Part 8

On another occasion, when Mr. Gooch was taking levels through some of the large tracts of grazing land, a few miles from London, two brothers, occupying the land came to him in a great rage, and insisted on his leaving their property immediately. He contrived to learn from them that the adjoining field was not theirs and he therefore remonstrated but very slightly with them, and then walked quietly through the gap in the hedge into the next field, and planted his level on the highest ground he could find—his assistant remaining at the last level station, distant about a hundred and sixty yards, apparently quite unconscious of what had taken place, although one of the brothers was moving very quickly towards him, for the purpose of sending him off. Now, if the assistant had moved his staff before Mr. Gooch had got his sight at it through the telescope of his level, all his previous work would have been completely lost, and the survey must have been completed in whatever manner it could have been done—the great object, however, was to prevent this serious inconvenience. The moment Mr. Gooch commenced looking through his telescope at the staff held by his assistant, the grazier nearest him, spreading out the tails of his coat, tried to place himself between the staff and the telescope, in order to intercept all vision, and at the same time commenced shouting violently to his comrade, desiring him to make haste and knock down the staff. Fortunately for Mr. Gooch, although nature had made this amiable being’s ears longer than usual, yet they performed their office very badly, and as he could not see distinctly what Mr. Gooch was about—the hedge being between them—he very simply asked the man at the staff what his (the enquirer’s) brother said. “Oh,” replied the man, “he is calling to you to stop that horse there which is galloping out of the fold yard.” Away went Clodpole, as fast as he could run, to restrain the unruly energies of Smolensko the Ninth, or whatever other name the unlucky quadruped might be called, and Mr. Gooch in the meanwhile quietly took the sight required—he having, with great judgment, planted his level on ground sufficiently high to enable him to see over the head of any grazier in the land; but his clever assistant, as soon as he perceived that all was right, had to take to his heels and make the shortest cut to the high road.

In another instance, a reverend gentleman of the Church of England made such alarming demonstrations of his opposition that the extraordinary expedient was resorted to of surveying his property during the time he was engaged in the pulpit, preaching to his flock. This was accomplished by having a strong force of surveyors all in readiness to commence their operations, by entering the clergyman’s grounds on the one side at the same moment that they saw him fairly off them on the other, and, by a well organised and systematic arrangement, each man coming to a conclusion with his allotted task just as the reverend gentleman came to a conclusion with his sermon; and before he left the church to return to his home, the deed was done.

—Roscoe’s _London and Birmingham Railway_.

SANITARY OBJECTIONS.

Mr. Smiles, in his _Life of George Stephenson_, remarks:—“Sanitary objections were also urged in opposition to railways, and many wise doctors strongly inveighed against tunnels. Sir Anthony Carlisle insisted that “tunnels would expose healthy people to colds, catarrhs, and consumption.” The noise, the darkness, and the dangers of tunnel travelling were depicted in all their horrors. Worst of all, however, was ‘the destruction of the atmospheric air,’ as Dr. Lardner termed it. Elaborate calculations were made by that gentleman to prove that the provision of ventilating shafts would be altogether insufficient to prevent the dangers arising from the combustion of coke, producing carbonic acid gas, which in large quantities was fatal to life. He showed, for instance, that in the proposed Box tunnel, on the Great Western Railway, the passage of 100 tons would deposit about 3090 lbs. of noxious gases, incapable of supporting life! Here was an uncomfortable prospect of suffocation for passengers between London and Bristol. But steps were adopted to allay these formidable sources of terror. Solemn documents, in the form of certificates, were got up and published, signed by several of the most distinguished physicians of the day, attesting the perfect wholesomeness of tunnels, and the purity of the air in them. Perhaps they went further than was necessary in alleging, what certainly subsequent experience has not verified, that the atmosphere of the tunnel was ‘dry, of an agreeable temperature, and free from smell.’ Mr. Stephenson declared his conviction that a tunnel twenty miles long could be worked safely and without more danger to life than a railway in the open air; but, at the same time, he admits that tunnels were nuisances, which he endeavoured to avoid wherever practicable.”

