In the documents laid before the Lords’ Committees on the London and Birmingham Railway, by the Treasurer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, on the 28th June, 1832, it is stated that the “number of trips of thirty miles” performed (or travelled) by the locomotive engines between Liverpool and Manchester, in the half year ending the 31st December, 1831, was “5392”: which, as the same document shews that the whole amount of profitable weight conveyed over those 30 miles during that half year was less than 91,000 tons, gives an average of only 17 tons as the profitable weight carried each “trip.” The weight of the engines by which these loads were drawn it may be difficult to fix upon: though, as the locomotives now used on that railway, are, some of them, above six tons, others above eight, and others above ten tons in weight, it may, perhaps, be fair to take eight tons as the average weight. The weight of the tenders with fuel and water, appears to be rather a delicate subject. The weight of the tender of the Rocket, with its load of fuel and water, at the grand locomotive engine competition in October, 1829, was three-fourths that of the engine itself. There have since been many accounts of immense loads drawn on the railway, of which those by Dr. Lardner, in his “Lectures on the Steam Engine,” are considered as “by authority.” But though we find the weights of the engines, as well as of the loads, and various other particulars (even to the state of the wind) given, yet does it happen that the weights of the tenders, with their supplies of fuel and water, are “unascertained” and omitted, throughout. Under these circumstances, I can do no other than act on the best information I have obtained, and suppose the weight of the engines and tenders with their cargoes of fuel and water to be twelve tons for each “trip.”
Assuming it to be so, the weight of the moving power will be above two-thirds of the profitable weight conveyed; while, supposing the same proportion to obtain as to the 4000 tons just mentioned, the amount of the effect of the friction of the power by which they were conveyed at the rate of 20 miles an hour, would be twice and a half as much as the friction of the air would be in a tunnel when twice the tonnage was conveyed from Liverpool to Manchester in it, at the same rate; which, for equal quantities, is five times the friction while, as relates to the fuel consumed, it would be very many more times than this, dearer.
There is one class, who, above all others, might derive benefit from properly considering what I thus submit, relative to the friction of the air.
When what was termed “the railway mania” was at its height, it was calculated that no body of men would be so much benefited by it as the iron trade; in proof of which the following statement was circulated:—
“We are authorised to state, that the rail-roads already projected, will require considerably more than two millions of tons of iron. Now, as iron has recently advanced from 7l. to 14l. per ton, it appears that the iron masters (by the way, the originators of, or principals in, many of these schemes) will receive from the subscribers twenty-eight millions sterling.”
But, instead of the iron trade having been benefited by the principal portion of what is expended on railways being for their article, scarcely more than one-twentieth-part has been expended for iron; the remainder having gone for labour in “cutting and embanking,” &c. &c.
In the account in Mr. Treasurer Booth’s book, of the expenses of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the line which, in the statement, runs “Iron rail account,” gives only 66,830l. as paid to the iron masters: the other hundreds, which make up the aggregate of 67,912l. there mentioned, being for “oak plugs, freights, und cartages;” which is little more than one-twentieth part of the whole that has been expended on this railway.
The rails of the London and Birmingham Railway are to be half as heavy again as those of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Yet does the expense of the “rails, chairs, keys, and pins,” in the estimate of that railway laid before Parliament, amount to only 212,940: one twelfth, that is, of the two millions and a half, which form the aggregate of the estimate there given in.
One of the inducements which railway advocates have held out to the landed proprietors of the Houses of Parliament, in order to lead them to support railway bills, has been the degree to which poor rates, &c. would be diminished, in consequence of the labourers there would be employed in digging out the earth for the cuttings and embankments, in the different parishes through which the lines of railway would run; and in the papers of the end of June and the beginning of July (1832) is a very long advertisement of the London and Birmingham Railway Company, one part of which states that “The landed interest will be benefitted by the expenditure of upwards of two millions of the capital of the Company in labour.”
According to their own shewing, therefore, the expenditure for the benefit of the landed interest will be “upwards of two millions,” while the cost of the iron rails, &c. will be only upwards of two hundred thousand pounds. And as both this, and other advertisements, and the evidence before Parliament, announce the extension of the railway from Birmingham to Liverpool, when this first half of it from London to Birmingham is done—which extension will be about the same length as this first half—the statements of the railway advocates themselves, give the iron masters to see, that the result of the time, trouble, and expense, which they (the iron masters) have devoted to bring forward railways, is, to put more than a shilling into the pockets of the agricultural interest (by the degree to which they will save parish rates, &c. &c.) for every farthing they put into the pockets of the iron masters themselves; all that is saved to country parishes, being actual gain to the agricultural interest; while the 12th or 16th paid to the iron trade is for value in iron; out of which the usual trade profit is all that the iron masters will gain. In other words, about four millions sterling will be paid for the parishes between London and Liverpool, in the shape of wages for labourers, while only about four hundred thousand pounds will be paid to the iron masters for the iron rails, &c.; out of which the iron masters will have to pay the wages of their men who smelt &c. the iron, and the royalties (or rent) for the ore, coal, &c. &c. used in making it.