Already the change on the great lines has begun, and it is a significant fact that the North Eastern have decided to adopt electricity on some thirty-seven miles of their system in the neighbourhood of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and a modified form of it in the shape of auto-cars with petrol engines and dynamos generating the current, on the short line between Hartlepool and West Hartlepool.
Of electric lines in progress or projected, we have the Manchester and Liverpool, the London and Brighton, the Edinburgh and Glasgow, and others.
In London all the big termini will be linked together, and connected with the metropolitan Tube systems, whatever form the latter may ultimately assume. This may have the effect of increasing the crowding and bustling of our big stations, but, on the other hand, a vast number of wealthy people will use motor-cars from “house-to-house,” dispensing altogether with the railway.
Trains, more speedily and more economically run, will start more frequently. Goods traffic will be on entirely separate lines, and passenger trains will be able to follow one another in rapid and safe succession.
Exteriorily all the termini will look as they do now, minus the presence of horsed four-wheelers and hansoms. But Victoria will be greatly enlarged along Buckingham Palace Road; while Euston, nearly doubled in size, will have its frontage brought forward to Euston Square. Within, there will be less confusion, as either the American check system of booking luggage will be adopted, or that of collecting it beforehand by the railway company’s swift motor-vans, and there will be less steam. On the whole, however, the old stations will probably be unchanged—Paddington, with its familiar transept roof, impressive as in 1854, when the late Queen, travelling from Windsor, paid it her first visit; the Midland, remarkable for its noble span roof, soaring one hundred feet above the level of its eleven lines of rail and its four platforms; the Great Eastern, the largest terminus in the kingdom, under five great spans—four parallel and one transverse—of glazed roofing, with its eighteen arrival and departure platforms; and Waterloo, once a mere shed propped up by arches, but now second in size only to Liverpool Street, a maze to the uninitiated.
The large provincial stations will most likely remain much as they are at present—Bristol, Exeter, York, Glasgow, Liverpool, all splendid specimens of important termini and junctions; Swindon, Crewe, Manchester, and Warrington, greatly improved, if not entirely rebuilt.
Power machinery will be housed in existing railway buildings when practicable, and intermediate sub-stations will be marked features along the railway routes. Pumping-houses, water-tanks, coalyards, stages, and sidings will have disappeared.
Sleepy wayside stations, with their pleasant gardens and rural surroundings, will probably remain untouched by the new order of things, save that the rapid delivery of farm produce by horseless vehicles or by light railways, acting as feeders, will wake them up.
THE IMPROVEMENT OF STREET TRAFFIC
The general use of horseless vehicles will do more—at any rate in London—towards the sanitation of great cities than all the enactments of county or borough councils. Medical experts are agreed that the condition of the roads, however well kept, in dry weather particularly, is highly conducive to the spread of all kinds of throat diseases, not to mention influenza; while if the roads are neglected, the peril is increased and every sense is offended. Horses, as beasts of burden, should have no place in crowded thoroughfares, and their presence in numbers produces on wood-paving a pernicious and offensive ammoniacal result which anyone can test in, say, Broad Street, after the omnibuses have ceased running for the day, or, rather, for the night. All over London, and even in the suburbs, the streets are Augean stables, which no effort of the Hercules of Spring Gardens or the Guildhall can effectually cleanse. It is estimated that at the present time there are over 16,000 licensed horse carriages in London, besides tradesmens vans and other vehicles, and that 200,000 horses are stabled every night, necessitating the removal of thousands of tons of manure and refuse daily.