ELEVATED RAILWAYS.

In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for June, 1830, it is stated:—“There are at present exhibiting in Edinburgh three large models, accompanied with drawings of railways and their carriages, invented by Mr. Dick, who has a patent. These railways are of a different nature from those hitherto in use, inasmuch as they are not laid along the surface of the ground, but elevated to such a height as, when necessary, to pass over the tops of houses and trees. The principal supports are of stone, and, being placed at considerable distances, have cast-iron pillars between them. The carriages are to be dragged along with a velocity hitherto unparalleled, by means of a rope drawn by a steam engine or other prime mover, a series being placed at intervals along the railway. From the construction of the railway and carriages the friction is very small.”

EVIDENCE OF A GENERAL SALESMAN.

The advantages London derives from railways, in regard to its supply of good meat, may be gathered from the evidence given by Mr. George Rowley in 1834, on behalf of the Great Western Railway Company.

“You have been a general salesman of live and dead stock of all descriptions in Newgate Market 32 years?”—“Yes.”

“What is about the annual amount of your sales?”—“I turn over £300,000 in a year.”

“Would a railway that facilitated the communication between London and Bristol be an advantage to your business?”—“I think it would be a special advantage to London altogether.”

“In what way?”—“The facility of having goods brought in reference to live stock is very important; I have been in the habit of paying Mr. Bowman, of Bristol, £1,000 a-week for many weeks; that has been for sending live hogs to me to be sold, to be slaughtered in London; and I have, out of that £1,000 a-week as many as 40 or 50 pigs die on the road, and they have sold for little or nothing. The exertion of the pigs kills them.”

“The means of conveying pigs on a railway would be a great advantage?”—“Yes, as far as having the pigs come good to market, without being subject to a distemper that creates fever, and they die as red as that bag before you, and when they are killed in good health they die a natural colour.”

“Then do I understand you that those who are fortunate enough to survive the journey are the worse for it?”—“Yes, in weight.”

“And in quality?”—“Yes! All meat killed in the country, and delivered in the London market dead, in a good state, will make from 6d. to 8d. a stone more than what is slaughtered in London.”

THE ANXIOUS HAIR-DRESSER.

“Clanwilliam mentioned this evening an incident which proves the wonderful celerity of the railroads. Mr. Isidore, the Queen’s coiffeur, who receives £2,000 a year for dressing Her Majesty’s hair twice-a-day, had gone to London in the morning to return to Windsor in time for her toilet; but on arriving at the station he was just five minutes too late, and saw the train depart without him. His horror was great, as he knew that his want of punctuality would deprive him of his place, as no train would start for the next two hours. The only resource was to order a special train, for which he was obliged to pay £18; but the establishment feeling the importance of his business, ordered extra steam to be put on, and convoyed the anxious hair-dresser 18 miles in 18 minutes, which extricated him from all his difficulties.”

_Raike’s Diary from_ 1831 _to_ 1847.

SHARP PRACTICE.

Sir Francis Head, Bart., in his _Stokers and Pokers_, remarks:—“During the construction of the present London and North Western Railway, a landlady at Hillmorton, near Rugby, of very sharp practice, which she had imbibed in dealings for many years with canal boatmen, was constantly remarking aloud that no navvy should ever “do” her; and although the railway was in her immediate neighbourhood, and although the navvies were her principal customers, she took pleasure on every opportunity in repeating the invidious remark.

“It had, however, one fine morning scarcely left her large, full-blown, rosy lips, when a fine-looking young fellow, walking up to her, carrying in both hands a huge stone bottle, commonly called a ‘grey-neck,’ briefly asked her for ‘half a gallon of gin;’ which was no sooner measured and poured in than the money was rudely demanded before it could be taken away.

