Railway Adventures and Anecdotes Part 11

About the time of the bursting of the railway bubble, or the collapse of the mania of 18445, the following clever lines appeared:-

"There was a sound of revelry by night."-_Childe Harold_.

"There was a sound that ceased not day or night, Of speculation. London gathered then Unwonted crowds, and moved by promise bright, To Capel-court rushed women, boys, and men, All seeking railway shares and scrip; and when The market rose, how many a lad could tell, With joyous glance, and eyes that spake again, 'Twas e'en more lucrative than marrying well;- When, hark! that warning voice strikes like a rising knell.

Nay, it is nothing, empty as the wind, But a 'bear' whisper down Throgmorton-street; Wild enterprise shall still be unconfined; No rest for us, when rising premiums greet The morn to pour their treasures at our feet; When, hark! that solemn sound is heard once more, The gathering 'bears' its echoes yet repeat- 'Tis but too true, is now the general roar, The Bank has raised her rate, as she has done before.

And then and there were hurryings to and fro, And anxious thoughts, and signs of sad distress Faces all pale, that but an hour ago Smiled at the thoughts of their own craftiness.

And there were sudden partings, such as press The coin from hungry pockets-mutual sighs Of brokers and their clients. Who can guess How many a stag already panting flies, When upon times so bright such awful panics rise?"

RAILWAY FACILITIES FOR BUSINESS.

A gentleman went to Liverpool in the morning, purchased, and took back with him to Manchester, 150 tons of cotton, which he sold, and afterwards obtained an order for a similar quant.i.ty. He went again, and actually, that same evening, delivered the second quant.i.ty in Manchester, "having travelled 120 miles in four separate journeys, and bought, sold, and delivered, 30 miles off, at two distinct deliveries, 300 tons of goods, in about 12 hours." The occurrence is perfectly astounding; and, had it been hinted at fifty years ago, would have been deemed impossible.

-_Railway Magazine_, 1840.

RAILWAYS AND THE POST-OFFICE.

It might naturally be thought that the new and quicker means of transport afforded by the railway would be eagerly utilised by the Post-office.

There were, however, difficulties on both sides. The railway companies objected to running trains during the night, and the old stage-coach offered the advantage of greater regularity. The railway was quicker, but was at least occasionally uncertain. Thus, in November, 1837, the four daily mail trains between Liverpool and Birmingham on ten occasions arrived before the specified time, on eight occasions were exact to time, and on 102 occasions varied in lateness of arrival from five minutes to five hours and five minutes. There were all sorts of mishaps and long delays by train. The mail guard, like the pa.s.senger guard, rode outside the train with a box before him called an "imperial," which contained the letters and papers entrusted to his charge. In very stormy weather the mail guard would prop up the lid of his imperial and get inside for shelter. On one occasion when the mail arrived at Liverpool the guard was found imprisoned in his letter-box. The lid had fallen and fastened in the male travesty of "Ginevra." Fortunately for him it was a burlesque and not a tragedy. Bags thrown to the guards at wayside stations not unfrequently got under the wheels of the train and the contents were cut to pieces. On one occasion, on the Grand Junction, an engine failed through the fire-bars coming out. The mails were removed from the train and run on a platelayer's "trolly," but unfortunately the contents of the bags took fire and were destroyed. But many of these mishaps were obviated by the invention of Mr. Nathaniel Worsdell, a Liverpool coachbuilder, in the service of the railway, who took out a patent in 1838 for an appliance for picking up and dropping mail bags while the train was at full speed. This is still used. The loads of railway vehicles, it may be mentioned, were limited by law to four tons until the pa.s.sage of the 5 and 6 Vic., c. 55. In 1837, when the weight of the mails pa.s.sing daily on the London and Birmingham line was only about 14cwt., the late Sir Hardman Earle suggested that a special compartment should be reserved for the mail guard in which he could sort the letters _en route_. The first vehicle specially set apart for mail purposes was put upon the Grand Junction in 1838. From this humble beginning has gradually developed the express mails, in which the chief consideration is the swift transit of correspondence, and which are therefore limited in the number of the pa.s.sengers they are allowed to carry. The cost of carrying the mails in 1838 and 1839 between Manchester and Liverpool by rail, including the guard's fare, averaged about 1 a trip, or half of the cost of sending them by coach. The price paid to the Grand Junction for carriage of mails between Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham was 1d. a mile for the guard and d. per cwt.

per mile for the mails. This brought a revenue of about 3,000 a year.

