Cabs in Solyma may fly;
'Tis a not unlikely tale:
And from Dan the tourist hie
Unto Beersheba by "rail."
But the miseries and discomforts of railway travelling are dwelt on far more frequently than its prospective delights. The first-class alone was endurable, and that was grossly overcharged: the rest had to put up with overcrowding, discomfort, draughts, hard seats, smoke, dust and dirt. Third-class passengers were negligible and contemptible folk; neither punctuality nor civility was to be expected.
In 1845 the railway mania becomes acute—a "universal epidemic." George Hudson, the Railway King, looms large in the public eye; and Punch expresses his dissatisfaction with M.P.s for dabbling in speculation which they have themselves the opportunity of unduly favouring. Burlesques of various railway projects—centrifugal and atmospheric—abound. Punch ridicules the idea of a railway in the Isle of Wight as unnecessary and calculated to spoil the "Garden of England." The menace to the rural and pastoral amenities of the countryside moves him to eloquent protest. The sufferings of M.P.s before Railway Committees are set forth in the parody of Tennyson's "Mariana in the Moated Grange"; the golden harvest reaped by expert engineering witnesses is resentfully acknowledged; "Jeames" has not escaped the infection and appears frequently as speculator, "stag," and dupe. The Battle of the Gauges had been joined, and Punch asserts that the largest entry in the "railway returns" was that recording the casualties. The Unicorn in the Royal Arms is explained as the "Stag" of railway speculation, and a design of a railway lunatic asylum is submitted as the most appropriate terminus for many of the new schemes. The protests of fox-hunters, noted by Punch, recall the verses of the Cheshire poet:—
Let the steam pot
Hiss till it's hot,
But give me the speed of the Tantivy Trot.