Now, owing to the manner in which the carriages that move in the tunnel can be constructed, and owing to there being no locomotive engines, and tenders carrying fuel and water, required to move them, this proportion of dead and unprofitable weight will be so much reduced, as for it not to amount to more than one-fifth of the similar weight on the railway.
The whole expense of conveyance on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway during the six months ending the 31st December, 1831, was, it appears by the statement laid before the Lords’ Committees on the London and Birmingham Railway bill, fourpence farthing per ton, per mile; while the whole charge for it was eightpence per ton, per mile. Coal being nearly ten times dearer here than it is there, there is no reason to suppose that what it might cost you for conveyance along a line of railway would be less than this; while it may be presumed that it would be so much more as, perhaps, and of itself, totally to counteract the advantages afforded by the shortness of your line, compared with the present route.
In addition to the advantages which I have stated a tunnel would hold out to the Company I have the honour to address, there would be one of a peculiar nature. It is generally understood, and appears from evidence to be the fact, that a considerable portion of the income of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company has arisen from persons who have visited and paid for riding over their line, solely from curiosity; while it is well known that the income derived from visitors to their tunnel, by the Thames Tunnel Company, is considerable; the average annual amount having been 1200l. per annum.
The curiosity excited by the public relative to the tunnel I constructed at Brighton, surprised me. Thousands manifested a desire to see it: hundreds applied to be permitted to do so; and when they found I would not let them, offered guinea after guinea to be allowed to gratify their curiosity, under the idea that mercenary motives gave rise to the orders I left that no one should be admitted; while many of the very highest rank (including every class of our nobility) made personal application to me to oblige them with a sight of it.
As I could convey persons in your tunnel (supposing you were to have one) most safely at the rate of a mile in a minute, and as a velocity of that kind being attained near the metropolis, by a method so novel as this, would induce very many thousands to visit and ride through it for curiosity, it may be expected that a considerable part of what it would cost to lay a tunnel down would be returned from this source; enough (in the end) I am bold to say, to pay for the cost of the iron whereof it would be constructed.
The Thames Tunnel, supposing it never should be completed, will for years bring in the 1200l. per annum, which is the average of what has been received from people visiting it; and I am fully satisfied that proper measures would, in the end, bring in, from this source alone, perhaps, more than would cover the coat of the iron, of which the tunnel I propose to you would be constructed.
In the prospectus of the Greenwich Railway Company is the following paragraph:—“Moreover, when it is considered that the population of London, Westminster, and the Borough, is about one million and a half, and that the population of the surrounding towns and villages, within a circuit of from forty to fifty miles round the Capital, amounts to nearly double that number; and that, in short, the number of persons visiting London during each year, make up a total exceeding five millions of persons, it is not unreasonable to expect that, through mere curiosity alone, two millions of persons will gratify the same, when it can be accomplished at a low price, suppose only one shilling, to go and return,—yet if so, that item alone would produce 100,000l.”
Now, as supposing that the curiosity excited by my novel proposition, will produce only one quarter of what the Greenwich Railroad Company calculate may come into their pockets from the same source, will, I think, be allowing sufficient pre-eminence to the superior curiosity which an old method of conveyance must excite, I trust that my idea, that the cost of the iron composing the tunnel may be repaid from this source, will be considered a not immoderate one.
In the Thames Tunnel there is nothing but the bare arch to see; while in this there would be the tunnel itself, the largest air-pumps, &c. &c. in the world, and a ride to and fro at the rate of sixty, or more, miles an hour.
Nor would the objection which, it may be imagined, must arise from the want of daylight in the tunnel, prove an objection in point of fact. So trifling is the degree of exhaustion and pressure required to move a load of 100 tons, that, but that the advantages which would arise, as relates to cheapness of site, and evasion of opposition on the part of the land-owners and occupiers, from carrying the tunnel under ground, prevent it, I could window light the tunnel throughout its whole, length: that which I constructed at Brighton having light admitted into it through windows of common thin glass; strong plate-glass not being required. Indeed, so far as relates to possibility, the upper half of the tunnel might be one continued window (like the top of a green-house), throughout its whole length. But as, even if this was done, artificial light must be had for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four in the winter; as the tunnel might be gas-lighted throughout its whole length; or as, instead of thus wasting light unnecessarily, each carriage might carry lights before and behind, the objection that the tunnel being underground would render it dark as midnight, is no more a serious objection than it would be, were the Thames tunnel finished, that it would be better to cross the river by London Bridge, than through that tunnel, because on the bridge you would have natural, while in the tunnel you must have artificial light.