Stephenson was now in full career as a leading railway engineer, and his father had pleasure in handing over to him, with the sanction of the companies concerned, nearly all the railway appointments which he held.
Robert Stephenson amply repaid his father’s care. The sound education of which he had laid the foundations at school, improved by his subsequent culture, but more than all by his father’s example of application, industry, and thoroughness in all that he undertook, told powerfully in the formation of his character, not less than in the discipline of his intellect. His father had early implanted in him habits of mental activity, familiarized him with the laws of mechanics, and carefully trained and stimulated his inventive faculties, the first great fruits of which, as we have seen, were exhibited in the triumph of the “Rocket” at Rainhill. “I am fully conscious in my own mind,” said the son at a meeting of the Mechanical Engineers at Newcastle, in 1858, “how greatly my civil engineering has been regulated and influenced by the mechanical knowledge which I derived directly from my father; and the more my experience has advanced, the more convinced I have become that it is necessary to educate an engineer in the workshop. That is, emphatically, the education which will render the engineer most intelligent, most useful, and the fullest of resources in times of difficulty.”
Robert Stephenson was but twenty-six years old when the performances of the “Rocket” established the practicability of steam locomotion on railways. He was shortly after appointed engineer of the Leicester and Swannington Railway; after which, at his father’s request, he was made joint engineer with himself in laying out the London and Birmingham Railway, and the execution of that line was afterwards entrusted to him as sole engineer. The stability and excellence of the works of that railway, the difficulties which had been successfully overcome in the course of its construction, and the judgment which was displayed by Robert Stephenson throughout the whole conduct
of the undertaking to its completion, established his reputation as an engineer; and his father could now look with confidence and with pride upon his son’s achievements. From that time forward, father and son worked together as one man, each jealous of the other’s honour; and on the father’s retirement, it was generally recognized that, in the sphere of railways, Robert Stephenson was the foremost man, the safest guide, and the most active worker.
Robert Stephenson was subsequently appointed engineer of the Eastern Counties, the Northern and Eastern, and the Blackwall railways, besides many lines in the midland and southern districts. When the speculation of 1844 set in, his services were, of course, greatly in request. Thus, in one session, we find him engaged as engineer for not fewer than 33 new schemes. Projectors thought themselves fortunate who could secure his name, and he had only to propose his terms to obtain them. The work which he performed at this period of his life was indeed enormous, and his income was large beyond any previous instance of engineering gain. But much of his labour was heavy hackwork of a very uninteresting character. During the sittings of the committees of Parliament, almost every moment of his time was occupied in consultations, and in preparing evidence or in giving it. The crowded, low-roofed committee-rooms of the old Houses of Parliament were altogether inadequate to accommodate the rush of perspiring projectors of bills, and even the lobbies were sometimes choked with them. To have borne that noisome atmosphere and heat would have tested the constitutions of salamanders, and engineers were only human. With brains kept in a state of excitement during the entire day, no wonder their nervous systems became unstrung. Their only chance of refreshment was during an occasional rush to the bun and sandwich stand in the lobby, though sometimes even that resource failed them. Then, with mind and body jaded—probably after undergoing a series of consultations upon many bills after the rising of the committees
—the exhausted engineers would seek to stimulate nature by a late, perhaps a heavy, dinner. What chance had any ordinary constitution of surviving such an ordeal? The consequence was, that stomach, brain, and liver were alike irretrievably injured; and hence the men who bore the brunt of those struggles—Stephenson, Brunel, Locke, and Errington—have already all died, comparatively young men.
In mentioning the name of Brunel, we are reminded of him as the principal rival and competitor of Robert Stephenson. Both were the sons of distinguished men, and both inherited the fame and followed in the footsteps of their fathers. The Stephensons were inventive, practical, and sagacious; the Brunels ingenious, imaginative, and daring. The former were as thoroughly English in their characteristics as the latter were perhaps as thoroughly French. The fathers and the sons were alike successful in their works, though not in the same degree. Measured by practical and profitable results, the Stephensons were unquestionably the safer men to follow.
Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel were destined often to come into collision in the course of their professional life. Their respective railway districts “marched” with each other, and it became their business to invade or defend those districts, according as the policy of their respective boards might direct. The gauge of 7 feet fixed by Mr. Brunel for the Great Western Railway, so entirely different from that of 4ft. 8½in. adopted by the Stephensons on the Northern and Midland lines, was from the first a great cause of contention. But Mr. Brunel had always an aversion to follow any man’s lead; and that another engineer had fixed the gauge of a railway, or built a bridge, or designed an engine, in one way, was of itself often a sufficient reason with him for adopting an altogether different course. Robert Stephenson, on his part, though less bold, was more practical, preferring to follow the old routes, and to tread in the safe steps of his father.
Mr. Brunel, however, determined that the Great Western
should be a giant’s road, and that travelling should be conducted upon it at double speed. His ambition was to make the best road that imagination could devise; whereas the main object of the Stephensons, both father and son, was to make a road that would pay. Although, tried by the Stephenson test, Brunel’s magnificent road was a failure so far as the shareholders in the Great Western Company were concerned, the stimulus which his ambitious designs gave to mechanical invention at the time proved a general good. The narrow-gauge engineers exerted themselves to quicken their locomotives to the utmost. They improved and re-improved them; the machinery was simplified and perfected; outside cylinders gave place to inside; the steadier and more rapid and effective action of the engine was secured; and in a few years the highest speed on the narrow-gauge lines went up from 30 to about 50 miles an hour. For this rapidity of progress we are in no small degree indebted to the stimulus imparted to the narrow-gauge engineers by Mr. Brunel. And it is well for a country that it should possess men such as he, ready to dare the untried, and to venture boldly into new paths. Individuals may suffer from the cost of the experiments; but the nation, which is an aggregate of individuals, gains, and so does the world at large.