Stokers and pokers

by Sir Francis Bond Head

The way, under Providence, to protect the public from avoidable accidents on railways is, utterly regardless of expense, to construct the rails, sleepers, locomotive-engines, and carriages of the very best materials, carefully put together by the best workmen; and then to intrust the maintenance of the line to engineers and other men of science of the highest attainments, assisted by a corps of able-bodied guards, pointsmen, and policemen, all sober, vigilant, active, intelligent, and honest.

Now it is highly satisfactory to reflect that every one of the above costly precautions, as well as all others of a similar nature which a paternal government could reasonably desire to enforce, are as conducive to the real interests of the proprietors of a railway as they are to the safety of those who travel on it; for even supposing that the Directors take no pride in maintaining the character of the national thoroughfare committed to their charge—that, reckless of human life, they care for nothing but their own pockets—a railway accident summarily inflicts upon their purses the same description of punishment instantaneously awarded to a man who carelessly runs his head against a post. For instance, only a few weeks ago a ballast-train on the London and North-Western Railway having stopped for a moment, a goods-train behind it ran into it. No one was hurt excepting the Company—who suffered a loss of 4000l. by the collision. Independent, therefore, of the heavy damages readily awarded by juries to any one hurt by a railway accident, the injuries self-inflicted by the Company on their own costly engines, carriages, &c., are most serious in amount, to say nothing of the almost incalculable embarrassment they may create: indeed, taking into fair consideration the costly results which have occurred to our railway companies by the dislocation of a bolt, the unscrewing of a little nut, or from a variety of other causes equally trifling, it may, we believe, be truly said that the punishments which railway companies have received from accidents have, generally speaking, exceeded rather than fallen short of their offences; and thus every intelligent board of directors is aware that safety in travelling is more emphatically for the interest of railway proprietors than any other consideration whatever: in short, that there is nothing more expensive to a railway Company than an accident.

It being evident, therefore, that it is as much for the interests of railway proprietors as of railway travellers that every possible precaution should be taken by the Company to prevent accidents, we have now to observe that to attain all the necessary securities there is but one thing needful—namely, MONEY. With it Her Majesty’s Government might conscientiously undertake the serious responsibility of prescribing all that Science could administer for the safety of the public. Without money, what government or what individual who had any character to lose could for a moment undertake that which his judgment would clearly admonish him to be utterly impracticable? Now, if this reasoning be correct, the managers of our arterial railways were certainly justified in expecting that, if the Government required them to take every possible precaution to ensure safe travelling, they would, as a matter of course, assist them in obtaining the same means which they themselves would require had they to effect the same object—namely, MONEY. But instead of endeavouring to obtain for railway companies these means—or rather, instead of enabling them to retain the means which, under their respective Acts of Parliament, they already legally possessed of purchasing security for the public, Parliament, in compliance with a popular outcry for cheap travelling, deemed it advisable to require from railways a reduction of the tolls necessary to ensure SAFE travelling.

To any one who will carefully observe the practical working of a railway, it is not only alarming, but appalling, to reflect on the accidents which sooner or later must befall the public if the master-mind which directs the whole concern, but which cannot possibly illuminate the darkness of every one of its details, were suddenly to be deprived of the talisman by which alone he can govern a lineal territory four or five hundred miles in length—namely, an abundant supply of MONEY. Parliament may thunder—Government may threaten—juries may punish—the public may rave; but if the fustian-clad workmen who put together the 5416 pieces of which a locomotive engine is composed are insufficiently paid—if the wages of the pointsmen, enginemen, and police be reduced to that of common labourers—if cheap materials are connected together by scamped workmanship—the black eyes, bloody noses, fractured limbs, mangled corpses of the public, will emphatically proclaim, as clearly as the hopper of a mill, the emptiness of the exchequer. So long as the manager of a railway has ample funds he ought to be prepared, regardless of expense, to repair with the utmost possible despatch the falling-in of a tunnel or any other serious accident to the works—in short, the whole powers of his mind should be directed to the paramount interests of the public, which, in fact, are identical with those of the Company. But if he has no funds—or, what is infinitely more alarming, in case, from want of funds, the impoverished proprietors of the railway shall have angrily elected in his stead the representative of an ignorant, ruinous, and narrow-minded policy—how loudly would the public complain—how severely would our commercial interests suffer, if, on the occurrence to the works of any of the serious accidents to which we have alluded, the new Ruler were to be afraid even to commence any repairs until he should have been duly authorised by his newly-elected economical colleagues to haggle and extract from a number of contractors the cheapest tender!

