I am not, at present, prepared to point out either the best route, or the best spot for the termination towards Hyde Park Corner; having investigated only so for as to satisfy myself that such a course is practicable.
You will, at first, be startled at, and disposed to object to this extension, because you will suppose that it involves the outlay which would be required for two additional miles of tunnel, without bringing in any more return than would be received from passengers to the Birmingham Railway. This conception, however, is an erroneous one.
Were a method of conveyance in operation, by which the inhabitants of the west end of Kensington, of Earl’s Court, of North End, of Walham Green, of Brook Green, of Hammersmith, of Turnham Green, of Chiswick, &c. &c. could be carried (more safely than by coaches) from your basin to Hyde Park Corner in two or three minutes, instead of the twenty minutes or nearly half an hour which it now takes to get over that ground, they would so prefer your method of conveyance, as to render the additional outlay required for said two extra miles of tunnel, the most remunerating portion of your whole line; while, in addition to enabling you thus to convey passengers, said branch would enable you also to deliver coals, and other goods at Hyde Park Corner from your canal, for an expense of less than a penny per ton carriage from your canal thither; so that you would rival the Grosvenor Canal, and add importantly to the tonnage trade of your own canal by it.
Should the Birmingham and Bristol Railways be completed, this branch would also enable you to convey goods, as well as passengers, to and from them, and to and from the western parts of town, more cheaply than could any how else be done; an accommodation which laying down your railway could not give. And as I could so construct these two extra miles of tunnel, as to render their cost—the cost of the tunnel itself, i.e.—not more than about five thousand pounds per mile, the expense of this branch would not prove any ruinous addition to your contemplated outlay.
Therefore, for these reasons, I recommend you to prevent its being necessary that people should pay omnibus (or other) proprietors, to carry them from Hyde Park Corner to your basin at Kensington, in order that you may then convey them to the Birmingham (or Bristol) Railway, by extending your line towards Hyde Park Corner, in the manner I have pointed out.
Your case, brought into a focus, is as follows. You have expended a large sum in opening a line of conveyance which, owing to its not being carried far enough at first, does not combine all the advantages your situation admits of. You are, naturally, desirous that it should do this. If you open a communication for goods with the Grand Junction Canal, by extending your own canal, you will do this in degree. You have, therefore, for some years, contemplated carrying your canal up the height between your basin and the Grand Junction Canal. But the enormous expense of this has prevented you from doing it.
Being now informed that your object may be better effected by a railway, you entertain that idea; and as, were you to lay a railway down, passengers, as well as goods, might be conveyed by it, you are desirous of, if possible, bringing the “passenger trade,” between the Birmingham Railway and the west end of London, to your line.
Owing, however, to the distance of your line from the west end of Town; and to the Edgeware Road, offering a shorter and cheaper communication from the Birmingham Railway to that part of the metropolis, your laying down a railway, will, for the reasons I have pointed out, certainly prove a losing speculation.
As the method I propose would be most importantly cheaper than a railway, in point of first cost, and still more importantly cheaper in point of current expenses, I venture to offer it to your notice. And as it would obviate the objection which your distance from Hyde Park Corner would occasion, supposing you were to have a railway, I presume to recommend it to your consideration, as more worthy notice than any thing else you can have laid before you; for the reasons, that it will, in the first place, be much cheaper in point of first cost than any other method of conveyance you can lay down: second, because it will be still more economical in point of current expenses: third, because, in addition to being incomparably safer, as relates to life and limb, than any other method of conveyance, it will be so much more expeditious as to render your circuitous route quicker, in point of time, than the shorter route by the Edgeware Road, as well as cheaper, in point of charge: and, fourth, because it will be productive of an important profit, additional to, and exclusive of, what a railway will bring in; and which will return no inconsiderable proportion of what it costs to lay it down.
Were the statements I have given relative to the cost and expenses of a railway, from my own estimates only, they might be doubted by you. In order, however, to avoid this, I have been careful to quote only the “evidence,” which was laid before Parliament, and other documents; which leave no doubt that the first cost and current expenses will be, at least, equal to what I have stated, though they by no means prove that they will not be more.