The Chief Engineer.
As the selection of an engineer-in-chief, competent to determine the best line for a projected railway to take, the mode in which it should be constructed, and, lastly, to execute his own project—deviating from it with consummate judgment according to the difficulties, physical, moral, and political, which, sometimes separately and sometimes collectively, suddenly rise up to oppose him—is a point not only of vital importance to the success of the undertaking, but in the undertaking is the first important point to be decided, it would, we were aware, have apparently been the most regular to have commenced the present chapter with this subject. We conceived, however, that instead of there detailing the qualifications necessary for the duties required, it would save us very many words, and our readers as much time, if we were to defer the consideration of that subject until a brief outline of those duties should, without comment, practically explain the qualifications required.
If the United Kingdom had only projected the construction of one or two great arterial railways, we might naturally have expected that the few competent engineers necessary would readily have been obtained; but when we consider the number of railways that were simultaneously created, the surveys, plans, sections, and other preparations that were necessary, the magnitude of the works of various descriptions that were to be constructed in each, it must evidently to many be a subject of astonishment that there should have been found on the surface of our country not only the amount of engineering talent necessary for the execution of such vast works, but an amount which may truly be said to have exceeded the demand.
The curious historical fact, however, is, that the amount of engineering talent thus suddenly required existed not on the surface of our country, but, on the contrary, many hundred fathoms beneath it. The brilliant talents that were required were “black diamonds,” without metaphor embedded in the bowels of the earth. Science called her spirits from the vasty deep, and in obedience to her commands there arose out of the shafts of our coaleries, and from beneath the bottom of the Thames—
Old George Stephenson, who had served his articles of apprenticeship in a coal-mine, for many years working at the engines both above ground and below;
Isambard Brunel, whose principal experience had been acquired in the construction of the Thames Tunnel;
Joseph Locke, a colliery-viewer, who had served his apprenticeship below ground;
Robert Stephenson, brought up as a coal-miner, served his apprenticeship at Killingworth colliery;
Frank Forster had worked for seven years as an apprentice in a coal-mine;
Nicholas Wood, ditto;
Charles Lean, ditto;
And a crowd of similar genii, all slaves of the same lamp, or “Old Davy,” as they term it.
To such men the difficulties attendant upon the construction of a railway were trifling as compared with those against which all their lives they had been contending.
For instance, he who along dark, intricate, subterranean passages, or “heavings,” as they are termed, often only three feet and a half high, and occasionally only two feet high, creeping and crawling through foul air, could with great speed, not only with unerring certainty find his way, but in such a secluded study could plan a variety of new cuttings, each forming part and parcel of a reticulated system of excavation which an unpractised mind would find it utterly impossible to comprehend, would, it may easily be conceived, experience but little difficulty, when walking erect in sunshine and in balmy air, to carry in his mind from, say Harrow to Watford, Watford to Tring, Tring to Wolverton, and Wolverton to Birmingham, those great leading features of the surrounding country which would enable him to exercise for the laying out of a railway the judgment and decision required.
Again, what, it may justly be asked, are embankments, deep cuttings, and occasionally here and there a straight tunnel thirty feet broad, twenty-seven feet high, usually forming by drainage its own adit, in comparison with the overwhelming and intricate difficulties attendant upon—
1st. The excavation of coal from strata of various characters, at various depths, each passage or “air-heaving” requiring perhaps a different system of support.
2nd. Encountering at various depths quicksands.
3rd. The great as well as minute arrangements necessary for wheeling carriages and raising the coals.
4th. The organization and management of a subterranean army of men and horses.
5th, and lastly. Lifting by steam-power from various depths, by night and by day, streams, floods, and occasionally almost rivers of water?
It has been beneath the surface of our country that these and many other difficulties of vast magnitude—unknown to and unthought of by the multitude—have for many generations been successfully encountered by science, capital, and by almost superhuman physical exertion; and it was accordingly, as we have stated, from beneath the surface of Great Britain that an organised corps of civil engineers, who, like those we have named, had regularly served as apprentices, arose, in the emergency of a moment, to assist their eminent brother engineers above ground, in constructing for the country the innumerable railways so suddenly required.