As the engine is proceeding, the driver, who has not very many inches of standing-room, remains upon its narrow platform, while his fireman, on about the same space, stands close beside him on the tender. We tried the position. Everything, however, proved to be so hard, excepting the engine, which was both hard and hot, that we found it necessary to travel with one foot on the tender and the other on the engine, and, as the motion of each was very different, we felt as if each leg were galloping at a different stride. Nevertheless the Company’s drivers and firemen usually travel from 100 to 120 miles per day, performing six of these trips per week; nay, a few run 166 miles per day—for which they are paid eight days’ wages for six trips.
But to return to the engine which we just left in the engine-house. As soon as the driver has carefully examined it, and has recorded in a book the report we have described, the “foreman of the fitters” comes to it, and examines it all over again; and if anything is found out of order which, on reference to the book, the driver has not reported, the latter is reported by the former for his negligence. A third examination is made by Mr. Walker, the chief superintending engineer of the station, a highly intelligent and valuable servant of the Company, who has charge of the repairs of the locomotive department between Camden and Tring. If HE detects any defect that has escaped the notice not only of the driver, but of the foreman of the fitters, woe betide them both!
While the engine, with several workmen screwing and hammering at it, is undergoing the necessary repairs, we will consider for a moment a subject to which Englishmen always attach considerable importance, namely, its victuals and drink, or, in other words, its coke and water. There is at Camden Station a coke-factory composed of eighteen ovens, nine on each side, in which coal after being burnt for about fifty hours gives nearly two-thirds of its quantity of coke. These ovens produce about 20 tons of coke per day; but, as 50 tons per day are required for the Camden Station alone, the remaining 30 tons are brought by rail all the way from Newcastle. Indeed, with the exception of fifty ovens at Peterborough, the whole of the coke required annually for the London and North-Western Railway, amounting to 112,500 tons, of an average value of 1l. per ton, comes from the Northern Coal-fields. For some time there were continual quarrels between the coke suppliers and receivers, the former declaring that the Company’s waggons had been despatched from the North as soon as loaded, and the latter complaining that they had been unnecessarily delayed. A robin-redbreast settled the dispute, for, on unloading one of the waggons immediately on its arrival at Camden Station, her tiny nest with three eggs in it minutely explained that the waggon had not been despatched as soon as loaded.
In order to obtain an ample supply of water for their engines, the Company at considerable expense sank at Camden an Artesian well 10 feet in diameter and 140 feet deep. The produce of this well, pumped by a high-pressure steam-engine of 27-horsepower into two immense cisterns 110 feet above the rails at Euston Square, supplies all the Camden Station, all the Company’s houses adjoining, the whole of the Euston Station, as well as the Victoria and Euston Hotels, with most beautiful clear water; and yet—though every man who drinks it or who shaves with it admires it, and though every lady who makes tea with it certifies that it is particularly well adapted for that purpose—strange to say, it disagrees so dreadfully with the stomachs of the locomotive engines—(who would ever suspect them to be more delicate than our own?)—that the Company have been obliged, at great inconvenience and cost, to obtain water for them elsewhere. The boilers of the locomotives were not only chemically liable to be incrusted with a deposition of the unusual quantity of soda contained in the Artesian-well water at Camden Station; but, not even waiting for this inconvenience, the engine without metaphor spit it out—ejecting it from the boiler with the steam through the funnel-pipe, a well-known misfortune termed by engineers “priming.”
As much time would be required for each travelling engine to get up its steam ab initio, a coke-furnace has been constructed at Camden Station to hasten the operation. Here nine men during the day, and the same number throughout the night, are continually employed to heat coke, which by means of iron shovels is to be delivered red-hot into the engines’ furnaces.
These preparations having been made, the driver’s duties are as follows:—
On leaving the shed in the morning the engine, after having been heated at the coke-furnace, is conducted on to a great turn-table 40 feet in diameter, which twists it towards a set of rails leading to the water-crane, where it imbibes at one draught about a thousand gallons of cold water, which, under ordinary circumstances, will enable it to draw its train about 40 miles; although in slippery weather, when the wheels revolve on, instead of along, the rails, it of course would not carry it so far. It then proceeds to the coke-shed, an enclosure 210 feet by 45 feet, capable of holding 1500 tons, for its proper supply of coke, namely, 1 ton—a goods-engine usually devouring 2½ tons.
The driver, leaving his engine in charge of his fireman, now proceeds to the office, where he signs his name in a book, the object being that it may be observed whether or not he is perfectly sober. From the chief clerk he receives his coke and time ticket, upon which, at every station, he has to record whatever time he may have lost up to that point; and when his chronometer is wound up, and set to the proper time, he is then considered to be ready for his journey.
The gigantic power of the locomotive engines hourly committed to the charge of these drivers was lately strangely exemplified in the large engine-stable at the Camden Station. A passenger-engine, whose furnace-fire had but shortly been lighted, was standing in this huge building surrounded by a number of artificers, who, in presence of the chief superintendent, were working in various directions around it. While they were all busily occupied, the fire in the furnace, by burning up faster than was expected, suddenly imparted to the engine the breath of life; and no sooner had the minimum of steam necessary to move it been thus created, than this infant Hercules not only walked off, but without the smallest embarrassment walked through the 14-inch brick wall of the great building which contained it, to the terror of the superintendent and workmen, who expected every instant that the roof above their heads would fall in and extinguish them! In consequence of the spindle of the regulator having got out of its socket, the very same accident occurred shortly afterwards with another engine, which, in like manner, walked through another portion of this 14-inch wall of the stable that contained it, just as a thorough-bred horse would have walked out of the door. And if such be the irresistible power of the locomotive engine when feebly walking in its newborn state, unattended or unassisted even by its tender, is it not appalling to reflect what must be its momentum when, in the full vigour of its life, it is flying down a steep gradient at the rate of 50 miles an hour, backed up by say 30 passenger-carriages, each weighing on an average 5½ tons? If ordinary houses could suddenly be placed on its path, it would, passengers and all, run through them as a musket-ball goes through a keg of butter; but what would be the result if, at this full speed, the engine by any accident were to be diverted against a mass of solid rock, such as sometimes is to be seen at the entrance of a tunnel, it is almost impossible to calculate, or even to conjecture. It is stated by the Company’s superintendent, who witnessed the occurrence, that some time ago, an ordinary accident happening to a luggage-train near Loughborough, the waggons overrode each other until the uppermost one was found piled 40 feet above the rails!
At Camden Station there are every day five spare or pilot engines, with their steam up, ready for assisting a train up the incline, or for any special purposes that may be required.