Railway Adventures and Anecdotes Part 6

"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 ca.n.a.l 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sengers, and it was no uncommon thing to hear pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sed 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 pet.i.tioned 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 pa.s.sage 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 mola.s.ses. 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 pa.s.senger. 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 fas.h.i.+on 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 pa.s.sed 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 mult.i.tudinous 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.