The railways generously permit a baby to be carried without charge; but not, it seems, without incurring responsibility. It has been lately decided, in “Austin v. the Great Western Railway Company,” 16 L. T. Rep., N. S., 320, that where a child in arms, not paid for as a passenger, is injured by an accident caused by negligence, the company is liable in damages under Lord Campbell’s Act. Three of the judges were clearly of opinion that the company had, by permitting the mother to take the child in her arms, contracted to carry safely both mother and child; and Blackburn, J., went still further, and was of opinion that, independently of any such contract, express or implied, the law cast upon the company a duty to use proper and reasonable care in carrying the child, though unpaid for. It may appear somewhat hard upon railway companies to incur liabilities through an act of liberality, but they have chosen to do so. The law is against them, that is clear; but they have the remedy in their own hands. There was some reason for exempting a child in arms, for it occupies no place in the carriage, and is but a trifling addition of weight. But now it is established that the company is responsible for the consequences of accident to that child, the company is clearly entitled to make such a charge as will secure them against the risk. The right course would be to have a tariff, say one-fifth or one-fourth of the full fare, for a child in arms; and if strict justice was done, this would be deducted from the fares of the passengers who have the ill-luck to face and flank the squaller.
—Law Times, 1867.
RAILROAD TRACKLAYER.
The railroad tracklayer is now working along regularly at the rate of a mile a day. The machine is a car 60 feet long and 10 feet wide. It has a small engine on board for handling the ties and rails. The ties are carried on a common freight car behind, and conveyed by an endless chain over the top of the machinery, laid down in their places on the track, and, when enough are laid, a rail is put down on each side in proper position and spiked down.
The tracklayer then advances, and keeps on its work until the load of ties and rails is exhausted, when other car loads are brought. The machine is driven ahead by a locomotive, and the work is done so rapidly that 60 men are required to wait on it, but they do more work than twice as many could do by the old system, and the work is done quite as well. The chief contractor of the road gives it as his opinion that when the machine is improved by making a few changes in the method of handling rails and ties it will be able to put down five or six miles per day. This will render it possible to lay down track twelve times as fast as the usual rate by hand, and it will do the work at less expense. The invention will be of immense importance to the country in connection with the Pacific railroad, which it was calculated could be built as fast as the track could be laid, and no faster; but hereafter the speed will be determined by the grading, which cannot advance more than five miles a day. Thirty millions of dollars have already been invested on the Pacific railroad, and if the time of completion is hastened one year by this tracklayer, as it will be if Central and Union Companies have money enough to grade each five miles a day, there will be a saving of three million dollars on interest alone on that one road.
—Alla California, 1868.
A GROWING LAD.
“This your boy, ma’am?” inquired a collector of a country woman, “he’s too big for a ’alf ticket.” “Oh, is he?” replied the mother. “Well, perhaps he is now, mister; but he wasn’t when he started. The train is ever so much behind time—has been so long on the road—and he’s a growing lad!”
FORGED TICKETS.
Attempts to defraud railway companies by means of forged tickets are seldom made, and still more seldom successful. In 1870, a man who lived in a toll-house near Dudley, and who rented a large number of tolls on the different turnpikes, in almost every part of the country,