Mr. Justice Ridley said he would give judgment in the sense in which the word was used in the Lands Clauses Act.
Judgment was given accordingly.
At a meeting of the Auctioneers’ Institute held last year, Mr. G. M. Freeman, K.C., speaking on this subject, pertinently remarked that various questions were likely to arise between the promotors of the new order of underground railway and the owners of adjacent property, and he gave it as his opinion that the assertion that no possible damage would be caused, had not been wholly verified, and that the rights of compensation to persons equally injured ought not to depend upon whether a piece of the subsoil under the street was or was not appropriated. In his judgment, all owners who could prove damage done by the construction or working of an underground railway, should have the same title to compensation.
VIBRATION
The outcome of the Board of Trade inquiry last year into the vexed question of tube vibration was interesting. It showed that alleged annoyance from vibration has not been altogether imaginary, and some novel facts were produced. Fourteen meetings were held, and evidence was given by some of the residents along the line of the Central Railway route, their habitat ranging from Bucklersbury in the City to Kensington Palace Gardens in the west. A large number of the witnesses represented householders having “frontages,” and among others, the Holborn Borough Council. They all deposed as to annoyance caused by the vibration, and were of opinion that the shaking was most perceptible when the trains first began running in the morning; between five and eight p.m.; and shortly after midnight, just before the trains ceased running.
Had any of these gentlemen resided on the north side of Victoria Street, near its western end, they would hardly have complained about mere vibration. In that delectable locality the backs of the houses overlook the Metropolitan District Railway, and if the dining-room happen to be in the rear, as in many of the flats it is, every wine-glass and tumbler on the table quivers in a fearful manner, all the ornaments tremble, and the whole apartment is agitated as each train thunders by.
But even this is nothing, contrasted with the daily experience of dwellers in suburban side streets, where passing of steam-rollers, pantechnicon-vans, and other elephantine vehicles, not only shakes the tenements to their basements, but forces out the mortar that is supposed to bind together the brickwork, dislocates the window-frames, turns askew the pictures on the walls, and would eventually, if not seen to, reduce the “eligible villas” to ruin.
However, the Board of Trade Committee, as in duty bound, personally investigated the Tube complaints and satisfied themselves that vibrations, sufficient to cause vexation to the inmates, were really felt in some of the houses near the Central, and the result of the inquiry was as follows:—
That it was a matter of chance whether any given train caused a slight, or a severe, vibration; also that trains which produced much tremblór de tiérra in one house, as likely as not caused but little in another, and that apparently different apartments in the same residence were not similarly affected by one and the same train. It was demonstrated that the locomotives, and not the cars, were responsible for the greater part of the disturbances, the reason assigned being that too great a springless load was carried on each axle of the engines, a method of construction adopted to obviate the necessity for gearing.
Acting upon the Committee’s representation, the Central Railway Company ordered two new types of locomotives, in one of which the “unspring-borne” load was much reduced by gearing. The other was not distinct from but attached to the train, the motors being carried at one end of two or more coaches—the motor-car system of electric traction in fact. The difference in weight was remarkable; the original gearless engines being 44 tons, the new geared pattern 33 tons, while the motor-cars only came up to 20 tons.