“On the navvy declining to pay the exorbitant price asked, the landlady, with a face like a peony, angrily told him he must either pay for the gin or _instantly_ return it.

“He silently chose the latter, and accordingly, while the eyes of his antagonist were wrathfully fixed upon his, he returned into her measure the half gallon, and then quietly walked off; but having previously put into his grey-neck half a gallon of water, each party eventually found themselves in possession of half a gallon of gin and water; and, however either may have enjoyed the mixture, it is historically recorded at Hillmorton that the landlady was never again heard unnecessarily to boast that no navvy could _do_ her.”

A NAVVY’S REASON FOR NOT GOING TO CHURCH.

A navvy at Kilsby, being asked why he did not go to church? duly answered in geological language—“_Why_, _Soonday hasn’t cropped out here yet_!” By which he meant that the clergyman appointed to the new village had not yet arrived.

SNAKES’ HEADS.

One of the earliest forms of rails used by the Americans consisted of a flat bar half-an-inch thick spiked down to longitudinal timbers. In the process of running the train, the iron was curved, the spikes loosened, and the ends of the bars turned up, and were known by the name of snakes’ heads. Occasionally they pierced the bottoms of the carriages and injured passengers, and it was no uncommon thing to hear passengers speculate as to which line they would go by, as showing fewest snakes’ heads.

PREJUDICE REMOVED.

Mr. William Reed, a land agent, was called, in 1834, to give evidence in favour of the Great Western Railway. He was questioned as to the benefits conferred upon the localities passed through by the Manchester and Liverpool Railway. He was asked, “From your knowledge of the property in the neighbourhood, can you say that the houses have not decreased in value?” “Yes; I know an instance of a gentleman who had a house very near, and, though he quarrelled very much with the Company when they came there, and said, ‘Very well, if you will come let me have a high wall to keep you out of sight,’ and a year-and-a-half ago he petitioned the Company to take down the wall, and he has put up an iron railing, so that he may see them.”

A RIDE FROM BOSTON TO PROVIDENCE IN 1835.

The early railway enterprise in America was not regarded by all persons with feelings of unmixed satisfaction. Thus we read of the railway journey taken by a gentleman of the old school, whose experience and sensations—if not very satisfactory to himself—are worth recording:—“July 22, 1835.—This morning at nine o’clock I took passage in a railroad car (from Boston) for Providence. Five or six other cars were attached to the locomotive, and uglier boxes I do not wish to travel in. They were made to stow away some thirty human beings, who sit cheek by jowl as best they can. Two poor fellows who were not much in the habit of making their toilet squeezed me into a corner, while the hot sun drew from their garments a villanous compound of smells made up of salt fish, tar, and molasses. By and bye, just twelve—only twelve—bouncing factory girls were introduced, who were going on a party of pleasure to Newport. ‘Make room for the ladies!’ bawled out the superintendent, ‘Come, gentlemen, jump up on the top; plenty of room there.’ ‘I’m afraid of the bridge knocking my brains out,’ said a passenger. Some made one excuse and some another. For my part, I flatly told him that since I had belonged to the corps of Silver Greys I had lost my gallantry, and did not intend to move. The whole twelve were, however, introduced, and soon made themselves at home, sucking lemons and eating green apples. . . The rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the polite and the vulgar, all herd together in this modern improvement of travelling. The consequence is a complete amalgamation. Master and servant sleep heads and points on the cabin floor of the steamer, feed at the same table, sit in each other’s laps, as it were, in the cars; and all this for the sake of doing very uncomfortably in two days what would be done delightfully in eight or ten. Shall we be much longer kept by this toilsome fashion of hurrying, hurrying, from starting (those who can afford it) on a journey with our own horses, and moving slowly, surely, and profitably through the country, with the power of enjoying its beauty, and be the means of creating good inns. Undoubtedly, a line of post-horses and post-chaises would long ago have been established along our great roads had not steam monopolized everything. . . . Talk of ladies on board a steamboat or in a railroad car. There are none! I never feel like a gentleman there, and I cannot perceive a semblance of gentility in any one who makes part of the travelling mob. When I see women whom, in their drawing rooms or elsewhere, I have been accustomed to respect and treat with every suitable deference—when I see them, I say, elbowing their way through a crowd of dirty emigrants or lowbred homespun fellows in petticoats or breeches in our country, in order to reach a table spread for a hundred or more, I lose sight of their pretensions to gentility and view them as belonging to the plebeian herd. To restore herself to her caste, let a lady move in select company at five miles an hour, and take her meals in comfort at a good inn, where she may dine decently. . . . After all, the old-fashioned way of five or six miles, with liberty to dine in a decent inn and be master of one’s movements, with the delight of seeing the country and getting along rationally, is the mode to which I cling, and which will be adopted again by the generations of after times.”

