IMPROVEMENT IN THIRD-CLASS TRAVELLING.
The Rev. F. S. Williams, in an article in the Contemporary Review, entitled “Railway Revolutions,” remarks:—“We need not go back so far as the time when third-class passengers had to stand in a sort of cattle-pen placed on wheels; it is only a few years since the Parliamentary trains were run in bare fulfilment of the obligations of Parliament, and when a journey by one of them could never be looked upon as anything better than a necessary evil. To start in the
darkness of a winter’s morning to catch the only third-class train that ran; to sit, after a slender breakfast, in a vehicle the windows of which were compounded of the largest amount of wood and the smallest amount of glass, and which were carefully adjusted to exactly those positions in which the fewest travellers could see out of them; to stop at every roadside station, however insignificant; and to accomplish a journey of 200 miles in about ten hours—such were the ordinary conditions which Parliament in its bounty provided for the people. Occasionally, moreover, the monotony of progress was interrupted by the shunting of the train into a siding, where it might wait for more respectable passenger trains and fast goods to pass.”
“We remember,” says a writer, “once standing on the platform at Darlington when the Parliamentary train arrived. It was detained for a considerable time to allow a more favoured train to pass, and, on the remonstrance of several of the passengers at the unexpected detention, they were coolly informed, “Ye mun bide till yer betters gaw past, ye are only the nigger train.”
“If there is one part of my public life,” recently said Mr. Allport (Midland Railway) to the writer, “in which I look back with more satisfaction than anything else, it is with reference to the boon we conferred on third-class passengers. When the rich man travels, or if he lies in bed all day, his capital remains undiminished, and perhaps his income flows in all the same. But when a poor man travels he has not only to pay his fare, but to sink his capital, for his time is his capital; and if he now consumes only five hours instead of ten in making a journey, he has saved five hours of time for useful labour—useful to himself, to his family, and to society. And I think with even more pleasure of the comfort in travelling we have been able to confer upon women and children. But it took,” he added, “five-and-twenty years’ work to get it done.”