While the travellers of a train are peacefully taking their seats, artillery-men, horses, and cannon, on a contiguous set of rails, are occasionally as quietly embarking in carriages, horse-boxes, and trucks, which are subsequently hooked on to a mass of passengers perfectly unconscious of the elements of war which are accompanying them.
As a departing railway-train, like a vessel sailing out of harbour, proceeds on its course, its rate rapidly increases, until, in a very short time, it has attained its full speed, and men of business are then intently reading the “City news,” and men of pleasure the leading article of their respective newspapers, when this runaway street of passengers—men, women, and children—unexpectedly find themselves in sudden darkness, visible only by a feeble and hitherto unappreciated lamp, which, like the pale moon after a fiery sunset, modestly shines over their head. By this time the boarded platform at Euston Station, but a few minutes ago so densely thronged with passengers, is completely deserted. The lonely guard on duty, every footstep resounding as he walks, paces along it like a sentinel. The newspaper-vendors, sick unto death of the news they had been vaunting, are indolently reclining at their stalls; even the boy who sells ‘Punch’ is half asleep; and there is nothing to break the sober dulness of the scene but a few clerks and messengers, who, like rabbits popping from one hole of their warren into another, enter upon the platform from the door of one office to hurry into that of the next. In a few minutes, however, the loud puffing of an engine announces the approach towards the platform of a string of empty carriages, which are scarcely formed into the next departure train, when vehicles of all descriptions are again to be seen in our most public thoroughfares concentrating upon the focus of Euston Square; and thus, with a certain alleviation on Sundays, this strange feverish admixture of confusion and quietness, of society and solitude, continues intermittently from ¼ past 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. during every day in the week, every week in the month, and every month in the year.
The Up Train.
The out-train having been despatched, we must now beg our readers to be so good as to walk, or rather to scramble, with us from the scene of its departure across five sets of rails, on which are lying, like vessels at anchor in a harbour, crowds of railway-carriages preparing to depart, to the opposite platform, in order to witness the arrival of an incoming train. This platform, for reasons which will shortly appear, is infinitely longer than that for the departure trains. It is a curve 900 feet in length, lighted by day from above with plate-glass, and at night by 67 large gas-lamps suspended from above, or affixed to the iron pillars that support the metallic net-worked roof. Upon this extensive platform scarcely a human being is now to be seen; nevertheless along its whole length it is bounded on the off-side by an interminable line of cabs, intermixed with private carriages of all shapes, gigs, dog-carts, and omnibuses, the latter standing opposite to little ugly black-faced projecting boards, which by night as well as by day are always monotonously exclaiming, “Holborn—Fleet Street—and Cheapside!”—“Oxford Street—Regent Street—and Charing Cross!” &c.
In this motley range of vehicles, smart coachmen, tall pale powdered footmen, and splendid horses are strangely contrasted with the humble but infinitely faster conveyance—the common cab. Most of the drivers of these useful machines, strange to say, are absent; the remainder are either lolling on benches, or, in various attitudes, dozing on their boxes. Their horses, which are generally well-bred, and whose bent knees and fired hocks proclaim the good services they have performed, stand ruminating with a piece of sacking across their loins, or with nose-bags, often empty—until for some reason a carriage before them leaves their line: in which case, notwithstanding the absence of their drivers and regardless of all noises, they quietly advance along the edge of the little precipice which bounds the rails. They there know quite well what they are waiting for, and have no desire to move. Indeed, it is a Pickwickian fact, well known to cab-drivers, that their horses travel unwillingly from the station, but always pull hard coming back, simply because it is during the waiting-time at Euston Station that their nose-bags are put on—or, in other words, that they are fed.
We may here observe that there are sixty-five selected cabmen who have the entrée to the platform, and who, quamdiù se bene gesserint, are allowed exclusively to work for the Company, whose name is painted on their cabs. If more than these are required, a porter calls them from a line of supplicant cabs standing in the adjacent street. Close to each departure-gate there is stationed a person whose duty it is to write down in a book the number of each cabman carrying away a passenger, as well as the place to which he is conveying him, which two facts each driver is required to exclaim as he trots by; and thus any traveller desirous to complain of a cabman, or who may have left any property in a carriage from Euston Station, has only to state on what day and by what train he arrived, also whither he was conveyed, and from these data the driver’s name can at any lapse of time be readily ascertained.
But our attention is suddenly claimed by something of infinitely more importance than a passenger’s luggage: for that low unearthly whine within the small signal-office behind the line of cabs and carriages requires immediate explanation.
The variety of unforeseen accidents that might occur by the unwelcome arrival of an unexpected or even of an expected passenger-train at the great terminus of the London and North-Western Railway are so obvious that it has been deemed necessary to take the following precautions.
As soon as the reeking engine-funnel of an up-train is seen darting out of the tunnel at Primrose Hill, one of the Company’s servants stationed there, who deals solely in compressed air—or rather, who has an hydraulic machine for condensing it—allows a portion to rush through an inch iron pipe; and he thus instantaneously produces in the little signal-office on the up-platform of Euston Station, where there is always a signal-man watching by night as well as by day, that loud melancholy whine which has just arrested our attention, and which will continue to moan uninterruptedly for five minutes:—
“Hic vasto rex Æolus antro