Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

“To the mechanical engineer the name of Manchester has a significance similar in a certain sense, to that which the name of Mecca has for the people of Mahommet’s creed. ‘He is not a true follower of the Prophet who has not been to Mecca once in his life at least;’ so is the saying in the Orient; and, in drawing the parallel, we are tempted to say—he is not a true mechanical engineer who has not visited Manchester once in his life, who has not seen the monuments raised to the memory of the prophets of modern generations, only recently dead, and more than that, who has not seen the faces of those great prophets still living and daily effecting marvels and revealing truth for the benefit of future generations. With the monuments raised to the dead we do not of course mean any special bronze memorial of James Watt, nor the unsightly monument of Crompton which ornaments the central part of Bolton, nor indeed, the memorial of Richard Roberts, which ought to stand somewhere in Manchester, but does not stand anywhere. But there are 150,000 boilers in operation in Manchester and the manufacturing district surrounding it—we state this figure as estimated by Mr. Longridge, the chief engineer of the Boiler Insurance and Steam Power Company—they represent, perhaps, one million of horses’ power in steam engines daily at work, and these we call the memorial raised by the town of Manchester to the name of James Watt. As for the monuments of Crompton and Roberts, they form great groups like the pyramids in the graveyards of Egyptian rulers, only more numerous, more valuable, and more useful. Every cotton mill, every manufactory of textile machinery, is a memorial to Samuel Crompton and Richard Roberts. Take the largest of these groups—the Hartford Ironworks, Oldham—there are 8,000 men under the command of one leading mind, assisted by every aid that mechanical appliances can give, and indebted in almost every one of the details of their machinery to Richard Roberts again, employed in carrying out the ideas of this great inventor for the benefit of themselves, their families, and mankind at large. What a sight to compare with that of a solid chimney standing between four bronze lions! It is characteristic to the engineering profession that the works of our great men form monuments for their names which no national munificence can equal.

“To pass from the memory of those gone by to those who make Manchester what it is at present, viz., the centre and metropolis of mechanical engineering, we need scarcely make an interruption in our cursory reference to the history of mechanics. Mr. William Fairbairn, Mr. Whitworth, Mr. Nasmyth, are fellow travellers of Richard Roberts on the road of progress. They also are erecting monuments to their names; and the great engineering establishments which bear their names, form some of the most important items in the great total of Manchester manufactories, which great total may be considered at this moment to represent almost every one of the more important branches of mechanical engineering in the widest sense of that term. To commence with coal-mining, the Lancashire coal-bed is one of the richest and most important of this country; its different seams are applicable to all the varied branches of industry, commencing with the most valuable of all, the cannel coal, down to the cheapest coal slack, which is still capable of being converted into coke of good quality, and by the assistance of the washing machine can be made to yield the best coke required for the smelting of hematite iron of the highest marks. We have entered in detail into some interesting points connected with the coal-mining and iron manufacture of this district, in our recent account of the Wigan Coal and Iron Company. The iron manufacture in that locality is rapidly rising. It is based upon an exchange of coal and ore with the Ulverstone district, and may thank the introduction of the Bessemer process for its recent prosperity and its excellent prospects for future success. The Bessemer process itself (this important element in modern engineering), has found a centre in Manchester and its neighbourhood. The Bolton Steel Works, the Lancashire Steel Works, the Manchester Steel and Plant Company, the important steel works at Crewe, and the Mersey Ironworks in Liverpool, form an aggregate power of production fully as great as that which is centred in Sheffield, and of course much greater than in any other part of the world, that small district in Prussia, on the banks of the river Ruhr, excepted. The foundries of Manchester, although their production does not reach that of the largest establishments in Scotland with regard to quantity, are fully equal to them with regard to quality and size of individual castings which they are capable of producing. We have had occasion to mention the hydraulic ram of the hoist for charging the Woodward cupola at Messrs. Dobson & Barlow’s works, which has been cast in one piece, 22 feet long, standing on its end, at the Union Foundry in Bolton, and we have been informed that this foundry is laid out for casting articles of the heaviest description, up to a depth of 30 feet. In the Bolton Steel Works, the anvil of the 25-ton hammer, which has been cast in its place, is said to be about 200 tons in weight. Machine-moulding, with all its delicacy and beauty of form, is more developed in the Manchester district than in any other locality. We have heard of wheels 3 feet in diameter, with teeth pitched one-eighth of an inch, i. e., about 900 in number, being moulded by machinery at the Hartford Works, Oldham. The application of machine-moulding to railway axle-boxes we have noticed in our description of the Ashbury Works. For the construction of stationary engines of different sizes Manchester, we believe, admits of few rivals. We have noticed the large blowing-engines, with 100-inch cylinders, 12 feet stroke, made at the Bridgewater Foundry, Patricroft; the pumping-engines for the Abbey Mills Station, and the Liverpool Waterworks engines, now in progress at the Union Foundry, Bolton; the beautifully finished rolling-mill engines for the Barrow Hematite Steel Works, made by Messrs. Hick, Hargreaves & Co.; and Messrs. Musgrave & Sons’ engines at the Lancashire Steel Company’s Works and at Barrow-in-Furness. All these, and numbers of others, which may be counted by hundreds, form the vast group of engine constructions in Manchester. Engineers’ tools have had their early development, and still have their principal seat of manufacture, in this important place. One by one they have come into existence at the Atlas Works in their first and original types, have obtained their graceful shapes, the hollow castings of their framework, the scraped surfaces of their slides, and the dead accuracy of their movements, at Mr. Whitworth’s works, and have then become standard types of form more or less closely imitated by every tool-maker, not only in Manchester, but all over the world.

