay costume, he was attired in black, and wore a grey wig and silver spectacles; he looked like a respectable divine of the Church of England, of about sixty-four years of age; to complete that character, he held a volume of sermons in his hand, which—they appeared so to absorb him—might have been his own.

“‘I do not wish to threaten you, young lady,’ he resumed, ‘and I think, besides, that I can trust your kind face. Will you promise me not to reveal this metamorphosis until your journey’s end?’

“‘I will,’ said I, ‘most certainly.’

“At Reading, the guard and a person in plain clothes looked into our carriage.

“‘You have the ticket, my love,’ said the young man, blandly, and looking to me as though he were my father.

“‘Never mind, sir; we don’t want them,’ said the official, as he withdrew his companion.

“‘I shall now leave you, madam,’ observed my fellow-traveller, as soon as the coast was clear; ‘by your kind and courageous conduct you have saved my life and, perhaps, even your own.’

“In another minute he was gone, and the train was in motion. Not till the next morning did I learn from the _Times_ newspaper that the gentleman on whom I had operated as hair cutter had committed a forgery to an enormous amount, in London, a few hours before I met him, and that he had been tracked into the express train from Paddington; but that—although the telegraph had been put in motion and described him accurately—at Reading, when the train was searched, he was nowhere to be found.”

SAFETY ON THE FLOOR.

Many concussions give no warning of their approach, while others do, the usual premonitory symptoms being a kind of bouncing or leaping of the train. It is well to know that the bottom of the carriage is the safest place, and, therefore, when a person has reason to anticipate a concussion, he should, without hesitation, throw himself on the floor of the carriage. It was by this means that Lord Guillamore saved his life and that of his fellow passengers some years since, when a concussion took place on one of the Irish railways. His Lordship feeling a shock, which he knew to be the forerunner of a concussion, without more ado sprang upon the two persons sitting opposite to him, and dragged them with him to the bottom of the carriage; the astonished persons at first imagined that they had been set upon by a maniac, and commenced struggling for their liberty, but in a few seconds they but too well understood the nature of the case; the concussion came, and the upper part of the carriage in which Lord Guillamore and the other two persons were was shattered to pieces, while the floor was untouched, and thus left them lying in safety; while the other carriages of the train presented nothing but a ghastly spectacle of dead and wounded.

—_The Railway Traveller’s Handy Book_.

LIFE UPON THE RAILWAY, BY A CONDUCTOR.

The Western Division of our road runs through a very mountainous part of Virginia, and the stations are few and far between. About three miles from one of these stations, the road runs through a deep gorge of the Blue Ridge, and near the centre is a small valley, and there, hemmed in by the everlasting hills, stood a small one-and-a-half-story log cabin. The few acres that surrounded it were well cultivated as a garden, and upon the fruits thereof lived a widow and her three children, by the name of Graff. They were, indeed, untutored in the cold charities of an outside world—I doubt much if they ever saw the sun shine beyond their own native hills. In the summer time the children brought berries to the nearest station to sell, and with the money they bought a few of the necessities of the outside refinement.

The oldest of these children I should judge to be about twelve years, and the youngest about seven. They were all girls, and looked nice and clean, and their healthful appearance and natural delicacy gave them a ready welcome. They appeared as if they had been brought up to fear God and love their humble home and mother. I had often stopped my train and let them get off at their home, having found them at the station some three miles from home, after disposing of their berries.

I had children at home, and I knew their little feet would be tired in walking three miles, and therefore felt that it would be the same with these fatherless little ones. They seemed so pleased to ride, and thanked me with such hearty thanks, after letting them off near home. They frequently offered me nice, tempting baskets of fruit for my kindness; yet I never accepted any without paying their full value.

Now, if you remember, the winter of ’54 was very cold in that part of the State, and the snow was nearly three feet deep on the mountains.

On the night of the 26th of December, of that year, it turned around warm, and the rain fell in torrents. A terrible storm swept the mountain tops, and almost filled the valleys with water. Upon that night my train was winding its way, at its usual speed, around the hills and through the valleys, and as the road-bed was all solid rock, I had no fear of the banks giving out. The night was intensely dark, and the winds moaned piteously through the deep gorges of the mountains. Some of my passengers were trying to sleep, others were talking in a low voice, to relieve the monotony of the scene. Mothers had their children upon their knees, as if to shield them from some unknown danger without.

It was near midnight, when a sharp whistle from the engine brought me to my feet. I knew there was danger by that whistle, and sprang to the brakes at once, but the brakesmen were all at their posts, and soon brought the train to a stop. I seized my lantern and found my way forward as soon as possible, when what a sight met my gaze! A bright fire of pine logs illuminated the track for some distance, and not over forty rods ahead of our train a horrible gulf had opened its maw to receive us!