A TALK ABOUT RAILWAYS.
Robert shortly sailed; and his father pushed on alone, with that brave spirit which carried him through many a darker hour.
On the 27th of September the Stockton and Darlington Railway was finished and opened. A great many came to see the new mode of travelling, which had proved a fruitful subject of talk, far and near, for many months;—some to rejoice; some to see the bubble burst; some with wonder, not knowing what to think; some with determined hostility. The opposition was strong: old England against young England; the counter currents of old and new ideas.
The road ran from Stockton to Darlington, a distance of twelve miles, and thence to the Etherly collieries—in all, thirty-two miles.
Four steam-engines were employed, and two stationary engines to hoist the train over two hills on the route. The locomotives were of six-horse power, and went at the rate of five or six miles an hour. Slow as this was, it was regarded with wonder. A "travelling engine" seemed almost a miracle. One day a race came off between a locomotive and a coach running on the common highway; and it was regarded as a great triumph that the former reached Stockton first, leaving the coach one hundred yards behind.
The road was built for a freight road, to convey lime, coal, and bricks from the mines and kilns in the interior to the sea-board for shipment abroad. Carrying passengers was not thought of. Enterprise, however, in this direction took a new start. A company was soon formed to run two coaches on the rails between Darlington and Stockton by horse-power. Each coach accommodated six inside passengers, and from fifteen to twenty outside; was drawn by one horse; and went at the rate of nine miles an hour.
"We seated ourselves," said a traveller of those days, "on the top of the 'Defence' coach, and started from Stockton highly interested with the novelty of the scene and of this new and extraordinary conveyance. Nothing could be more surprising than the rapidity and smoothness of the motion." Yet the coach was without springs, and jerked and jolted over the joints of the rails with a noise like the clinking of a mill-hopper.
"Such is the first great attempt to establish the use of railways," writes a delighted editor, "for the general purposes of travelling; and such is its success, that the traffic is already great, and, considering that there was formerly no coach at all on either of the roads along which the railroad runs, quite wonderful. A trade and intercourse have arisen out of nothing, and nobody knows how."
Such was their small and imperfect beginning, we should say, now that railroads, improved and perfected, have fulfilled Stephenson's prediction uttered in the little inn, and have become the great highways of the civilized world.