Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

It is not to be supposed that going through the air at the rate of between forty and fifty miles an hour is disagreeable. It is not so, unless the weather be severe and trying; but in fine, and especially warm weather, the rapid movement creates a feeling of much pleasure and enjoyment. It is only when amateurs do not travel on railway engines that the real hardships of locomotive driving can be appreciated; of late years, however, the little wooden fencing, with oval glass window on each side, the whole technically called a “cab,” gives an amount of protection which materially lessens hardship in inclement weather.

It may be considered, as a general rule, that there are on an average, twelve men employed on each mile of railway in the United Kingdom. Taking the present length of railways as 14,300 miles,[73] this would make the number about 172,000. Of course on many of the railways, especially on those opened in recent years, which are single lines, and run through districts where the population is sparse and the trains infrequent, there is nothing like that average number employed. But, on the other hand, the unceasing increase of business, especially in goods and mineral traffic, on all the leading railways that connect important places together, necessitates continued increase of staff; hence it is that the number of men directly employed is very nearly the same per mile as it was seven or eight-and-twenty years ago.

The engine drivers and firemen constitute about a twelfth of the total staff of railway companies.

One of the oldest railways guide books published, gives exact directions how to arrive at Euston Station from other parts of the town, and we are told to take special notice of the “Grand Facade at Euston Grove.” The centre of it is the Doric portico built by Hardwich, used by nobody, which, however, cost shareholders no less than £40,000. No wonder, seeing that it contains not less than 75,000 cubic feet of Yorkshire freestone, several of the blocks of which, weighed upwards of thirteen tons each.

Passing by, but not through this massive portal, we arrive at the actual station, and thence at the platform, whence, in the magnificent language of penny-a-lining,[74] we are so shortly to be “hurled along through the atmosphere at singularly rapid—it might almost be said marvellously terrific speed of forty-five miles an hour.” Not being historiographers for Mr. Frith, R.A., we do not intend to give any account of the persons whom he truly, but not with such intense artistic effect as in the “Derby Day,” depicts, as those who fill a railway platform just before a train is starting. We must therefore not say anything of the unconscious or indifferent old gentleman, who so placidly reads his newspaper, within six inches of the two broad-brimmed detectives, one of whom dangles the “bracelets” into the view of the foiled and agonised culprit, compelled to convert an intended migration into forced residence in Newgate. We must also leave unrecorded about heaving porters, rushing guards, precipitous newsboys, friends parting—some with lurking tears, some with tears more open—some with scarce suppressed pleasure and fervent hope, as they affectionately squeeze each other’s hands, that they may never meet again, at all events on this side of Jordan; all these must we pass by, that we may show to the engine driver and his “mate” the order, which gives us the privilege of placing ourselves, with them, on the footplate of the engine.

There she is—manacled with harness that Vulcan presided at the forging of—smoke-vomiting, steam-emitting, snorting, bubbling inside, grunting, growling—hissing too, with an intensity equal to the combined and concentrated hissing of ten thousand offended and irritated cats, additioned with the hissing of at least the like number of angry birds, the hissing of one of which was enough to save from capture Roman Capitol, ancient Rome’s strongest fortress, 365 years after Roman City had been created.

Every passenger is seated, the door of every carriage has received its last bang[75] at closing, even the inevitable last man has rushed in, panting and breathless, and has been shoved with main force, by at least a dozen sturdy porters, into a compartment. This last man is as inevitable as the dog at Epsom Races on the Derby Day, or any other incident of life, the absence of which is so impossible, that life could not go on without it. There always is—there always must be—a last man; inexorable fate has so decided. Then it is that the gentleman in the braided green coat, with—as a further mark of distinction from other officials—a hat on, gracefully and graciously, with becoming dignity, yet withal not pompously, in short, exactly as befits a railway official of authority, weight, and consequence, waves a white flag which he has just received from an official of humbler grade standing beside him, once up, once down, and once more up again. He waves no more; the before-mentioned humbler official receiving the flag staff from his dignified chief, carefully folds it up, that it may be in readiness for precisely the same ceremony at the departure of each subsequent train; the chief (still dignified) gives a vade-valeque motion of his right hand, the guard sounds his whistle, and all the bustle, life, excitement, and animation of ten minutes by-gone have as completely vanished, as if they had never existed.

The engine has no sooner, by the slight movement of the “regulator” which the driver gently handles, received a first injection of steam into her cylinders than she starts into motion as a thing of life, with a weight behind her of not less than from 100 to 150 tons. The slow pace at starting is gradually increased, but she has scarcely passed the limit of the station when she is taught the lesson of life, which even the most favoured learn—that it is with her as with man, it is uphill work, at all events in its early stages, for in the first mile and a quarter she has to ascend the stiffest hill in her whole journey, “1 in 80,” Camden being just a hundred feet higher than Euston. Bury’s “four-wheelers,” the dii maximi of railway engine power in 1810, were so weak that they could not bring a train, the weight of which was not a quarter of one of a modern date, up the “Euston incline” without the friendly aid of ropes worked by two fixed engines of high power, and two very high chimneys, at Camden. But the chimneys have long since disappeared, and the engines are doing good service in some other place belonging to the Company’s gigantic establishments. The engine and train emerge from the Primrose tunnel to hide themselves in a minute or two afterwards in that of Kilburn, and as they pass the station of that name, the reader may be reminded it was there that Dick Turpin began his ride to York, on Black Bess, 130 years ago[76]. Had it been mail horses of the olden time their run to Wimbledon (seven miles from Euston) would have completed their present journey, and they would have rested until they were harnessed to the “up mail,” and having brought it to London, their work of twenty-four hours would have been completed. But at seven miles from its starting point the iron horse would not have been more than four or five minutes at full running pace; three minutes in time and two miles in distance bring time-honoured Harrow in sight, “on the hill,” for its church is noticable from every point of the compass, and it was of it that Charles II. said, during a theological discussion in his presence, “the true visible church, as it could be seen everywhere.” Of its school,[77] founded in 1571 by John of Lyon, but one momentary view is obtained, and that is only as a day train darts along the valley that leads to Watford. The three most distinguished men of modern times who have received their education there have been Peel, Palmerston, and Byron.[78]

The northern extremity of the long Watford tunnel, twenty miles from London, is reached just thirty-three minutes from the time of starting; yet it has been climbing work all the while, and the climbing work continues still farther to Tring, eleven miles more distant from London; but the hill is not so steep as it was at starting. Long it is; but Tring is, nevertheless, only some 750 feet higher than Euston, and some 350 feet higher than the top of the cross of the noblest Protestant Church in the world—St. Paul’s. Has the engine felt it? Not she. She has only shown that she knows the difference between a gradient of 1 in 80 and 1 in 300, by the bound she made into higher speed, as, escaping from the stiffer incline, she dashed on to more level ground through the Points of Camden.