Part 7

“I should have observed before that the most remarkable movements of the journey are those in which trains pass one another. The rapidity is such that there is no recognizing the features of a traveller. On several occasions, the noise of the passing engine was like the whizzing of a rocket. Guards are stationed in the road, holding flags, to give notice to the drivers when to stop. Near Newton I noticed an inscription recording the memorable death of Huskisson.”

—_Crabb Robinson’s Diary_.

EARLY AMERICAN RAILWAY ENTERPRISE.

Mr. C. F. Adams, in his work on _Railroads_: _Their Origin and Problems_, remarks:—“There is, indeed, some reason for believing that the South Carolina Railroad was the first ever constructed in any country with a definite plan of operating it exclusively by locomotive steam power. But in America there was not—indeed, from the very circumstances of the case, there could not have been—any such dramatic occasions and surprises as those witnessed at Liverpool in 1829 and 1830. Nevertheless, the people of Charleston were pressing close on the heels of those at Liverpool, for on the 15th of January, 1831—exactly four months after the formal opening of the Manchester and Liverpool road—the first anniversary of the South Carolina Railroad was celebrated with due honor. A queer-looking machine, the outline of which was sufficient in itself to prove that the inventor owed nothing to Stephenson, had been constructed at the West Point Foundry Works in New York during the summer of 1830—a first attempt to supply that locomotive power which the Board had, with sublime confidence in possibilities, unanimously voted on the 14th of the preceding January should alone be used on the road. The name of _Best Friend_ was given to this very simple product of native genius. The idea of the multitubular boiler had not yet suggested itself in America. The _Best Friend_, therefore, was supplied with a common vertical boiler, ‘in form of an old-fashioned porter-bottle, the furnace at the bottom surrounded with water, and all filled inside of what we call teats running out from the sides and tops.’ By means of the projections or ‘teats’ a portion at least of the necessary heating surface was provided. The cylinder was at the front of the platform, the rear end of which was occupied by the boiler, and it was fed by means of a connecting pipe. Thanks to the indefatigable researches of an enthusiast on railroad construction, we have an account of the performances of this and all the other pioneers among American locomotives, and the pictures with which Mr. W. H. Brown has enriched his book would alone render it both curious and valuable. Prior to the stockholders’ anniversary of January 15th, 1831, it seems that the _Best Friend_ had made several trips ‘running at the rate of sixteen to twenty-one miles an hour, with forty or fifty passengers in some four or five cars, and without the cars, thirty to thirty-five miles an hour.’ The stockholders’ day was, however, a special occasion, and the papers of the following Monday, for it happened on a Saturday, gave the following account of it:—

“Notice having been previously given, inviting the stockholders, about one hundred and fifty assembled in the course of the morning at the company’s buildings in Line Street, together with a number of invited guests. The weather the day and night previous had been stormy, and the morning was cold and cloudy. Anticipating a postponement of the ceremonies, the locomotive engine had been taken to pieces for cleaning, but upon the assembling of the company she was put in order, the cylinders new packed and at the word the apparatus was ready for movement. The first trip was performed with two pleasure cars attached, and a small carriage, fitted for the occasion, upon which was a detachment of United States troops and a field-piece which had been politely granted by Major Belton for the occasion. . . The number of passengers brought down, which was performed in two trips, was estimated at upward of two hundred. A band of music enlivened the scene, and great hilarity and good humour prevailed throughout the day.”

