[84] The Marquis of Clanricarde brought under the notice of the House of Lords, in 1845, that one Charles Guernsey, the son of a charwoman and a clerk in a broker's office at 12s. a week, had his name down as a subscriber for shares in the London and York line for £52,000.
[85] On the 17th of November, 1845, Mr. Spackman published a list of the lines projected (many of which were not afterward prosecuted), from which it appeared that there were then 620 new railway projects before the public, requiring a capital of £563,203,000.
[86] The original width of the coal tram-roads in the North virtually determined the British gauge. It was the width of the ordinary road-track—not fixed after any scientific theory, but adopted simply because its use had already been established. George Stephenson introduced it without alteration on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and the lines subsequently formed in that district were laid down of the same width. Stephenson from the first anticipated the general extension of railways throughout England, and one of the ideas with which he started was the essential importance of preserving such a uniformity as would admit of perfect communication between them. When consulted about the gauge of the Canterbury and Whitstable, and Leicester and Swannington Railways, he said, "Make them of the same width: though they may be a long way apart now, depend upon it they will be joined together some day." All the railways, therefore, laid down by himself and his assistants in the neighborhood of Manchester, extending from thence to London on the south, and to Leeds on the east, were constructed on the Liverpool and Manchester, or narrow gauge. Besides the Great Western Railway, where the gauge adopted was seven feet, the only other line on which a broader gauge than four feet eight and a half inches was adopted was the Eastern Counties, where it was five feet, Mr. Braithwaite, the engineer, being of opinion that an increase of three and a half inches in the width of the line would afford better space for the machinery of the locomotive. But when the northern and eastern extension of the same line was formed, which was to work into the narrow-gauge system of the Midland Railway, Robert Stephenson, its new engineer, strongly recommended the directors of the Eastern Counties Line to alter their gauge accordingly, for the purpose of securing uniformity, and they adopted his recommendation.
[87] The atmospheric lines had for some time been working very irregularly and very expensively. Robert Stephenson, in a letter to Mr. T. Sopwith, F.R.S., dated the 8th of January, 1846, wrote: "Since my return [from Italy] I have learned that your atmospheric friends are very sickly. A slow typhus has followed the high fever I left them in about three months ago. I don't anticipate, however, that the patient will expire suddenly. There is every appearance of the case being a protracted one, though a fatal termination is inevitable. When the pipes are sold by auction, I intend to buy one and present it to the British Museum." During the last half year of the atmospheric experiment on the South Devon line in 1848, the expenditure exceeded the gross income (£26,782) by £2487, or about 9-3/4 per cent. excess of working expenses beyond the gross receipts.
[88] "When my father came about the office," said Robert, "he sometimes did not well know what to do with himself. So he used to invite Bidder to have a quiet wrestle with him, for old acquaintance sake. And the two wrestled together so often, and had so many 'falls' (sometimes I thought they would bring the house down between them), that they broke half the chairs in my outer office. I remember once sending my father in a joiner's bill of about £2 10s. for the mending of broken chairs."
[89] The simple fact that in a heavy storm the force of impact of the waves is from one and a half to two tons per square foot, must necessarily dictate the greatest possible caution in approaching so formidable an element. Mr. R. Stevenson (Edinburg) registered a force of three tons per square foot at Skerryvore during a gale in the Atlantic, when the waves were supposed to run twenty feet high.
[90] See "Lives of the Engineers," vol. ii., p. 445. It appears that Mr. Fairbairn suggested this idea in his letter to Mr. Stephenson, dated the 3d of June, 1845, accompanied by a drawing. See his "Account of the Construction of the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges," etc. London, 1849.
[91] Robert Stephenson's narrative of the early history of the design, in Edwin Clark's "Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges," vol. i., p. 25, London, 1850.
[92] Robert Stephenson's narrative in Clark's "Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges," vol. i., p. 27.
[93] Robert Stephenson's narrative in Clark's "Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges," vol. i., p. 27.