For ten years I had now been manager of the Midland Great Western Railway, and busy and interesting years they were. In that period Irish railways, considering that the population of the country was diminishing, had
made remarkable progress, and effected astonishing improvements. Whilst the population of England during the decade had increased by 9.13 per cent., and Scotland by 4.69, that of Ireland had decreased by 4.29 per cent! Yet, notwithstanding this, the railway traffic in Ireland, measured by receipts, had increased by 22 per cent., against England 31 and Scotland 36. In the number of passengers carried the increase in Ireland was 29 per cent. In the same period the increase in the number of engines and vehicles in Ireland was 22, in England 30, and Scotland 33 per cent., whilst the number of train miles run (which is the real measure of the usefulness of railways to the public) had advanced 27 per cent. in Ireland, compared with 28 in England, and 30 in Scotland.
These figures indicate what Irish railways had accomplished in the decade ending with December, 1900, and betoken, I venture to affirm, a keen spirit of enterprise. These ten years had witnessed the introduction of breakfast and dining cars on the trains, of parlour cars, long bogie corridor carriages, the lighting of carriages by electricity, the building of railway hotels in tourist districts, the establishment of numerous coach and steamboat tours, the quickening of tourist traffic generally, the adoption of larger locomotives of greatly increased power, the acceleration of the train service, the laying of heavier and smoother permanent way, and a widespread extension of cheap fares—tourist, excursion, week-end, etc. It was a period of great activity and progress in the Irish railway world, with which I was proud and happy to be intimately connected. But what a return for all this effort and enterprise the Irish railway companies received—£3 17s. 10d. per cent. on the whole capital expended, plus a liberal amount of abuse from the Press and politicians, neither of whom ever paused to consider what Ireland owed to her railways, which, perhaps, all things considered, was the best conducted business in the country. It, however, became the vogue to decry Irish lines as inefficient and extortionate, and a fashion once started, however ridiculous, never lacks supporters. The public, like sheep, are easily led. In England the average return on capital expended was £4 0s. 5d., and in Scotland £4 2s. 2d.
In the spring of 1901, Mr. W. H. Mills, the Engineer of the Great Northern Railway of Ireland, and I were entrusted by the Board of Works
with an investigation into the circumstances of the Cork, Blackrock and Passage Railway in regard to a proposed Government loan to enable the Company to discharge its liabilities and complete an extension of its railway to Crosshaven. It was an interesting inquiry, comprising a broken contract, the cost of completing unfinished works, the financial prospects of the line when such works were completed, and other cognate matters. A Bill in Parliament promoted by the Railway Company in the following year became necessary in connection with the loan, which after our Report the Government granted, and I had to give evidence in regard to it. In the same session I appeared also before two other Parliamentary Committees, so again I had a busy time outside the ordinary domestic duties pertaining to railway management.
On the first day of November, 1902, my good friend Walter Bailey and I started on a visit to Egypt. It, like Constantinople and Spain and Portugal, occupied more than the usual month’s vacation, but as these extra long excursions were taken only every two or three years, and as it was never my habit to nibble at holidays by indulging in odd days or week-ends, my conscience was clear, especially as my Chairman and Directors cordially approved of my seeing a bit of the world, and readily granted the necessary leave of absence. As for Bailey, he always declared this Egyptian tour was the holiday of his life. To continue, we arrived in Cairo, via Trieste and Alexandria, on the 10th. There we were met by Mr. Harrison, the general manager of Messrs. Thomas Cook and Son, and their principal dragoman, Selim, whom he placed during our stay in Cairo at our disposal. Selim was a Syrian and the prince of dragomans; a handsome man, of Oriental dignity and gravity, arrayed in wonderful robes, which by contrast with our Occidental attire made Bailey and me feel drab and commonplace. At Cairo we stayed for eight days at Shepheard’s Hotel, and under Selim’s guidance made good use of our time. On the ninth day we began a delightful journey up the Nile. Mr. Frank Cook had insisted upon our being the guests of his firm on their tourist steamer Amasis.
My relations with Messrs. Thomas Cook and Son go back for many years, and with the Midland of England, my Alma Mater, the firm is, perhaps, more closely associated than with any other railway. It was on the Midland
system that, in 1841, its business began. In that year the founder of the firm, Mr. Thomas Cook, arranged with the Midland the first public excursion train on record. It ran from Leicester to Loughborough and back at a fare of one shilling, and carried 570 passengers. This was the first small beginning of that great tourist business which now encircles the habitable globe. Mr. Thomas Cook was a Derbyshire man and was born in 1808. My father knew him well, often talked to me about him, and told me stories of the excursion and tourist trade in its early days. But I am digressing, and must return to Old Father Nile, who was in great flood. We saw him at his best. His banks were teeming with happy dusky figures and the smiling irrigated land was bright with fertility. Our journey to Assouan occupied eleven days, a leisurely progress averaging about two and a-half miles an hour. During the night we never steamed, the Amasis lying up while we enjoyed quiet rest in the quietest of lands. Of course we visited all the famous temples and tombs, ruins and monuments, of ancient Egypt; and had many camel and donkey rides on the desert sands before reaching the first cataract. At Luxor, where we stayed for five days, we were pleasantly surprised at seeing Mr. Harrison and Mr. Warren Gillman come on board. The latter was Secretary of Messrs. Cook and Son’s Egyptian business, and has, I believe, since risen higher in the service of the firm.
The great Dam at Assouan was just completed and we traversed its entire length on a trolley propelled by natives. Assouan detained us for four days; then, time being important, we travelled back to Cairo by railway. Three more interesting days were passed in the Babylonian city, then homewards we went by the quickest route attainable.
Whilst in Cairo and on our journey up the Nile, Bailey and I wrote, jointly, a series of seven articles on “Egypt and its Railways.” These appeared in the Railway News in seven successive weeks during December and January.