Sir G. Hayter, R.A.] [From the Print published by Messrs. Graves.
HER MAJESTY TAKING THE OATH ON HER ACCESSION.
Sixty years ago! It is the second and third generation from that time which now cries “God save the Queen! Long live Victoria!” Never before in the history of our nation has it fallen to the lot of any historian to tell the story of such a long reign, to chronicle such unbroken national progress, to trace such a series of peaceful changes, to record such accumulation of wealth and diffusion of comfort in a like period.
Sixty years ago! The population of these islands was then some twenty-five millions; it amounts now to upwards of thirty-eight millions. |Early Railways.| The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, about thirty miles long, had been open for eight years, causing far-sighted folk to predict an important change in the mode of travelling. The Liverpool and Birmingham Railway was opened in the year of the Queen’s accession. In 1838 the line between London and Birmingham was finished, and trains were timed to do the distance—112¼ miles—at the average speed of twenty miles an hour. The London and Croydon Railway began running in 1839, and in 1840 there were 838 miles of railway open in the United Kingdom. At the present time there are 20,000 miles open, owned by companies which in 1894 had an authorised capital of £1,099,013,785, earning a gross revenue of £84,310,831, and a net profit of £37,102,518.
STEPHENSON’S LOCOMOTIVE, “THE ROCKET.”
This engine was constructed by Messrs. Stephenson & Co. in 1829, to compete in the trial of locomotive engines held at Rainhill, on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in October of that year, where it gained the prize of £500. The “Rocket” worked on the Liverpool and Manchester line till 1837, when it was removed to the Midgeholm Railway, near Carlisle. It ceased running in 1843–4, and was presented to the South Kensington Museum in 1862.
In order to convey the impressions of an educated traveller by the new mode of transit, the temptation to quote once more from the lively Greville is irresistible. In July 1837 he became tired of hearing nothing in London except about the Queen and the coming elections, so he resolved to see the new Birmingham and Liverpool Railway. Reaching Birmingham in 12½ hours by coach, he “got upon the railroad at half-past seven in the morning. Nothing can be more comfortable than the vehicle in which I was put, a sort of chariot with two places, and there is nothing disagreeable about it but the occasional whiffs of stinking air which it is impossible to exclude altogether. The first sensation is a slight degree of nervousness and a feeling of being run away with, but a sense of security soon supervenes, and the velocity is delightful.”
The “velocity” referred to was regulated to an average of about twenty miles an hour; but the diarist makes mention of a foolhardy driver who ventured to run forty miles an hour, and was promptly dismissed by the directors.