—_Recollections of Samuel Breck_.

APPEALING TO THE CLERGY.

Mr. C. F. Adams remarks:—“During the periods of discouragement which, a few years later, marked certain stages of the construction of the Western road, connecting Worcester with Albany—when both money and courage seemed almost exhausted—Mr. De Grand never for a moment faltered. He might almost be said to have then had Western railroad on the brain. Among other things, he issued a circular which caused much amusement and not improbably some scandal among the more precise. The Rev. S. K. Lothrop, then a young man, had preached a sermon in Brattle Street Church which attracted a good deal of attention, on the subject of the moral and Christianizing influence of railroads. Mr. De Grand thought he saw his occasion, and he certainly availed himself of it. He at once had a circular printed, a copy of which he sent to every clergyman in Massachusetts, suggesting the propriety of a discourse on ‘The moral and Christianizing influence of railroads in general and of the Western railroad in particular.’”

AIR-WAYS INSTEAD OF RAILWAYS.

In the _Mechanics’ Magazine_ for July 22nd, 1837, is to be found the following remarkable suggestion:—“In many parts of the new railroads, where there has been some objection to the locomotive engines, stationary ones are resorted to, as everyone knows to draw the vehicles along. Why might not these vehicles be balloons? Why, instead of being dragged on the surface of the ground, along costly viaducts or under disagreeable tunnels, might they not travel two or three hundred feet high? By balloons, I mean, of course, anything raised in the air by means of a gas lighter than the air. They might be of all shapes and sizes to suit convenience. The practicability of this plan does not seem to be doubtful. Its advantages are obvious. Instead of having to purchase, as for a railway, the whole line of track passed over, the company for a balloon-way would only have to procure those spots of ground on which they proposed to erect stationary engines; and these need in no case be of peculiar value, since their being a hundred yards one way or the other would make little difference. Viaducts of course would never be necessary, cuttings in very few occasions indeed, if at all. The chief expense of balloons is their inflation, which is renewed at every new ascent; but in these balloons the gas once in need never to be let out, and one inflation would be enough.”

The same writer a few years later on observes:—“One feature of the air-way to supersede the railway would be, that besides preventing the destruction of the architectural beauties of the metropolis, now menaced by the multitudinous network of viaducts and subways at war with the existing thoroughfares, it would occasion the construction of numerous lofty towers as stations of arrival and departure, which would afford an opportunity of architectural effect hitherto undreamed of.”

PREJUDICE AGAINST CARRYING COALS BY RAILWAYS.

