FIG. 7. INTERIOR OF A BEHR MONO-RAILWAY CAR
By permission of Mr. F. B. Behr, Ass. Inst. C. E.
As regards the cost of this novel undertaking, our Liverpool friend had beforehand ascertained that the capital had been fixed at £2,800,000, and that an average of eight persons per train would more than cover the expense of the enterprise.
Swiftly leaving Warrington in the distance, the express shoots onwards—past Eccles, Pendleton, and Salford—and reaches the terminus at the west side of Deansgate, in the busiest part of Cottonopolis, where, again using the lift, our honest broker speeds to the Exchange in another eight minutes, and in forty-five minutes after leaving Liverpool is in deep business conference with his principal at Manchester.
Contrast this with the existing facilities of the old system for rapid transit between the two places; and those who know their Manchester and Liverpool well, will at once be able to decide whether or not the electric express better meets the requirements of those to whom every minute is of consequence.
The London and North Western Railway (which has a perfectly straight bit of track to Manchester, unequalled, except on the Great Eastern between Littleford and Lynn—21 miles—and on the South Eastern between Nutfield and Ashford—32 miles) runs expresses without stopping from Lime Street and Edge Hill to the Exchange Station, Manchester, doing the journey in forty minutes.
The Great Central Railway, by an indirect route, viâ Garston and Widnes, runs expresses from their Liverpool station (St. James’s) direct to the Manchester Central, in from forty to forty-five minutes; but on neither line is there such a thing as a ten minutes’ service, the intervals between the direct expresses ranging from forty-five minutes to so much as four hours.
Plans, it is said, have been submitted to the Board of Trade for a mono-railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The proposed construction is similar to that of the Behr mono-railway between Liverpool and Manchester. It is quite unlike the canny Scot to rush into sensational experiments for a speed of 117 miles per hour, especially as a few years’ waiting for the completion of the Liverpool line would prove or disprove the possibility of the scheme.
CHAPTER V
REJUVENATING THE METROPOLITAN INNER CIRCLE
“So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”—Ps. ciii. 5.