But we fear it would not be difficult to show that, in reducing the established rates of our great railways before their works were completed, Parliament has unintentionally legislated upon erroneous principles. For instance, we have already explained that the profit of a railway depends upon the amount of the population and goods which flow upon it from the towns it taps. If, therefore, the traffic on an arterial line be but moderately remunerative, it must be evident that a branch line must be an unprofitable concern—unless, indeed, the company be authorized to levy upon it higher tolls than are sufficient on the trunk line. When, therefore, in the rapid development of our great national railway system it was found necessary for the accommodation of a fraction of the public to apply to Parliament for powers to make these unremunerating branch lines, the companies were certainly in theory entitled to expect the extra assistance we have explained;—instead of which they were practically informed that, unless they would consent to LOWER their tolls altogether, they would not be allowed to develop their system by the construction of any branch line; which is as if a tenant were to say to his landlord—“If you incur the expense of making convenient bye-roads to my farm to enable me with facility to take my crops to market, you must lower my rent.”

As it is undeniable that exorbitant rates, besides being inconvenient to the public, are highly injurious to the real interests of railway proprietors—indeed we have shown how enormously the traffic of the country has been increased by low charges—we would be fully disposed, not only most strongly to recommend, but, as far as it may be legal, to enforce, that salutary principle; but the insuperable difficulty of at present adjusting the proper tolls to be levied on the public is, that no arterial railway in Great Britain can either declare in figures, or even verbally explain, the real state of its ultimate expenditure and receipts, for the sole reason, namely, that the enterprise is not yet worked out, and that no man breathing can foretell what are to be its limits.

What has become, we ask, of the old London and Birmingham Railway (born only in 1836)—of the Grand Junction Railway—of the Manchester and Birmingham—the Liverpool and Manchester Railways—and of a score of others we could name? What has become of the civil, or rather uncivil, war which all these companies waged against each other; as well as against Messrs. Pickford, the most powerful carriers in the world? They have all lost the independence they respectively occupied, and, like the ingredients cast by Macbeth’s witches “i’ th’ charmed pot,” they have “boiled,” or, as it is now-a-days termed, amalgamated, into one great stock; and while this long continuous arterial line has been drawing from the public for goods and passenger traffic considerable receipts, it has been, and at various localities still is, draining its own life-blood by the forced construction of a number of sucking branch-lines, which, as far as we can see, are not likely ever to be remunerative.

For some time railway companies deemed it their interest to compete against each other, but this ruinous system was gradually abandoned and is now reversed. The two lines from London to Peterborough, after competing for several months, now divide their profits. The two lines to Edinburgh will probably ere long do the same. But besides this transmutation of competition into combination, public notice was lately given that three of the large arterial lines, namely, the Great Western, the South-Western, and the London and North-Western, were meditating an amalgamation of their respective stocks into one vast concern. On this important project, which for the present has been abandoned, we will offer a very few observations.

We believe it may be affirmed, without fear of contradiction, that the working details of a railway are invariably well executed in proportion to their magnitude:—that, for instance, in the management of the London and North-Western Railway the arrival and departure of trains are better regulated at their large stations than at their small;—that their great manufactories are better and more economically conducted than their little ones;—that the arrangements of Messrs. Pickford and of Messrs. Chaplin and Horne are better at Camden Town than at the small outlying stations;—in short, we most distinctly observed that wherever there was an enormous amount of important business to be transacted, there were invariably to be found assembled superior talents, superior workmen, superior materials; and that, on the other hand, at small and secluded localities, where little work was performed, inferior men, inferior waggons, horses, &c., were employed.

In the old system of travelling it was safer to drive along a lonely road than through crowded streets; old horses as well as old drivers were deemed safer than young ones; in fact, the more the traveller was impeded, the less dangerous was his journey. But on our railways, when once a man has tied himself to the tail of a locomotive engine, it matters but little, especially in a fog, whether he flies at the pace of fifty miles an hour, or whether he crawls, as it is now termed, at the rate only of twenty; for, in either case, if there be anything faulty in the works, machinery, or management, accidents may occur to him which it is fearful to contemplate.