The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson / Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway Locomotive

by Samuel Smiles

In the midst of all these alarms and prophecies of failure, Stephenson never lost heart, but held to his purpose. His motto was "Persevere!" "You must go on filling in," he said; "there is no other help for it. The stuff emptied in is doing its work out of sight, and if you will but have patience, it will soon begin to show." And so the filling in went on; several hundreds of men and boys were employed to skin the Moss all round for many thousand yards, by means of sharp spades, called by the turf-cutters "tommy-spades;" and the dried cakes of turf were afterward used to form the embankment, until at length, as the stuff sank and rested upon the bottom, the bank gradually rose above the surface, and slowly advanced onward, declining in height and consequently in weight, until it became joined to the floating road already laid upon the Moss. In the course of forming the embankment, the pressure of the bog turf tipped out of the wagons caused a copious stream of bog-water to flow from the end of it, in color resembling Barclay's double stout; and when completed, the bank looked like a long ridge of tightly-pressed tobacco-leaf. The compression of the turf may be understood from the fact that 670,000 cubic yards of raw moss formed only 277,000 cubic yards of embankment at the completion of the work.

At the western, or Liverpool end of the Chat Moss, there was a like embankment; but, as the ground there was solid, little difficulty was experienced in forming it, beyond the loss of substance caused by the oozing out of the water held by the moss-earth.

At another part of the Liverpool and Manchester line, Parr Moss was crossed by an embankment about a mile and a half in extent. In the immediate neighborhood was found a large excess of cutting, which it would have been necessary to "put out in spoil-banks" (according to the technical phrase) but for the convenience of Parr Moss, into which the surplus clay, stone, and shale were tipped, wagon after wagon, until a solid but congealed embankment, from fifteen to twenty feet high, was formed, although to the eye it appears to be laid upon the level of the adjoining surface, as at Chat Moss.

The road across Chat Moss was finished by the 1st of January, 1830, when the first experimental train of passengers passed over it, drawn by the "Rocket;" and it turned out that, instead of being the most expensive part of the line, it was about the cheapest. The total cost of forming the line over the Moss was £28,000, whereas Mr. Giles's estimate was £270,000! It also proved to be one of the best portions of the railway. Being a floating road, it was as smooth and easy to run upon as Dr. Arnott's water-bed is soft and easy to lie upon—the pressure being equal at all points. There was, and still is, a sort of springiness in the road over the Moss, such as is felt when passing along a suspended bridge; and those who looked along the Moss as a train passed over it said they could observe a waviness, such as precedes and follows a skater upon ice.

During the progress of the works the most ridiculous rumors were set afloat. The drivers of the stage-coaches, who feared for their calling, brought the alarming intelligence into Manchester from time to time that "Chat Moss was blown up!" "Hundreds of men and horses had sunk in the bog; and the works were completely abandoned!" The engineer himself was declared to have been swallowed up in the Serbonian bog; and "railways were at an end forever!"

In the construction of the railway, George Stephenson's capacity for organizing and directing the labors of a large number of workmen of all kinds eminently displayed itself. A vast quantity of ballast-wagons had to be constructed for the purposes of the work, and implements and materials had to be collected, before the mass of labor to be employed could be efficiently set in motion at the various points of the line. There were not at that time, as there are now, large contractors, possessed of railway plant, capable of executing earthworks on a large scale. Our engineer had, therefore, not only to contrive the plant, but to organize the labor, and direct it in person. The very laborers themselves had to be trained to their work by him; and it was on the Liverpool and Manchester line that Mr. Stephenson organized the staff of that formidable band of railway navvies, whose handiworks will be the wonder and admiration of succeeding generations. Looking at their gigantic traces, the men of some future age may be found to declare, of the engineer and of his workmen, that "there were giants in those days."

Although the works of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway are of a much less formidable character than those of many lines that have since been constructed, they were then regarded as of a stupendous kind. Indeed, few works of such magnitude had before been executed in England. It had been the engineer's original intention to carry the railway from the north end of Liverpool round the red sandstone ridge on which the upper part of the town is built, and also round the higher rise of the coal formation at Rainhill, by following the natural levels to the north of Knowsley. But the opposition of the land-owners having forced the line more to the south, it was rendered necessary to cut through the hills, and go over the high grounds instead of round them. The first consequence of this alteration in the plans was the necessity for constructing a tunnel under the town of Liverpool a mile and a half in length, from the docks at Wapping to the top of Edgehill; the second was the necessity for forming a long and deep cutting through the red sandstone rock at Olive Mount; and the third and worst of all was the necessity for ascending and descending the Whiston and Sutton hills by means of inclined planes of 1 in 96. The line was also, by the same forced deviation, prevented passing through the Lancashire coal-field, and the engineer was compelled to carry the works across the Sankey valley at a point where the waters of the brook had dug out an excessively deep channel through the marl-beds of the district.

The principal difficulty was experienced in pushing on the works connected with the formation of the tunnel under Liverpool, 2200 yards in length. The blasting and hewing of the rock were vigorously carried on night and day; and the engineer's practical experience in the collieries here proved of great use to him. Many obstacles had to be encountered and overcome in the formation of the tunnel, the rock varying in hardness and texture at different parts. In some places the miners were deluged by water, which surged from the soft blue shale found at the lowest level of the tunnel. In other places beds of wet sand were cut through, and there careful propping and pinning were necessary to prevent the roof from tumbling in until the masonry to support it could be erected. On one occasion, while Stephenson was absent from Liverpool, a mass of loose moss-earth and sand fell from the roof, which had been insufficiently propped. The miners withdrew from the work; and on the engineer's return he found them in a refractory state, refusing to re-enter the tunnel. He induced them, however, by his example, to return to their labors; and when the roof had been secured, the work went on again as before. When there was danger, he was always ready to share it with the men; and, gathering confidence from his fearlessness, they proceeded vigorously with the undertaking, boring and mining their way toward the light.