Railway Adventures and Anecdotes Part 26

TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA.

Of course, travelling in Russia is no longer what it was. During the last quarter of a century a vast network of railways has been constructed and one can now travel in a comfortable first-cla.s.s carriage from Berlin to St. Petersburg or Moscow, and thence to Odessa, Sebastopol, the Lower Volga, or even the foot of the Caucasus; and, on the whole, it must be admitted that the railways are tolerably comfortable. The carriages are decidedly better than in England, and in winter they are kept warm by small iron stoves, such as we sometimes see in steamers, a.s.sisted by double windows and double doors-a very necessary precaution in a land where the thermometer often descends to 30 degrees below zero. The trains never attain, it is true, a high rate of speed-so at least English and Americans think-but then we must remember that Russians are rarely in a hurry, and like to have frequent opportunities of eating and drinking.

In Russia time is not money; if it were, nearly all the subjects of the Tsar would always have a large stock of ready money on hand, and would often have great difficulty in spending it. In reality, be it parenthetically remarked, a Russian with a superabundance of ready money is a phenomenon rarely met with in real life.

In conveying pa.s.sengers at the rate of from fifteen to thirty miles an hour, the railway companies do at least all that they promise, but in one very important respect they do not always strictly fulfil their engagements. The traveller takes a ticket for a certain town, and on arriving at what he imagines to be his destination, he may merely find a railway station surrounded by fields. On making inquiries he finds to his disappointment, that the station is by no means identical with the town bearing the same name, and that the railway has fallen several miles short of fulfilling the bargain, as he understood the terms of the contract. Indeed, it might almost be said as a general rule railways in Russia, like camel drivers in certain Eastern countries, studiously avoid the towns. This seems at first a strange fact. It is possible to conceive that the Bedouin is so enamoured of tent life and nomadic habits, that he shuns a town as he would a man-trap; but surely civil engineers and railway contractors have no such dread of brick and mortar.

The true reason, I suspect, is that land within or immediately without the munic.i.p.al barrier is relatively dear, and that the railways, being completely beyond the invigorating influence of healthy compet.i.tion, can afford to look upon the comfort and convenience of pa.s.sengers as a secondary consideration.

It is but fair to state that in one celebrated instance neither engineers nor railway contractors were to blame. From St. Petersburg to Moscow the locomotive runs for a distance of 400 miles, almost as "the crow" is supposed to fly, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. For fifteen weary hours the pa.s.senger in the express train looks out on forest and mora.s.s and rarely catches sight of human habitation. Only once he perceives in the distance what may be called a town; it is Tver which has been thus favoured, not because it is a place of importance, but simply because it happened to be near the straight line. And why was the railway constructed in this extraordinary fas.h.i.+on? For the best of all reasons-because the Tsar so ordered it. When the preliminary survey was being made, Nicholas learned that the officers intrusted with the task-and the Minister of Ways and Roads in the number-were being influenced more by personal than by technical considerations, and he determined to cut the Gordian knot in true Imperial style. When the Minister laid before him the map with the intention of explaining the proposed route, he took a ruler, drew a straight line from the one terminus to the other, and remarked in a tone that precluded all discussion, "You will construct the line so!" And the line was so constructed-remaining to all future ages, like St. Petersburg and the Pyramids, a magnificent monument of autocratic power.

Formerly this well-known incident was often cited in whispered philippics to ill.u.s.trate the evils of the autocratic form of government. Imperial whims, it was said, override grave economic considerations. In recent years, however, a change seems to have taken place in public opinion, and some people now venture to a.s.sert that this so-called Imperial whim was an act of far-seeing policy. As by far the greater part of the goods and pa.s.sengers are carried the whole length of the line, it is well that the line should be as short as possible, and that branch lines should be constructed to the towns lying to the right and left. Apart from political considerations, it must be admitted that a great deal may be said in support of this view.