Rev. F. S. Williams in an article upon “Railway Revolutions,” remarks:—“When railways were first established it was never imagined that they would be so far degraded as to carry coals; but George Stephenson and others soon saw how great a service railways might render in developing and distributing the mineral wealth of the country. Prejudice had, however, to be timidly and vigorously overcome. When it was mentioned to a certain eminent railway authority that George Stephenson had spoken of sending coals by railway: ‘Coals!’ he exclaimed, ‘they will want us to carry dung next.’ The remark was reported to ‘Old George,’ who was not behind his critic in the energy of his expression. ‘You tell B—,’ he said, ‘that when he travels by railway, they carry dung now!’ The strength of the feeling against the traffic is sufficiently illustrated by the fact that, when the London and Birmingham Railway began to carry coal, the wagons that contained it were sheeted over that their contents might not be seen; and when a coal wharf was first made at Crick station, a screen was built to hide the work from the observation of passengers on the line. Even the possibility of carrying coal at a remunerative price was denied. ‘I am very sorry,’ said Lord Eldon, referring to this subject, ‘to find the intelligent people of the north country gone mad on the subject of railways;’ and another eminent authority declared: ‘It is all very well to spend money; it will do some good; but I will eat all the coals your railway will carry.’

“George Stephenson, however, and other friends of coal, held on their way; and he declared that the time would come when London would be supplied with coal by railway. ‘The strength of Britain,’ he said, ‘is in her coal beds; and the locomotive is destined, above all other agencies, to bring it forth. The Lord Chancellor now sits upon a bag of wool; but wool has long ceased to be emblematical of the staple commodity of England. He ought rather to sit upon a bag of coals, though it might not prove quite so comfortable a seat. Then think of the Lord Chancellor being addressed as the noble and learned lord on the coal-sack? I’m afraid it wouldn’t answer, after all.’”

AN EPITAPH ON THE VICTIM OF A RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

A correspondent writes to the _Pall Mall Gazette_:—“Our poetic literature, so rich in other respects, is entirely wanting in epitaphs on the victims of railway accidents. A specimen of what may be turned in this line is to be seen on a tombstone in the picturesque churchyard of Harrow-on-the-Hill. It was, I observe, written as long ago as 1838, so that it can be reproduced without much danger of hurting the feelings of those who may have known and loved the subject of this touching elegy. The name of the victim was Port, and the circumstances of his death are thus set forth:—

Bright was the morn, and happy rose poor Port; Gay on the train he used his wonted sport. Ere noon arrived his mangled form they bore With pain distorted and overwhelmed with gore. When evening came and closed the fatal day, A mutilated corpse the sufferer lay.”

AN ENGINE-DRIVER’S EPITAPH.

In the cemetery at Alton, Illinois, there is a tombstone bearing the following inscription:—

“My engine is now cold and still. No water does my boiler fill. My coke affords its flame no more, My days of usefulness are o’er; My wheels deny their noted speed, No more my guiding hand they heed; My whistle—it has lost its tone, Its shrill and thrilling sound is gone; My valves are now thrown open wide, My flanges all refuse to glide; My clacks—alas! though once so strong, Refuse their aid in the busy throng; No more I feel each urging breath, My steam is now condensed in death; Life’s railway o’er, each station past, In death I’m stopped, and rest at last.”

This epitaph was written by an engineer on the old Chicago and Mississippi Railroad, who was fatally injured by an accident on the road; and while he lay awaiting the death which he knew to be inevitable, he wrote the lines which are engraved upon his tombstone.

TRAFFIC-TAKING.

Between the years 1836 and 1839, when there were many railway acts applied for, traffic-taking became a lucrative calling. It was necessary that some approximate estimate should be made as to the income which the lines might be expected to yield. Arithmeticians, who calculated traffic receipts, were to be found to prove what promoters of railways required to satisfy shareholders and Parliamentary Committees. The Eastern Counties Railway was estimated to pay a dividend of 23½ per cent.; the London and Cambridge, 14½ per cent.; the Sheffield and Manchester, 18½ per cent. One shareholder of this company was so sanguine as to the success of the line that in a letter to the _Railway Magazine_ he calculated on a dividend of 80 per cent. Bitter indeed must have been the disappointment of those railway shareholders who pinned their faith to the estimates of traffic-takers, when instead of receiving large dividends, little was received, and in some instances the lines paid no dividend at all.

MONEY LOST AND FOUND.

On Friday night, a servant of the Birmingham Railway Company found in one of the first-class carriages, after the passengers had left, a pocket