When the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed and carried the imposition of the pa.s.senger duty, in 1832, the company intimated to the Post-office that they should advance the mail guard's fare d. per mile. In 1840 an agreement was negotiated between the Post-office and railway authorities to convey the mails between Lancas.h.i.+re and Birmingham four times daily for 19 10s. a day, with a penalty of 500 on the railway company in case of bad time keeping. This agreement was not carried into effect.

-_Manchester Guardian_.

RAILWAY SIGNALS.

The history of railway signals is a curious page in the annals of practical science. For some years signals seem scarcely to have been dreamt of. Holding up a hat or an umbrella was at first sufficient to stop a train at an intermediate station. At level crossings the gates had to stand closed across the line of rails, and on the top bar hung a lamp to indicate to drivers that the way was blocked. In 1839, Colonel Landman, of the Croydon line, said that he should avoid the danger at a junction during a fog by going slowly, tolling a bell, beating a drum, or sounding a whistle. The first junction signal was denominated a lighthouse. The difficulties attending junctions may be judged of by the fact that when the Bolton and Preston line was ready for opening it was agreed that no train should attempt to enter or leave the North Union line at Euxton junction within fifteen minutes of a train being due on the main line which might interfere with it. The movable rails at junctions had to be removed by hand and fixed into position by hammer and pin. Mr. Watts, engineer to the Lancas.h.i.+re and Yorks.h.i.+re Railway, is believed to have been one of the first to use the tapering movable switch. One of Mr. Watts's men invented the back weight, another designed the crank, while a third suggested the long rod. These improvements were all about the year 1846. The first fixed signal set up at stations was an ordinary round flag pole having a pulley on the top, upon which was hoisted a green flag to stop a train and a red one to indicate danger on the road. The night signal was a hand lamp hoisted in the same way. These were superseded by a signal on which an arm was worked at the end of a rod, and a square lamp with two sides, red and white, having blinkers working on hinges to shut out the light. These were used until 1848. The semaph.o.r.es only came into practical use some 20 years ago, and it is remarkable that the first time they were used on the Liverpool and Manchester line they were the cause of a slight collision. The use of signal lights on trains was much advanced by two accidents which occurred on the North Union line on the 7th September, 1841. One of these happened at Farrington, where two pa.s.senger trains came into collision. The other happened at Euxton, where a coal train ran into a stage coach which was taking pa.s.sengers to Southport. The Rev. Mr. Joy was killed, and several others, including the station master, who lost one leg, were injured. These were the first serious accidents investigated by the now Government Inspector of Railways, Sir Frederic Smith, who was appointed by the Board of Trade under Lord Seymour's Act.

-_Manchester Guardian_.

FOG-SIGNALS.

During the prevalence of fogs, when neither signal-posts nor lights are of any use, detonating signals are frequently employed, which are affixed to the rails, and exploded by the iron tread of the advancing locomotive.

All guards, policemen, and pointsmen who are not appointed to stations, and all enginemen, gatemen, gangers and platelayers, and tunnel-men, are provided with packets of these signals, which they are required always to have ready for use whilst on duty; and every engine, on pa.s.sing over one of these signals, is to be immediately stopped, and the guards are to protect their train by sending back and placing a similar signal on the line behind them every two hundred yards, to the distance of six hundred yards; the train may then proceed slowly to the place of obstruction.