It was not long, however, before the _Best Friend_ came to serious grief. Naturally, and even necessarily, inasmuch as it was a South Carolina institution, it was provided with a negro fireman. It so happened that this functionary while in the discharge of his duties was much annoyed by the escape of steam from the safety valve, and, not having made himself complete master of the principles underlying the use of steam as a source of power, he took advantage of a temporary absence of the engineer in charge to effect a radical remedy of this cause of annoyance. He not only fastened down the valve lever, but further made the thing perfectly sure by sitting upon it. The consequences were hardly less disastrous to the _Best Friend_ than to the chattel fireman. Neither were of much further practical use. Before this mishap chanced, however in June, 1831, a second locomotive, called the _West Point_, had arrived in Charleston, and this last was constructed on the principle of Stephenson’s _Rocket_. In its general aspect, indeed, it greatly resembled that already famous prototype. There is a very characteristic and suggestive cut representing a trial trip made with this locomotive on March 5th, 1831. The nerves of the Charleston people had been a good deal disturbed and their confidence in steam as a safe motor shaken by the disaster which had befallen the _Best Friend_. Mindful of this fact, and very properly solicitous for the safety of their guests, the directors now had recourse to a very simple and ingenious expedient. They put what they called a ‘barrier car’ between the locomotive and passenger coaches of the train. This barrier car consisted of a platform on wheels upon which were piled six bales of cotton. A fortification was thus provided between the passengers and any future negro sitting on the safety valve. We are also assured that ‘the safety valve being out of the reach of any person but the engineer, will contribute to the prevention of accidents in the future, such as befel the _Best Friend_.’ Judging by the cut which represents the train, this occasion must have been even more marked for its ‘hilarity’ than the earlier one which has already been described. Besides the locomotive and the barrier car there are four passenger coaches. In the first of these was a negro band, in general appearance very closely resembling the minstrels of a later day, the members of which are energetically performing on musical instruments of various familiar descriptions. Then follow three cars full of the saddest looking white passengers, who were present as we were informed to the number of one hundred and seventeen. The excursion was, however, highly successful, and two-and-a-quarter miles of road were passed over in the short space of eight minutes—about the speed at which a good horse would trot for the same distance.

This was in March, 1831. About six months before, however, there had actually been a trial of speed between a horse and one of the pioneer locomotives, which had not resulted in favour of the locomotive. It took place on the present Baltimore and Ohio road upon the 28th of August, 1830. The engine in this case was contrived by no other than Mr. Peter Cooper. And it affords a striking illustration of how recent those events which now seem so remote really were, that here is a man until very recently living, and amongst the most familiar to the eyes of the present generation, who was a contemporary of Stephenson, and himself invented a locomotive during the Rainhill year, being then nearly forty years of age. The Cooper engine, however, was scarcely more than a working model. Its active-minded inventor hardly seems to have aimed at anything more than a demonstration of possibilities. The whole thing weighed only a ton, and was of one horse power; in fact it was not larger than those handcars now in common use with railroad section-men. The boiler, about the size of a modern kitchen boiler, stood upright and was fitted above the furnace—which occupied the lower section—with vertical tubes. The cylinder was but three-and-a-half inches in diameter, and the wheels were moved by gearing. In order to secure the requisite pressure of steam in so small a boiler, a sort of bellows was provided which was kept in action by means of a drum attached to one of the car-wheels over which passed a cord which worked a pulley, which in turn worked the bellows. Thus, of Stephenson’s two great devices, without either of which his success at Rainhill would have been impossible—the waste steam blast and the multitubular boiler—Peter Cooper had only got hold of the last. He owed his defeat in the race between his engine and a horse to the fact that he had not got hold of the first. It happened in this wise. Several experimental trips had been made with the little engine on the Baltimore and Ohio road, the first sections of which had recently been completed and were then operated upon by means of horses. The success of these trips was such that at last, just seventeen days before the formal opening of the Manchester and Liverpool road on the other side of the Atlantic, a small open car was attached to the engine—the name of which, by the way, was _Tom Thumb_—and upon this a party of directors and their friends were carried from Baltimore to Ellicott’s Mills and back, a distance of some twenty-six miles.

The trip out was made in an hour, and was very successful. The return was less so, and for the following reason:—

“The great stage proprietors of the day were Stockton and Stokes; and on that occasion a gallant grey, of great beauty and power, was driven by them from town, attached to another car on the second track—for the company had begun by making two tracks to the Mills—and met the engine at the Relay House on its way back. From this point it was determined to have a race home, and the start being even, away went horse and engine, the snort of the one and the puff of the other keeping tune and time.

“At first the grey had the best of it, for his _steam_ would be applied to the greatest advantage on the instant, while the engine had to wait until the rotation of the wheels set the blower to work. The horse was perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead when the safety valve of the engine lifted, and the thin blue vapour issuing from it showed an excess of steam. The blower whistled, the steam blew off in vapoury clouds, the pace increased, the passengers shouted, the engine gained on the horse, soon it lapped him—the silk was plied—the race was neck and neck, nose and nose—then the engine passed the horse, and a great hurrah hailed the victory. But it was not repeated, for, just at this time, when the grey’s master was about giving up, the band which draws the pulley which moved the blower slipped from the drum, the safety valve ceased to scream, and the engine—for want of breath—began to wheeze and pant. In vain Mr. Cooper, who was his own engineer and fireman, lacerated his hands in attempting to replace the band upon the wheel; the horse gained upon the machine and passed it, and although the band was presently replaced, and the steam again did its best, the horse was too far ahead to be overtaken, and came in the winner of the race.”

