Railway Adventures and Anecdotes Part 19

To the above letter the following reply was sent to the _Times_.

"Alleged Accident on the Great Northern.

"To the Editor of the _Times_.

"Sir,-The Directors of the Great Northern railway will feel much obliged by the insertion of the following statement in the _Times_ to-morrow relative to a letter which appeared therein to-day, signed 'Thomas Waddington, M.D., of Wakefield,' and headed, 'Accident on the Great Northern railway.'

There was no accident whatever yesterday on the Great Northern railway.

The trains all reached King's Cross with punctuality, the most irregular in the whole day being only five minutes late. No such person as Thomas Waddington is known at Morley's Hotel, whence the letter in question is dated.

I am, Sir, yours faithfully, Seymour Clark, General Manager, King's Cross, March 27.

In the _Times_ on the day following appeared a letter from the real Dr.

Waddington, of Wakefield, (Edward not "Thomas") confirmatory of the impudence of the hoax.

"The alleged Accident on the Great Northern railway.

"To the Editor of the _Times_.

"Sir,-My attention has been called to a letter in the _Times_ of yesterday (signed 'Thomas Waddington, M.D., of Wakefield') the signature of which is as gross and impudent a fabrication as the circ.u.mstances which the writer professes to detail. I need only say there is no 'M.D.'

here named Waddington but myself, and that I was not on the Great Northern or any other Railway on the 26th inst, when the accident is alleged to have occured.

Having obtained possession of the original letter, I have handed it to my solicitors, in the hope that they may be enabled to discover and bring to justice the perpetrator of this very stupid hoax.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Edward Waddington, M.D.

Wakefield, March 28.

A'PENNY A MILE.

Two costers were looking at a railway time-table.

"Say, Jem," said one of them, "vot's P.M. mean?"

"Vy, penny a mile, to be sure."

"Vell, vot's A.M.?"

"A'penny a mile, to be sure."

SINGULAR FREAK.

In October, 1857, Mr. Tindal Atkinson applied to Mr. Hammill, at Wors.h.i.+p Street Police Court, to obtain a summons under the following strange circ.u.mstances:-

"Mr. Atkinson stated that he was instructed on behalf of the Directors of the Eastern Counties Railway Company to apply to the magistrate under the terms of their Act of Incorporation, for a summons against Mr. Henry Hunt, of Waltham-Cross, Ess.e.x, for having unlawfully used and worked a certain locomotive upon a portion of their line, without having previously obtained the permission or approval of the engineers or agents of the company, whereby he had rendered himself liable to a penalty of 20. He should confine himself to that by stating that in the dark, on the night of Thursday, the 1st instant, a locomotive engine belonging to Mr. Hunt was suddenly discovered by some of the company's servants to be running along the rails in close proximity to one of the regular pa.s.senger trains on the North Woolwich line. So great was the danger of a collision, that they were obliged to instantly stop the train till the stranger engine could get out of the way, to the great terror of the pa.s.sengers by the train, and as he was instructed it was almost the result of a merciful interposition of Providence that a collision had not occurred between them, in which event it would probably have terminated fatally, to a greater or lesser extent. He now desired that summonses might be granted not only against the owner of the engine so used, but also against the driver and stoker of it, both of whom, it was obvious, must have been well aware of their committing an unlawful act, and of the perilous nature of the service in which they were engaged when they were running an engine at such a time and place.

"Mr. Hammill said it certainly was a most extraordinary proceeding for anyone to adopt, and after the learned gentleman's statement he had no hesitation whatever in granting summonses against the whole of the persons engaged in it."

A.B.C. AND D.E.F.

A gentleman travelling in a railway carriage was endeavouring, with considerable earnestness, to impress some argument upon a fellow-traveller who was seated opposite to him, and who appeared rather dull of apprehension. At length, being slightly irritated, he exclaimed in a louder tone, "Why, sir, it's as plain as A.B.C." "That may be,"

quietly replied the other, "but I am D.E.F."

NATIONAL CONTRAST.

The contrast which exists between the character of the French and English navvy may be briefly exemplified by the following trifling anecdote:-

"In excavating a portion of the first tunnel east of Rouen towards Paris, a French miner dressed in his blouse, and an English "navvy" in his white smock jacket, were suddenly buried alive together by the falling in of the earth behind them. Notwithstanding the violent commotion which the intelligence of the accident excited above ground, Mr. Meek, the English engineer who was constructing the work, after having quietly measured the distance from the shaft to the sunken ground, satisfied himself that if the men, at the moment of the accident, were at the head of "the drift"

at which they were working, they would be safe.

Accordingly, getting together as many French and English labourers as he could collect, he instantly commenced sinking a shaft, which was accomplished to the depth of 50 feet in the extraordinary short s.p.a.ce of eleven hours, and the men were thus brought up to the surface alive.

The Frenchman, on reaching the top, suddenly rus.h.i.+ng forward, hugged and saluted on both cheeks his friends and acquaintances, many of whom had a.s.sembled, and then, almost instantly overpowered by conflicting feelings-by the recollection of the endless time he had been imprisoned and by the joy of his release-he sat down on a log of timber, and, putting both his hands before his face, he began to cry aloud most bitterly.

The English "navvy" sat himself down on the very same piece of timber-took his pit-cap off his head-slowly wiped with it the perspiration from his hair and face-and then, looking for some seconds into the hole or shaft close beside him through which he had been lifted, as if he were calculating the number of cubic yards that had been excavated, he quite coolly, in broad Lancas.h.i.+re dialect, said to the crowd of French and English who were staring at him, as children and nursery-maids in our London Zoological Gardens stand gazing half-terrified at the white bear, "YAW'VE BEAN A DARMNATION SHORT TOIME ABAAOWT IT!"

Sir F. Head's _Stokers and Pokers_.

REMARKABLE ACCIDENT.

The most remarkable railway accident on record happened some years ago on the North-Western road between London and Liverpool. A gentleman and his wife were travelling in a compartment alone, when-the train going at the rate of forty miles an hour-an iron rail projecting from a car on a side-track cut into the carriage and took the head of the lady clear off, and rolled it into the husband's lap. He subsequently sued the company for damages, and created great surprise in court by giving his age at thirty-six years, although his hair was snow white. It had been turned from jet black by the horror of that event.

ENGINEERING LOAN, OR STAKING OUT A RAILWAY.

"Beau" Caldwell was a sporting genius of an extremely versatile character. Like all his fraternity, he was possessed of a pliancy of adaptation to circ.u.mstances that enabled him to succ.u.mb with true philosophy to misfortunes, and also to grace the more exalted sphere of prosperity with that natural ease attributed to gentlemen with bloated bank accounts.