In the development of the railway system there has been another disturbing cause, which is not likely to occur to the English mind. In England, individuals and companies habitually act according to their private interests, and the State interferes as little as possible; private initiative acts as it pleases, unless the authorities can prove that important bad consequences will necessarily result. In Russia, the _onus probandi_ lies on the other side; private initiative is allowed to do nothing until it gives guarantees against all possible bad consequences. When any great enterprise is projected, the first question is-"How will this new scheme affect the interests of the State?" Thus, when the course of a new railway has to be determined, the military authorities are always consulted, and their opinion has a great influence on the ultimate decision. The consequence of this is that the railway map of Russia presents to the eye of the tactician much that is quite unintelligible to the ordinary observer-a fact that will become apparent to the uninitiated as soon as a war breaks out in Eastern Europe. Russia is no longer what she was in the days of the Crimean war, when troops and stores had to be conveyed hundreds of miles by the most primitive means of transport. At that time she had only about 750 miles of railway; now she has more than 11,000 miles, and every year new lines are constructed.

_Russia_, by D. M. Wallace, M.A.

AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.

As giving an idea of the old way of signalling and precautions employed to ensure safety on the Hudson River Railroad nearly forty years ago, we append the following from the _Albany Journal_. It should be premised that this road extends from New York to East Albany, a distance of only 144 miles:-

"AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.-As you are whirled along over the Hudson River Railroad at the rate of 40 miles an hour, you catch a glimpse, every minute or two, of a man waving something like a white pocket handkerchief on the end of a stick, with a satisfactory sort of expression of countenance. If you take the trouble to count, you will find that it happens some two hundred times between East Albany and Thirty-first street. It looks like rather a useless ceremony, at first glance, but is a pretty important one, nevertheless.

"There are 225 of these 'flagmen' stationed at intervals along the whole length of the line. Just before a train is to pa.s.s, each one walks over his "beat," and looks to see that every track and tie, every tunnel, switch, rail, clamp, and rivet, is in good order and free from obstruction. If so, he takes his stand with a white flag and waves it to the approaching train as a signal to 'come on'-and come on it does, at full speed. If there is anything wrong, he waves a red flag, or at night a red lamp, and the engineer, on seeing it, promptly shuts off the steam, and sounds the whistle to 'put down the brakes.' Every inch of the road is carefully examined after the pa.s.sage of each train. Austrian espionage is hardly more strict."

SEIZURE OF A RAILWAY TRAIN FOR DEBT.

The financial difficulties under which some railway companies have recently laboured were brought to a crisis lately in the case of the Potteries, Shrewsbury, and North Wales Railway, a line running from Llanymynech to Shrewsbury, with a projected continuation to the Potteries. A debenture holder having obtained a judgment against the company, a writ was forthwith issued, and a few days back the sheriff's officers unexpectedly presented themselves at the company's princ.i.p.al station in Shrewsbury, and formally entered upon possession. The down train immediately after entered the station, and the bailiffs, without having given any previous intimation to the manager, whose office adjoins the station, seized the engines and carriages, and refused to permit the outgoing train to start, although many pa.s.sengers had taken tickets.

Ultimately the manager obtained the requisite permission, and it was arranged that the train should make the journey, one of the bailiffs meanwhile remaining in charge. The acting-sheriff refused a similar concession with regard to the further running of the trains, and it being fair day at Shrewsbury, and a large number of persons from various stations along the line having taken return tickets, much inconvenience to the public was likely to ensue. The North Wales section of this line was completed in August last at a cost of a little over 1,100,000, and was opened for pa.s.senger and goods traffic on the 13th of that month. As has already been stated, the ordinary traffic of the line was, after the enforcement of the writ, permitted to be continued, with the proviso that a bailiff should accompany each train. This condition was naturally very galling to the officials of the railway company, but they nevertheless treated the representative of the civil law with a marked politeness. On the night of his first becoming a constant pa.s.senger by the line he rode in a first-cla.s.s carriage to Llanymynech, and on the return journey the attentive guard conducted him to a similar compartment which was devoted to his sole occupation. On arriving at Kennerly the bailiff became conscious of the progress of an elaborate process of shunting, followed by an entire stoppage of the train. After sitting patiently for some minutes it occurred to him to put his head out of the window and inquire the reason for the delay, and in carrying out the idea he discovered that the train of which his carriage had lately formed a part was vanis.h.i.+ng from sight round a distant curve in the line. He lost no time in getting out and making his way into the station, which he found locked up, according to custom, after the pa.s.sage through of the last down train.

