TURNTABLE FOR THE ENGINE AND TENDER.
The locomotive, with its tender, is five feet long and about eighteen inches in height. It is of six-inch gauge, and is an exact duplicate on a small scale of an express of the London and North-Western Railway. It is a real working locomotive, most exquisitely made. The only points in which it differs from its model are such as come from its comparatively diminutive size. Thus, its boiler has not the usual number of tubes, it has no injector, and steam is got up in it by a charcoal fire, the charcoal being kept at a great heat by a "blast."
SNAP-SHOT OF THE TRAIN EN ROUTE.
The cost of the engine and tender was £320 or a little more, and it was made entirely by Mr. Lucas, of Lucas and Davies. It took him nearly nine months to complete it, but from this period there would have to be deducted a good many hours when he was called away to attend to some other piece of business for his firm. And here I may remark that it took eighteen months to build the line, five months of which were occupied in fitting up the large room already mentioned.
The speed of the train on the straight portions of the line is six miles an hour, but it is considerably less on the curves at either end, which are twenty-six feet in diameter. The contractors experienced a great deal of difficulty in getting the curves exactly right, as the six-inch gauge of the railway, no other line being of any assistance in this particular, introduced an entirely new problem in railroad construction. The engine can travel six times round the entire length of the system without its being necessary to renew the charcoal fire.
DEEP CUTTING, FORTY FEET LONG.
There are both a passenger train and a goods train. The former consists of three carriages and a guard's van. One carriage is a first-class corridor, a second is a third-class corridor, and the third is a composite first-class and third-class carriage. Each of them is fitted with the usual upholstered seats found in compartments belonging to their classification; there are hat racks and blinds, mirrors and lavatories and so forth in every carriage; there are carpets, too, on the floors of the first-class. The guard's van has not been neglected, but in its dog-boxes and other appointments is a facsimile of the vans that go out daily from Euston. As a matter of fact, the whole train is panelled and painted throughout in the familiar colours of the London and North-Western Railway. The carriages are mounted on bogies, and have been completely equipped with carriage springs, grease boxes for the axles, spring buffers, draw-bars and screw couplings right and left. The two corridor carriages have the proper extending covered ways.
The goods train is quite as remarkable in its way as every other part of this railway. It is composed of ten trucks and vans, and has besides a guard's brake-van fitted with a screw-down brake of the usual sort. There are two high-side trucks, four medium, and two low; two covered-in vans and two cattle trucks, and, if a glance be taken at the illustration which exhibits the goods train most completely, it will be noticed that all of these trucks and vans are loaded with appropriate articles of freight—logs of wood, slates, casks of beer, marble, and other things, while the two bullock wagons are filled with animals.