before the mania had reached its height, he warned those present against the prevalent disposition towards railway speculation. It was, he said, like walking upon a piece of ice with shallows and deeps; the shallows were frozen over, and they would carry, but it required great caution to get over the deeps. He was satisfied that in the course of the next year many would step on to places not strong enough to carry them, and would get into the deeps; they would be taking shares, and afterwards be unable to pay the calls upon them. Yorkshiremen were reckoned clever men, and his advice to them was, to stick together and promote communication in their own neighbourhood,—not to go abroad with their speculations. If any had done so, he advised them to get their money back as fast as they could, for if they did not they would not get it at all. He informed the company, at the same time, of his earliest holding of railway shares; it was in the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and the number he held was three—“a very large capital for him to possess at the time.” But a Stockton friend was anxious to possess a share, and he sold him one at a premium of 33s.; he supposed he had been about the first man in England to sell a railway share at a premium.
During 1845, his son’s offices in Great George-street, Westminster, were crowded with persons of various conditions seeking interviews, presenting very much the appearance of the levee of a minister of state. The burly figure of Mr. Hudson, the “Railway King,” surrounded by an admiring group of followers, was often to be seen there; and a still more interesting person, in the estimation of many, was George Stephenson, dressed in black, his coat of somewhat old-fashioned cut, with square pockets in the tails. He wore a white neckcloth, and a large bunch of seals was suspended from his watch-ribbon. Altogether, he presented an appearance of health, intelligence, and good humour, that rejoiced one to look upon in that sordid, selfish and eventually ruinous saturnalia of railway speculation.
Powers were granted by Parliament, in 1843, to construct
not less than 2883 miles of new railways in Britain, at an expenditure of about forty-four millions sterling! Yet the mania was not appeased; for in the following session of 1846, applications were made to Parliament for powers to raise £389,000,000 sterling for the construction of further lines; and powers were actually conceded for forming 4790 miles (including 60 miles of tunnels), at a cost of about £120,000,000 sterling. During this session, Mr. Stephenson appeared as engineer for only one new line,—the Buxton, Macclesfield, Congleton, and Crewe Railway—a line in which, as a coal-owner, he was personally interested;—and of three branch-lines in connexion with existing companies for which he had long acted as engineer. At the same time, all the leading professional men were fully occupied, some of them appearing as consulting engineers for upwards of thirty lines each!
One of the features of the mania was the rage for “direct lines” which everywhere displayed itself. There were “Direct Manchester,” “Direct Exeter,” “Direct York,” and, indeed, new direct lines between most of the large towns. The Marquis of Bristol, speaking in favour of the “Direct Norwich and London” project, at a public meeting at Haverhill, said, “If necessary, they might make a tunnel beneath his very drawing-room, rather than be defeated in their undertaking!” And the Rev. F. Litchfield, at a meeting in Banbury, on the subject of a line to that town, said “He had laid down for himself a limit to his approbation of railways,—at least of such as approached the neighbourhood with which he was connected,—and that limit was, that he did not wish them to approach any nearer to him than to run through his bedroom, with the bedposts for a station!” How different was the spirit which influenced these noble lords and gentlemen but a few years before!
The House of Commons became thoroughly influenced by the prevailing excitement. Even the Board of Trade began to favour the views of the fast school of engineers. In their “Report on the Lines projected in the Manchester and
Leeds District,” they promulgated some remarkable views respecting gradients, declaring themselves in favour of the “undulating system.” They there stated that lines of an undulating character “which have gradients of 1 in 70 or in 80 distributed over them in short lengths, may be positively better lines, i.e., more susceptible of cheap and expeditious working, than others which have nothing steeper than 1 in 100 or 1 in 120!” They concluded by reporting in favour of the line which exhibited the worst gradients and the sharpest curves, chiefly on the ground that it could be constructed for less money.
Sir Robert Peel took occasion to advert to this Report in the House of Commons on the 4th of March following, as containing “a novel and highly important view on the subject of gradients, which, he was certain, never could have been taken by any Committee of the House of Commons, however intelligent;” and he might have added, that the more intelligent, the less likely they were to arrive at any such conclusion. When Mr. Stephenson saw this report of the Premier’s speech in the newspapers of the following morning, he went forthwith to his son, and asked him to write a letter to Sir Robert Peel on the subject. He saw clearly that if these views were adopted, the utility and economy of railways would be seriously curtailed. “These members of Parliament,” said he, “are now as much disposed to exaggerate the powers of the locomotive, as they were to under-estimate them but a few years ago.” Robert accordingly wrote a letter for his father’s signature, embodying the views which he so strongly entertained as to the importance of flat gradients, and referring to the experiments conducted by him many years before, in proof of the great loss of working power which was incurred on a line of steep as compared with easy gradients. It was clear, from the tone of Sir Robert Peel’s speech in a subsequent debate, that he had carefully read and considered Mr. Stephenson’s practical observations on the subject; though it did not appear that he had come
to any definite conclusion thereon, further than that he strongly approved of the Trent Valley Railway, by which Tamworth would be placed upon a direct main line of communication.
The result of the labours of Parliament was a tissue of legislative bungling, involving enormous loss to the public. Railway Bills were granted in heaps. Two hundred and seventy-two additional Acts were passed in 1846. Some authorised the construction of lines running almost parallel to existing railways, in order to afford the public “the benefits of unrestricted competition.” Locomotive and atmospheric lines, broad-gauge and narrow-gauge lines, were granted without hesitation. Committees decided without judgment and without discrimination; it was a scramble for Bills, in which the most unscrupulous were the most successful.