Kennerly is a small roadside station about 12 miles from Shrewsbury, and offers no accommodation for chance guests; and, had it been otherwise, it was of course the first duty of the bailiff to look after the train, of which he at that moment was supposed to be in "possession." There being no alternative, he started on foot for Shrewsbury, where he arrived shortly after midnight, having accomplished a perilous pa.s.sage along the line. It appeared, on inquiry, that in the course of the shunting the coupling-chain which connected the tail coach with the body of the train had by some means become unlinked; hence the accident. The bailiff accepted the explanation, but on subsequent journeys he carefully avoided the tail-coach.

_Railway News_, 1866.

A KANGAROO ATTACKING A TRAIN.

The latest marsupial freak is thus given by a thoroughly reliable correspondent of the _Courier_ (an Australian paper):-A rather exciting race took place between the train and a large kangaroo on Wednesday night last. When about nine miles from Dalby a special surprised the kangaroo, who was inside the fences. The animal ran for some distance in front, but getting exhausted he suddenly turned to face his opponent, and jumped savagely at the stoker on the engine, who, not being able to run, gamely faced the "old man" with a handful of coal. The kangaroo, however, only reached the side of the tender, when, the step striking him, he was "knocked clean out of it" in the one round. No harm happened beyond a bit of a scare to the stoker, as the kangaroo picked himself up quickly and cleared the fence.

SHE TAKES FITS.

Some time ago, an old lady and gentleman were coming from Devenport when the train was crowded. A young man got up and gave the old lady a seat, while his companion, another young gent, remained stedfast and let the old gent stand. This did not suit the old gentleman, so he concluded to get a seat in some way, and quickly turning to the young man on the seat beside his wife, he said:-"Will you be so kind as to watch that woman while I get a seat in another carriage? She takes fits!" This startled the young gent. He could not bear the idea of taking charge of a fitty woman, so the old gentleman got a seat, and his wife was never known to take a fit afterwards.

SNAGS' CORNERS.

The officials of a Michigan railroad that was being extended were waited upon the other day by a person from the pine woods and sand hills who announced himself as Mr. Snags, and who wanted to know if it could be possible that the proposed line was not to come any nearer than three miles to the hamlet named in his honour.

"Is Snags' Corners a place of much importance?" asked the President.

"Is it? Well, I should say it was! We made over a ton of maple sugar there last spring!"

"Does business flourish there?"

"Flouris.h.!.+ Why, business is on the gallop there every minute in the whole twenty-four hours. We had three false alarms of fire there in one week. How's that for a town which is to be left three miles off your railroad?"

Being asked to give the names of the business houses, he scratched his head for awhile, and then replied-

"Well, there's me, to start on. I run a big store, own eight yokes of oxen, and shall soon have a dam and a sawmill. Then there's a blacksmith shop, a post-office, a doctor, and last week over a dozen patent-right men pa.s.sed through there. In one brief year we've increased from a squatter and two dogs to our present standing, and we'll have a lawyer there before long."

"I'm afraid we won't be able to come any nearer the Corners than the present survey," finally remarked the President.

"You won't! It can't be possible that you mean to skip a growing place like Snags' Corners!"

"I think we'll have to."

"Wouldn't come if I'd clear you out a place in the store for a ticket office?"

"I don't see how we could."

"May be I'd subscribe 25 dols.," continued the delegate.

"No, we cannot change."

"Can't do it nohow?"

"No."

"Very well," said Mr. Snags as he put on his hat. "If this 'ere railroad thinks it can stunt or cripple Snags' Corners by leaving it out in the cold it has made a big mistake. Before I leave town to-day I'm going to buy a windmill and a melodeon, and your old locomotives may toot and be hanged, sir-toot and be hanged!"