Opening by the Marquis of Salisbury.
Early in 1893 the railway was completed and ready for opening, and the Marquis of Salisbury, then Prime Minister, kindly undertook to perform the opening ceremony. The opening was fixed for the 3rd February. Lord Salisbury arrived from London the night before, and came direct to my house at Blundellsands. We had a large house party to meet him, including the first Earl of Lathom, Sir William Cooper, Mr. Walter Long, Lord Kelvin, and a number of electrical experts.
The National Telephone Company kindly connected the dinner table with the various theatres in Manchester and in London, and at ten o'clock each guest took a little receiver from under the cloth and enjoyed listening to the various performances at the theatres, where the pantomimes were still running. The Telephone Company had laid special direct wires from my house to the trunk wires from Liverpool, so that the telephonic communications were very clear and distinct.
On a side table was placed a special instrument for Lord Salisbury, which was connected directly with the House of Commons. He went to it, and, taking up the receiver, spoke to Mr. Sydney Herbert, who gave him a report on the progress of the debate on the address. Lord Salisbury was both surprised and delighted, and said: "I can hear someone talking about Uganda." It was the first time the House of Commons was ever connected by telephone.
The next morning we drove down to the generating station of the Overhead, escorted by mounted police. Lord Salisbury started the engines and then rode in a special train from one end of the line to the other, and afterwards we adjourned to the Town Hall for luncheon. He was apparently delighted with the function, and said it was a great pleasure to him to meet scientific men. He was very well up in the details of electric traction, and minutely examined every part of our machinery. A few days after he wrote expressing the pleasure the visit had given him. He said:—"I thank you heartily for a very interesting evening and day at the end of last week. I hate political functions, but this was a very different occasion; it was one of the most interesting twenty-four hours I have passed." Thus was opened the first full-gauged electric railway in the world, and I am glad to think that electrically it has been an unqualified success and has proved a great benefit to the trade of the port. The railway carried in 1908, 9,500,000 passengers.
It also promised to be a good property for our shareholders. Our dividend gradually increased; we had paid 5 per cent. and were well within sight of 6 per cent., when the whole circumstances of our dock traffic were changed by the Corporation introducing electricity into the working of their tramway system and extending their lines so as to parallel the Overhead Railway. We also suffered from the introduction of the telephone and from the substitution of steamers for sailing ships, and of large steamers for small steamers, all tending to reduce the number of men employed about the docks.
Still I hope and believe there is a future for our little railway, but it is heartbreaking work to run a railway which does not earn a dividend.
We have had many important people to visit our railway, affording as it does an excellent view of the docks, and we have always arranged a special train for their conveyance. Among others whom I have had the honour of escorting over the line are the present King and Queen when Prince and Princess of Wales. Our most amusing and difficult visitor was the Shahzada of Afghanistan. He had no idea of the value of time, and when we arrived at the end of our journey he called for his doctor and then for his apothecary, and it was useless my trying to impress upon his A.D.C. that the whole traffic of the line was being stopped while his Highness took a pill.