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN OPPOSITION.

What wonder that such an innovation as railways was strenuously opposed, threatening, as it did, the coaching interest, and the posting interest, the canal interest, and the sporting interest, and private interests of every variety. “Gentlemen, as an individual,” said a sporting M.P. for Cheltenham, “I hate your railways; I detest them altogether; I wish the concoctors of the Cheltenham and Oxford, and the concoctors of every other scheme, including the solicitors and engineers, were at rest in Paradise. Gentlemen, I detest railroads; nothing is more distasteful to me than to hear the echo of our hills reverberating with the noise of hissing railroad engines, running through the heart of our hunting country, and destroying that noble sport to which I have been accustomed from my childhood.” And at Tewkesbury, one speaker contended that “any railway would be injurious;” compared engines to “war-horses and fiery meteors;” and affirmed that “the evils contained in Pandora’s box were but trifles compared with those that would be consequent on railways.” Even in go-aheadative America, some steady jog trotting opponents raised their voices against the nascent system; one of whom (a canal stockholder, by the way) chronicled the following objective arguments. “He saw what would be the effect of it; that it would set the whole world a-gadding. Twenty miles an hour, sir! Why you will not be able to keep an apprentice-boy at his work; every Saturday evening he must take a trip to Ohio, to spend the Sabbath with his sweetheart. Grave plodding citizens will be flying about like comets. All local attachments must be at an end. It will encourage flightiness of intellect. Veracious people will turn into the most immeasurable liars; all their conceptions will be exaggerated by their magnificent notions of distance. ‘Only a hundred miles off! Tut, nonsense, I’ll step across, madam, and bring your fan!’ ‘Pray, sir, will you dine with me to-day at my little box at Alleghany?’ ‘Why, indeed, I don’t know. I shall be in town until twelve. Well, I shall be there; but you must let me off in time for the theatre.’ And then, sir, there will be barrels of pork, and cargoes of flour, and chaldrons of coals, and even lead and whiskey, and such-like sober things that have always been used to sober travelling, whisking away like a set of sky-rockets. It will upset all the gravity of the nation. If two gentlemen have an affair of honour, they have only to steal off to the Rocky Mountains, and there no jurisdiction can touch them. And then, sir, think of flying for debt! A set of bailiffs, mounted on bomb-shells, would not overtake an absconded debtor, only give him a fair start. Upon the whole, sir, it is a pestilential, topsy-turvy, harum-scarum whirligig. Give me the old, solemn, straightforward, regular Dutch canal—three miles an hour for expresses, and two for ordinary journeys, with a yoke of oxen for a heavy load! I go for beasts of burthen: it is more primitive and scriptural, and suits a moral and religious people better. None of your hop-skip-and-jump whimsies for me.”

—_Sharpe’s London Journal_.

AN UNPLEASANT TRIAL TRIP.

Mr. O. F. Adams remarks:—“A famous trial trip with a new locomotive engine was that made on the 9th of August, 1831, on the new line from Albany to Schenectady over the Mohawk Valley road. The train was made up of a locomotive, the _De Witt Clinton_, its tender, and five or six passenger coaches—which were, indeed, nothing but the bodies of stage coaches placed upon trucks. The first two of these coaches were set aside for distinguished visitors; the others were surmounted with seats of plank to accommodate as many as possible of the great throng of persons who were anxious to participate in the trip. Inside and out the coaches were crowded; every seat was full. What followed the starting of the train has thus been described by one who took part in the affair:—

“‘The trucks were coupled together with chains or chain-links, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force to jerk the passengers who sat on seats across the tops of the coaches, out from under their hats, and in stopping they came together with such force as to send them flying from their seats.

