RAILWAY TRAVELLING IN ENGLAND.
While our facilities in railway travelling have wonderfully improved in the past ten years, it must not be supposed that in conservative England they have stood still entirely. But the improvements in carriage accommodation there have been so steady and gradual that passengers hardly recognize how much more they get for their money now than they did a generation back. For instance, the old first-class carriage of forty years ago was fifteen feet long, six and a half feet broad, and less than five feet high, and this was constructed to seat eighteen passengers; in other words, each person had about twenty-six cubic feet of space. In the carriages built to-day to accommodate ten first-class passengers, each one has ninety cubic feet.
Nor because we in America have such luxurious Pullman and vestibuled cars must it be imagined that the English railway carriages have not comforts and luxuries of their own. Some of them, for example, are built to seat only two or three persons, thus securing complete privacy to a party of that number.
I have never occupied a more comfortable railway carriage than in going, as I did, last September, from Edinburgh to London over the lines of the Caledonian and London and Northwestern railways, on the world-famous train called the “Flying Scotchman”—and a flyer it is. The distance is four hundred miles, and it is run in eight and one-half hours. You leave Edinburgh at 10.15 A.M. and reach Euston square before 7 P.M. As there are several important stations between the two cities at which long stops are made, the train must make between many of the stations much more than fifty miles an hour. The speed was so great at times that it caused unusual vibration, and at times it gave me a slight reminder of sea-sickness.
The carriage was built to seat two persons only. In it there were two large, softly-upholstered, sleep-inviting arm-chairs, one on each side of the car. Between the two chairs at the back was a door leading to a lavatory for the sole use of the two passengers. It was supplied with iced water, washing water, towels, mirror and all the etceteras and conveniences that are desirable in travelling. The car had in all six windows—two at each side and two in front. Between the two front windows was a handsomely-framed bevelled mirror. The floor was richly carpeted and the carriage was supplied with a number of brass brackets and hooks for the travellers’ impedimenta. But more than this—across the front, breast high, was a shelf about six inches wide to hold books and papers, and below this another shelf about the same width for a foot-rest.
The carriage was seven feet square and seven feet high. Here a man and wife or two friends can make themselves about as comfortable as if they were at home in their own drawing-room. You exchange your shoes for slippers, don your smoking jacket and if your companion does not object, you can enjoy a fragrant Havana. To be sure this is against the rules of the company and your indulgence in the weed would cost you forty shillings if you were found out, but the distances are great and the stops few on this “flying Scotchman,” so there is ample time to enjoy a smoke undisturbed. No extra fare is demanded for this most luxurious vehicle; it is simply ranked as a first-class carriage, but you had better write to the station master and engage such a carriage a day or two in advance of your intended journey, for not more than one of these small private cars is by chance attached even to a “flying Scotchman.” No extra charge is made for this engagement in advance.
The complaint years ago that passengers were locked in the cars can seldom now be made. The custom is almost entirely abolished; it caused so many accidents. The aim of each and every passenger on a British railway is to secure a seat with his back to the engine. In this way he avoids draughts of air: draughts from a bottle they never object to. In fact both men and women drink often and deeply during a journey, but it does not seem to affect them.