Historic Inventions

by Rupert Sargent Holland

With the opening of this line the success of the railroad as a practical means of conveyance became assured. Singularly enough the builders of the railroad had based their estimates almost entirely on merchandise traffic, and had stated to the committee of the House of Commons that they did not expect their passenger coaches to be more than half filled. The carriages they planned to use would have carried 400 to 500 persons if full, but the road was hardly open before the company had to provide accommodations to carry 1,200 passengers daily, and the receipts from passenger travel immediately far exceeded the receipts from carrying freight.

Similarly the directors had expected that the average speed of the locomotives would be about nine or ten miles an hour, but very soon the trains were carrying passengers the entire thirty miles between Liverpool and Manchester in a little more than an hour. Travel by stage-coach had taken at least four hours, so that the railroad reduced the time nearly one-fourth. Engineers who came from a distance to examine the railroad were amazed at the smoothness of travel over it. Two experts from Edinburgh declared that traveling on it was smoother and easier than any they had known over the best turnpikes of Mr. Macadam. They said that even when the train was going at the very high speed of twenty-five miles an hour they “could observe the passengers, among whom were a good many ladies, talking to gentlemen with the utmost sang froid.”

Business men were delighted at being able to leave Liverpool in the morning, travel to Manchester, do business there, and return home the same afternoon. The price of coal, and the cost of carrying all classes of goods, was tremendously reduced. Another result, which was the opposite of what had been expected, was that the price of land along the line and near the stations at once rose. Instead of the noise and smoke of the trains frightening people away it seemed to charm them. The very landlords who had driven the surveyors off their property and done everything they could to hinder the builders now complained if the railroad did not pass directly through their domains, and begged for stations close at hand. Even the land about Chat Moss was bought up and improved, and all along the line what had been waste stretches began to blossom into towns and villages.

Stephenson continued to make improvements to his locomotives. He had already added the multitubular boiler, the idea of which was to increase the evaporative power of the boiler by adding to its heating surface by means of many small tubes filled with water. This increase of evaporative power increased the speed the engine could attain. In his new engine, the “Samson,” he adopted the plan of coupling the fore and rear wheels of the engine. This more effectually secured the adhesion of the wheels to the rails, and allowed the carrying of heavier loads. He improved the springs of the carriages, and built buffers to prevent the bumping of the carriage ends, which had been very unpleasant for the earliest passengers. He also found a new method of lubricating his carriage axles, his spring frames, the buffers, and the brakes he had built for the trains.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was to be followed rapidly by other lines. George Stephenson was a good man of business as well as a good engineer. He suggested a number of lucrative opportunities to his Liverpool friends, and he took a financial share in some of them himself. He thought there should be a line between Swannington and Leicester, in order to increase the coal supply of the latter town, which was quite a manufacturing centre. A company was formed, and his son Robert was appointed engineer. In the course of the work Robert learned that an estate near the road was to be sold, and decided that there was considerable coal there. George Stephenson and two other friends bought the place, and he took up his residence there, at Alton Grange, in order to supervise the mining operations. The mine was very successful, and the railroad proved of the greatest value to the people of Leicester. Stephenson now changed his position from that of an employee of coal-owners to that of employer of many miners himself.

The first railroads to be built were principally branches of the Liverpool and Manchester one, and chiefly located in the mining and manufacturing county of Lancaster. But before long the great metropolis of London required railroad communication with the Midlands, and the London and Birmingham road was projected. Here again the promoters had to overcome gigantic obstacles, the opposition of the great landed proprietors who owned vast estates in the neighborhood of London, the opposition of the old posting companies, and of the conservative element who were afraid of the great changes such a method of transportation would bring about. The natural difficulties of the first lines were increased a hundredfold, greater marshes had to be crossed, greater streams to be bridged, greater hills to be tunneled. But the greater the obstacles the greater Stephenson’s resources proved. When some of his tunnels were flooded, because the workmen had cut into an unexpected bed of quicksand, he immediately designed and built a vast system of powerful pumps, and drew off enough water to fill the Thames from London Bridge to Woolwich, so that his workmen might continue the tunnels and line them with masonry sufficiently solid to withstand any future inrush of water.

The men who were back of this railroad would very probably never have projected it had they realized that the building of it would cost five million pounds. But when the road was opened for use the excess in traffic beyond the estimates was much greater than the excess in cost had been. The company was able to pay large dividends, and the builders found that they could have made no better investment. This London and Birmingham road, 112 miles long, was opened September 17, 1838. The receipts from passenger traffic alone for the first year were £608,564. Evidently travel by coach had not been as popular in reality as the conservatives had ardently maintained.

It is curious to note the many kinds of opposition these first railways encountered. Said Mr. Berkeley, a member of Parliament for Cheltenham, “Nothing is more distasteful to me than to hear the echo of our hills reverberating with the noise of hissing railroad engines running through the heart of our hunting country, and destroying that noble sport to which I have been accustomed from my childhood.” One Colonel Sibthorpe declared that he “would rather meet a highwayman, or see a burglar on his premises, than an engineer; he should be much more safe, and of the two classes he thought the former more respectable!” Sir Astley Cooper, the eminent surgeon, said to Robert Stephenson, when the latter called to see him about a new road, “Your scheme is preposterous in the extreme. It is of so extravagant a character as to be positively absurd. Then look at the recklessness of your proceedings! You are proposing to cut up our estates in all directions for the purpose of making an unnecessary road. Do you think for one moment of the destruction of property involved in it? Why, gentlemen, if this sort of thing is allowed to go on, you will in a very few years destroy the noblesse!” Physicians maintained that travel through tunnels would be most prejudicial to health. Dr. Lardner protested against passengers being compelled to put up with what he called “the destruction of the atmospheric air,” and Sir Anthony Carlisle insisted that “tunnels would expose healthy people to colds, catarrhs, and consumption.” Many critics expected the boilers of the locomotives to explode at any and all times. Others were sure that the railways would throw so many workmen out of employment that revolution must follow, and still others declared that England was being delivered utterly into the power of a small group of manufacturers and mine-owners. But in spite of all this the people took to riding on the railways and England prospered.

The aristocracy held out the longest. Noblemen did not relish the thought of traveling in the same carriages with workmen. The private coach had for long been a badge of station. For a time, therefore, the old families and country gentility sent their servants and their luggage by train, but themselves jogged along the old post-roads in the family chariots. But there were more accidents and more delays in travel by coach than by train, and so, one by one, they pocketed their pride and capitulated. The Duke of Wellington, who had seen the accident to Mr. Huskisson near Liverpool, held out against such travel for a long time. But when Queen Victoria, in 1842, used the railway to go from London to Windsor, the last resistance ended, and the Iron Duke, together with the rest of his order, followed the Queen’s example. Said the famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby, as he watched a train speeding through the country, “I rejoice to see it, and think that feudality is gone forever. It is so great a blessing to think that any one evil is really extinct.”