“Of specialities in tools, such as Messrs. Collier & Co.’s multiple drills, Messrs. Hetherington & Son’s new drilling machines, and some new tools at work at Messrs. Parr, Curtis & Madeley’s, we have had opportunities of taking notice some short time ago. They are only single items selected out of a great crowd of others, and that great crowd again forms only one small part of the entire mechanical business of Manchester. We pass to boiler construction, and we find it developed into a branch of engineering by itself. It stands upon a higher level in Manchester than elsewhere, and we need only refer to our recent description of Mr. Adamson’s works, if we desire a proof for this assertion. The construction of locomotives—and we comprise Crewe, St. Helen’s, &c., in the name of that manufacturing district generally understood under the designation of Manchester by mechanical engineers—shows the same predominance over that of any other town as the branches previously named. For railway plant we have now the newly established Bessemer Steel Works, making rails, axles, tires, and other articles; we have the Ashbury Works, with their large production of carriages and waggons; for iron bridges, the Fairbairn Engineering Company’s Works. Of the machinery employed in the Bessemer process, the manufacture is exclusively in the hands of Messrs. W. & J. Galloway & Sons, and Messrs. Hick, Hargreaves & Co. The Nasmyth and the Condie hammer, and almost all the rolling mills for weldless tires, such as Messrs. Collier & Co.’s., Messrs. Galloway & Sons’, and Mr. Jackson’s mills, belong to the workshops of Manchester, and form elements of its trade. In wood-working machinery the production of Messrs. Thos. Robinson & Son, of Rochdale, is the largest of that class. For shipbuilding and marine engineering we need go no farther than the Mersey; but in this line, and in the branch of agricultural machinery, the great centres of manufacture lie elsewhere, and must remain so in the future from natural causes. With the consideration of these facts we think it sufficiently established that ‘the city of the tall chimneys’ is more than what it used to be half a century ago ‘the cotton metropolis;’ it is now the metropolis of mechanical engineering as well. There is another important institution which gives to Manchester the character of a metropolis for manufactures, and that is the Exchange. To attend at the Exchange forms part of the business of a commercial engineer in Manchester, and the Exchange has thereby become one of the most important institutions for one branch of the profession. The Manchester Exchange forms a general place of appointment for all parties interested in the manufactures of that district, where every manufacturer expects to find everyone engaged in trade at a certain hour once or twice in every week. To point out what saving of time, what enlargement of power for transacting business, this institution has given to the whole industrial population of Manchester, will hardly be necessary, but the extraordinary aspect which the Manchester Exchange presents to the eye of a stranger entering it any Tuesday between twelve and one o’clock is worthy of a brief remark. There is a dense crowd, numbering by thousands of heads, filling the entire area of the large hall, which is divided longitudinally in three parallel passages by two rows of columns or pillars supporting the roof. By universal admission, a kind of rule seems to have been established, perhaps without its having ever been expressed in words. This rule refers to the division of the total space in the hall between the different branches represented there. One of the outer passages belongs to engineers and machinists; the central part is devoted to the manufacturers of textile fabrics; and the part of the hall at the opposite side is occupied by the mercantile part of the assembly, the cotton brokers, exporters of goods, &c.

“A stranger entering the hall for the first time may recognise the side belonging to the engineers at a single glance. Their faces, their general appearance, and their whole bearing are characteristic, and not to be mistaken. There is, of course, no possibility of knowing one engineer from one merchant at first sight, but an assembly of, say, two hundred engineers looks as different from a congregation of two hundred merchants as two groups of men possibly can be. Those habits of thought and observation, that consciousness of—we may say—creative power, that determination to succeed in spite of difficulties, which are the attributes of the mind of an engineer, never fail to show themselves in the outward appearance of the man; they may be too faint for recognition in the single individual, but they are stamped upon an assembly of the members of our profession, where the marks common to the group come out more prominently by repetition. There are other things clearly visible in the appearance of the great crowd collected ‘on Change’ which are not perceptible by observation of single individuals, and that is the state of the trade and the nature of the transactions afloat. Looking at the crowd from above, and knowing the positions which the different branches habitually occupy in the building, the manner in which the groups cluster together, and the greater or less speed with which they change their positions, give remarkably clear indications to the practised eye. The Manchester Exchange is to be rebuilt and very considerably enlarged. At a public competition of plans for a new Exchange building, Messrs. Mills and Mergatroyd, architects of Manchester, have gained the two first prizes, and they are now entrusted with the construction of the new building. There are some other points, with regard to which the town of Manchester has just commenced to take up its proper position as the great centre of mechanical engineering. A college for engineering science is to be established in the cotton metropolis very shortly, and the funds for this purpose have been raised by subscriptions amongst the leading members of our profession, who have responded to the call with a princely munificence.”