When these detonating signals were first invented, it was resolved to ascertain whether they acted efficiently, and especially whether the noise they produced was sufficient to be distinctly heard by the engine driver. One of them was accordingly fixed to the rails on a particular line by the authority of the company, and in due time the train having pa.s.sed over it, reached its destination. Here the engine driver and his colleague were found to be in a state of great alarm, in consequence of a supposed attack being made on them by an a.s.sa.s.sin, who, they said, lay down beside the line of rails on which they had pa.s.sed, and deliberately fired at them. The efficiency of the means having thus been tested, the apprehensions of the enginemen were removed, though there was at first evident mortification manifested that they had been made the subjects of such a successful experiment.

-F. S. Williams's _Our Iron Roads_.

"ALMOST DAR NOW."

The following anecdote, ill.u.s.trative of railroad facility, is very pointed. A traveller inquired of a negro the distance to a certain point. "Dat 'pends on circ.u.mstances," replied darkey. "If you gwine afoot, it'll take you about a day; if you gwine in de stage or homneybus, you make it half a day; but if you get in one of _dese smoke wagons_, you be almost dar now."

WORDSWORTH'S PROTEST.

Lines written by Wordsworth as a protest against making a railway from Kendal to Windermere:-

"Is there no nook of English ground secure From rash a.s.sault? Schemes of retirement sown In youth, and 'mid the world kept pure As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown, Must perish; how can they this blight endure?

And must he, too, his old delights disown, Who scorns a false, utilitarian lure 'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?

Baffle the threat, bright scene, from Orrest-head, Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance!

Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance Of nature; and if human hearts be dead, Speak, pa.s.sing winds; ye torrents, with your strong And constant voice, protest against the wrong!"

THE HON. EDWARD EVERETT'S REPLY TO WORDSWORTH'S PROTEST.

The Hon. Edward Everett in the course of his speech at the Boston Railroad Jubilee in commemoration of the opening of railroad communication between Boston and Canada, observed, "But, sir, as I have already said, it is not the material results of this railroad system in which its happiest influences are seen. I recollect that seven or eight years ago there was a project to carry a railroad into the lake country in England-into the heart of Westmoreland and c.u.mberland. Mr.

Wordsworth, the lately deceased poet, a resident in the centre of this region, opposed the project. He thought that the retirement and seclusion of this delightful region would be disturbed by the panting of the locomotive and the cry of the steam whistle. If I am not mistaken, he published one or two sonnets in deprecation of the enterprise. Mr.

Wordsworth was a kind-hearted man, as well as a most distinguished poet, but he was entirely mistaken, as it seems to me, in this matter. The quiet of a few spots may be disturbed, but a hundred quiet spots are rendered accessible. The bustle of the station-house may take the place of the Druidical silence of some shady dell; but, Gracious Heavens, sir, how many of those verdant cathedral arches, entwined by the hand of G.o.d in our pathless woods, are opened to the grateful wors.h.i.+p of man by these means of communication?

"How little of rural beauty you lose, even in a country of comparatively narrow dimensions like England-how less than little in a country so vast as this-by works of this description. You lose a little strip along the line of the road, which partially changes its character; while, as the compensation, you bring all this rural beauty,

'The warbling woodland, the resounding sh.o.r.e, The pomp of groves, the garniture of fields,'

within the reach, not of a score of luxurious, sauntering tourists, but of the great ma.s.s of the population, who have senses and tastes as keen as the keenest. You throw it open, with all its soothing and humanizing influences, to thousands who, but for your railways and steamers, would have lived and died without ever having breathed the life-giving air of the mountains; yes, sir, to tens of thousands who would have gone to their graves, and the sooner for the prevention, without ever having caught a glimpse of the most magnificent and beautiful spectacle which nature presents to the eye of man, that of a glorious curving wave, a quarter-of-a-mile long, as it comes swelling and breasting toward the sh.o.r.e, till its soft green ridge bursts into a crest of snow, and settles and digs along the whispering sands."

REMARKABLE ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT.

The most astonis.h.i.+ng kind of property to leave behind at a railway station is mentioned in an advertis.e.m.e.nt which appeared in the newspapers dated Swindon, April 27th, 1844. It gave notice "That a pair of bright bay horses, about sixteen hands high, with black switch tails and manes,"