—“words of learned length and thundering sound
Amaze the operatives rang’d around,”
it may have sufficed. But when held up as a criterion by which the public mind is to take its tone for my condemnation, I am compelled to pronounce it philosophy of which its author ought to be ashamed.
These evidences being all of dates several years anterior to the period when Mr. Badnall states the idea of his “Undulating Railway” first occurred to him, I shall be liable to no charge of proposing to avail myself of momentum in consequence of his having proposed “Undulating Railways.”
J. S. Hodson, Printer, 15, Cross Street, Hatton Garden.
FOOTNOTES.
[4a] I have known a barge of (apparently) fifty tons burthen, come up the whole length of your canal, with nothing but fourteen tons of coal to land at your basin.
[4b] In his Report on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Mr. Walker states the price of the 40,000 tons of coal, which he supposed might be required for the locomotive engines, at 5s. 10d. per ton. The 25,000 tons which he supposed might be required for the stationary engines, he states at the price of 2s. 6d. per ton.
In their review of this Report, Messrs. Stephenson and Locke state the price of coal at 4s. 6d. per ton for 37,222 tons.
[5] The capital requisite to complete this railway was first announced to be a million and a half. Then it was raised to two millions. Then it was raised to three millions, in order to admit of a “quadruple line” (that is, eight lines of rails,) being laid down. And credit is now taken for its cheapness, because, after announcing that three millions would be sufficient to lay down a “quadruple” railway, two millions and a half are stated as the estimated expense of a “double” railway. That is, after having, by advertisement upon advertisement, announced that three millions would be enough to lay down eight lines of rails, credit is taken for finding out that four lines will cost two millions and a half: when the fact is, that the estimated expense is reduced only one-sixth, while the work which said three millions were stated to be enough to do, is reduced one half. In other words, twopence-halfpenny is charged for half the loaf, after it had been, in every possible way trumpeted forth, that the whole loaf would be sold for threepence: while even this twopence-halfpenny is liable to additions such as the following pages advert to.
[6] I believe that the average width is not the half of 66 feet: and that it is, in parts, much less than half, is proved by various circumstances; one of which is the following account of an “Accident on the railway.—An accident fatal to a poor man named Thomas Ryans, took place on the railway on Monday last. Ryans was employed by the Railway Company as a breaksman; and was engaged in his business on a small train of goods drawn by the Vulcan engine. When within a short distance of a bridge, he, for some purpose, projected his head over the side of the waggon, and, melancholy to relate, it came in contact with the buttress of the bridge. The poor fellow’s brains were knocked out on his cheek; but he lingered some time before death ended his sufferings.—Manchester Courier.”—Morning Herald, 27th Sept. 1831.