[51] The earliest historical notice that exists respecting stamps freeing letters through the post, dates as far back at 1653. In that year M. de Velayer, Maître des Requêtes in the French Court of Chancery, established an office close to the law courts, in pursuance of a Royal Decree of Louis XIV., authorising him to sell for two sous each, stamped slips of paper with the words printed on them, Port payé———— le———— jour du mois———— de l’an. The date of the privilege ceasing is not known; it was at M. de Velayer’s death. As regards modern postage stamps, Sir Rowland Hill, in 1838, gave the credit of them to Mr. Charles Knight; on the other hand, Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, claimed to have suggested them in 1834; and Mr. Charles Whiting, of Beauford House, Strand, in his evidence before the Postal Committee of 1838, stated that as early as 1830, he had proposed them to the Government for franking printed matter, and he exhibited several specimens to the Committee. Mr. Lewins, in Her Majesty’s Mail, does not take a correct view on this subject.

On the 23rd of August, 1839, the Lords of the Treasury offered to “all artists, men of science, and the public in general,” a premium of £500 for the best design of an envelope that should fulfil the double purpose of illustrating the universality of the new postal system, and of acting as a frank of the value of one penny. The premium was awarded to the late Mr. Mulready, R.A., but the appearance of the envelopes caused such fun, banter, and amusement, that they were withdrawn as soon as possible, and they are now extremely scarce. We hope we shall not be accused of one of the highest of crimes, if we mention a belief very current in 1840, that it was not to Mr. Mulready, but to a very exalted personage, that the authorship of the design should really have been attributed.

At the first institution of postage stamps, there were only two forms, black (very shortly afterwards changed to red), one penny; blue, twopence. There are now ten forms, the value of each of which varies from one penny to five shillings.

In France, in Switzerland, and in Belgium, in consequence of the cost of transmission of newspapers and other printed matter in those several countries being so low, there are postage stamps of the value of one centime, two, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and eighty, each. France has also postage stamps of the value of five francs (four shillings) each.

The number of stamps of different values circulating in the different countries of the civilised world that issue them (and there is hardly one such country that does not do so), is rather over 2,000. In case the reader should be travelling abroad, he may perhaps like to know what he must ask for, as the equivalent for the English compound word “Postage-Stamp.” If in France, Switzerland, or Belgium, the word is “Timbre-Poste;” if in Prussia proper or Sweden, “Freimarke;” Hamburg or Lubeck, “Postmarke;” Austria, “Post-Stempfel;” the territory that was Hanover, “Bestelgeld-frei;” Holland, “Post-zegel;” Italy, “Franco-bollo;” Spain, “Timbre (with the final e pronounced) de Posta.”

Timbromaniacs (so collectors of postage stamps are called), give employment, as we learn from the editor of the Every Boy’s Annual, for 1866, to a considerable number of persons who are especially engaged in the collection and sale of foreign stamps. These for the purposes of the trade are of two orders, the “maculate,” or those which have gone through the post, and the “immaculate,” or those which, if the owner were in the country to which they belong, would give free transmission to his letters, the adequate amount of stamps being fixed upon them. Some postage stamps have already become out of date, in consequence of the dominions in which they were issued having been absorbed in other kingdoms. Thus, in Italy, there are no longer the postage stamps issued in the former kingdom of Naples, or in the overthrown Grand Duchies of Tuscany, Parma, and Modena. (The last Stuart Queen of England, wife of James the Second, was the Princess Mary of Modena.) In 1866, Hanover, Frankfort, Nassau, and Electoral Hesse, having been seized by Prussia and absorbed into that kingdom, have ceased to issue postage stamps. The sovereign of the largest territorial possessions, since the time of Imperial Rome, Charles the V., of Spain, reigning also as Emperor over Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and the Netherlands, gave authority in or about 1540, to the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, to establish a line of posts from Vienna to Brussels; and the family of this House has, ever since, held special rights and privileges in relation to the postal systems of Germany, their posts being distinct from those appertaining to the Crown, in the kingdoms through which their rights extended. But these privileges absolutely ceased in the countries absorbed by Prussia in 1866, and negotiations have since been completed for the transfer to Prussia of the remaining postal rights of the princely house of Thurn and Taxis. Their cessation, however, will have no consequence as regards postage stamps, those of the Governments of the countries through which their privileges extended, only having been issued in them.