“They used dry pitch-pine for fuel, and, there being no smoke or spark-catcher to the chimney or smoke stack, a volume of black smoke, strongly impregnated with sparks, coal, and cinders, came pouring back the whole length of the train. Each of the outside passengers who had an umbrella raised it as a protection against the smoke and fire. They were found to be but a momentary protection, for I think in the first mile the last one went overboard, all having their covers burnt off from the frames, when a general mêlée took place among the deck passengers, each whipping his neighbour to put out the fire. They presented a very motley appearance on arriving at the first station.” Here, “a short stop was made, and a successful experiment tried to remedy the unpleasant jerks. A plan was soon hit upon and put into execution. The three links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to their utmost tension, a rail from a fence in the neighbourhood was placed between each pair of cars and made fast by means of the packing yarn from the cylinders. This arrangement improved the order of things, and it was found to answer the purpose when the signal was again given and the engine started.’”

PROGNOSTICATIONS OF FAILURE.

In the year 1831, the writer of a pamphlet, who styled himself _Investigator_, essayed the task of “proving by facts and arguments” that a railway between London and Birmingham would be a “burden upon the trade of the country and would never pay.” The difficulties and dangers of the enterprise he thus sets forth:—

“The causes of greater danger on the railway are several. A velocity of fifteen miles an hour is in itself a great source of danger, as the smallest obstacle might produce the most serious consequences. If, at that rate, the engine or any forward part of the train should suddenly stop, the whole would be cracked by the collision like nutshells. At all turnings there is a danger that the latter part of the train may swing off the rails; and, if that takes place, the most serious consequences must ensue before the whole train can be stopped. The line, too, upon which the train must be steered admits of little lateral deviation, while a stage coach has a choice of the whole roadway. Independently of the velocity, which in coaches is the chief source of danger, there are many perils on the railway, the rails stand up like so many thick knives, and any one alighting on them would have but a slight chance of his life . . . Another consideration which would deter travellers, more especially invalids, ladies, and children, from making use of the railways, would be want of accommodation along the line, unless the directors of the railway choose to build inns as commodious as those on the present line of road. But those inns the directors would have in part to support also, because they would be out of the way of any business except that arising from the railway, and that would be so trifling and so accidental that the landlords could not afford to keep either a cellar or a larder.

“Commercial travellers, who stop and do business in all the towns and by so doing render commerce much cheaper than it otherwise would be, and who give that constant support to the houses of entertainment which makes them able to supply the occasional traveller well and at a cheap rate, would, as a matter of course, never by any chance go by the railroad; and the occasional traveller, who went the same route for pleasure, would go by the coach road also, because of the cheerful company and comfortable dinner. Not one of the nobility, the gentry, or those who travel in their own carriages, would by any chance go by the railway. A nobleman would really not like to be drawn at the tail of a train of wagons, in which some hundreds of bars of iron were jingling with a noise that would drown all the bells of the district, and in the momentary apprehension of having his vehicle broke to pieces, and himself killed or crippled by the collision of those thirty-ton masses.”

SIR ASTLEY COOPER’S OPPOSITION TO THE LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM RAILWAY.

Robert Stephenson, while engaged in the survey of the above line, encountered much opposition from landed proprietors. Many years after its completion, when recalling the past, he said:—“I remember that we called one day on Sir Astley Cooper, the eminent surgeon, in the hope of overcoming his aversion to the railway. He was one of our most inveterate and influential opponents. His country house at Berkhampstead was situated near the intended line, which passed through part of his property. We found a courtly, fine-looking old gentleman, of very stately manners, who received us kindly and heard all we had to say in favour of the project. But he was quite inflexible in his opposition to it. No deviation or improvement that we could suggest had any effect in conciliating him. He was opposed to railways generally, and to this in

## particular. ‘Your scheme,’ said he, ‘is preposterous in the extreme. It

is of so extravagant a character as to be positively absurd. Then look at the recklessness of your proceedings! You are proposing to cut up our estates in all directions for the purpose of making an unnecessary road. Do you think, for one moment, of the destruction of property involved by it? Why, gentlemen, if this sort of thing be permitted to go on you will in a very few years _destroy the nobility_!’”

OPPOSITION TO MAKING SURVEYS.

A great deal of opposition was encountered in making the surveys for the London and Birmingham Railway, and although, in every case, as little damage was done as possible, simply because it was the interest of those concerned to conciliate all parties along the line, yet, in several instances, the opposition was of a most violent nature; in one case no skill or ingenuity could evade the watchfulness and determination of the lords of the soil, and the survey was at last accomplished at night by means of dark lanterns.