Awpo-taw, said he, twirling his watch-key, wen dyou expect anotha twain to take us on?
Dont know, sir, probably half-an-hour.
Aw! Dooced awkwad. My fwend has got the bwidge of his nose damaged, besides some sort of internal injuway, and wont be able to attend to business to-night, I feardooced awkwad.
Dyou hear that? whispered Sharp to Gurwood, as the fwend in questionhe with the checked trouserssauntered past holding a handkerchief to his nose. I know by the way in which that was said that there will be something more heard some day hence of our fop in checks. Just come and stand with me in the doorway of the waiting-room, and listen to what some of the other passengers are saying.
Very hard, observed a middle-aged man with a sour countenance, who did not present the appearance of one who had sustained any injury at all, very hard this. I shall miss meeting with a friend, and perhaps lose doin a good stroke of business to-night.
Be thankful you havent lost your life, said Will Garvie, who supported the head of his injured mate.
Mayhap I have lost my life, young man, replied the other sharply. Internal injuries from accidents often prove fatal, and dont always show at first. Ive had a severe shake.
Here the sour-faced man shook himself slightly, partly to illustrate and partly to prove his point.
Youre quite right, sur, remarked an Irishman, who had a bandage tied round his head, but who did not appear to be much, if at all, the worse of the accident. Its a disgrace intirely that the railways should be allowed to trait us in this fashion. If theyd only go to the trouble an expense of havin proper signals on lines, there would be nothing o this kind. And if Government would make a law to have an arm-chair fitted up in front of every locomotive and a director made to travel with sich train, wed hear of fewer accidents. But its meself ll come down on em for heavy damages for this.
He pointed to his bandaged head, and nodded with a significant glance at the company.
A gentleman in a blue travelling-cap, who had hitherto said nothing, and who turned out to have received severer injuries than any other passenger, here looked up impatiently, and said
It appears to me that there is a great deal of unjust and foolish talk against railway companies, as if they, any more than other companies, could avoid accidents. The system of signalling on a great part of this line is the best that has been discovered up to this date, and it is being applied to the whole line as fast as circumstances will warrant; but you cant expect to attain perfection in a day. What would you have? How can you expect to travel at the rate you do, and yet be as safe as if you were in one of the old mail-coaches?
Right, sir; youre right, cried John Marrot energetically, raising himself a little from the bench on which he lay, right in sayin we shouldnt ought to expect parfection, but wrong in supposin the old mail-coaches was safer. Wy, railways is safer. They wont stand no comparison. Here ave I bin drivin on this ere line for the last eight year an only to come to grief three times, an killed no more than two people. There aint a old coach goin, or gone, as could say as much. An wen you come to consider that in them eight years Ive bin goin more than two-thirds o the time at an average o forty mile an houroff an onall night amost as well as all day, an run thousands and thousands o miles, besides carryin millions of passengers, more or less, it do seem most rediklous to go for to say that coaches was safer than railwaysthe revarse bein the truth. Turn me round a bit, Bill; so, thatll do. Its the bad leg I come down on, else I shouldnt have bin so hard-up. Yes, sir, as you truly remark, railway companies aint fairly dealt with, by no means.
At this point the attention of the passengers was attracted by a remarkably fat woman, who had hitherto lain quietly on a couch breathing in a somewhat stertorous manner. One of the medical men had been so successful in his attention to her as to bring her to a state of consciousness. Indeed she had been more or less in this condition for some time past, but feeling rather comfortable than otherwise, and dreamy, she had lain still and enjoyed herself. Being roused, however, to a state of activity by means of smelling-salts, and hearing the doctor remark that, except a shaking, she appeared to have sustained no injury, this stout woman deemed it prudent to go off into hysterics, and began by uttering a yell that would have put to shame a Comanchee Indian, and did more damage, perhaps, to the nerves of her sensitive hearers than the accident itself. She followed it up by drumming heavily on the couch with her heels.
Singularly enough her yell was replied to by the whistle of the up train, that had been due for some time past. She retorted by a renewed shriek, and became frantic in her assurances that no power yet discoveredwhether mechanical, moral, or otherwisecould or would, ever persuade her to set foot again in a railway train! It was of no use to assure her that no one meant to exert such a power, even if he possessed it; that she was free to go where she pleased, and whenever she felt inclined. The more that stout woman was implored to compose herself, the more she discomposed herself, and everybody else; and the more she was besought to be calm, the more, a great deal, did she fill the waiting-room with hysterical shrieks and fiendish laughter, until at last every one was glad to go out of the place and get into the train that was waiting to take them back to Clatterby. Then the stout woman became suddenly calm, and declared to a porterwho must have had a heart of stone, so indifferent was he to her woesthat she would be, glad to proceed to the nearest otel if e would be good enough to fetch her a fly.
Hm! said Mr Sharp, as he and young Gurwood entered a carriage together, after having seen John Marrot placed on a pile of rugs on the floor of a first-class carriage; theres been work brewin up for me to-night.
How? What do you mean? asked Edwin.
I mean that, from various indications which I observed this evening, we are likely to have some little correspondence with the passengers of the 6:30 p.m. train. However, were used to it; perhaps well get not to mind it in course of time. We do all that we can to accommodate the publicfit up our carriages and stations in the best style compatible with giving our shareholders a small dividendcarry them to and fro over the land at little short of lightning speed, every day and all day and night too, for extremely moderate fares, and with excessive safety and exceeding comfort; enable them to live in the country and do business in the city, as well as afford facilities for visiting the very ends of the earth in a few days; not to mention other innumerable blessings to which we run them, or which we run to them, and yet no sooner does a rare accident occur (as it will occur in every human institution, though it occurs less on railways than in most other institutions) than down comes this ungrateful public upon us with indignant cries of disgraceful! and, in many cases, unreasonable demands for compensation.
Such is life, said Gurwood with a smile.
On the rail, added Mr Superintendent Sharp with a sigh, as the whistle sounded and the train moved slowly out of the station.
Chapter Six.
History of the Iron Horse
Having gone thus far in our tale, permit us, good reader, to turn aside for a little to make a somewhat closer inspection of the Iron Horse and his belongings.
Having gone thus far in our tale, permit us, good reader, to turn aside for a little to make a somewhat closer inspection of the Iron Horse and his belongings.
Railways existed long before the Iron Horse was born. They sprang into being two centuries ago in the form of tramways, which at first were nothing more or less than planks or rails of timber laid down between the Newcastle-on-Tyne collieries and the river, for the purpose of forming a better way over which to run the coal-trucks. From simple timber-rails men soon advanced to planks having a strip of iron nailed on their surface to prevent too rapid tear and wear, but it was not till the year 1767 that cast-iron rails were introduced. In order to prevent the trucks from slipping off the line the rails were cast with an upright flange or guide at one side, and were laid on wooden or stone sleepers.
This form of rail being found inconvenient, the flange was transferred from the rails to the wheels, and this arrangement, under various modifications has been ever since retained.
These innocent railroadsas they have been sometimes and most appropriately named, seeing that they were guiltless alike of blood and high speedwere drawn by horses, and confined at first to the conveyance of coals. Modest though their pretensions were, however, they were found to be an immense improvement on the ordinary roads, insomuch that ten horses were found to be capable of working the traffic on railroads, which it required 400 horses to perform on a common road. These iron roads, therefore, began to multiply, and about the beginning of the present century they were largely employed in the coal-fields and mineral districts of the kingdom. About the same time thoughtful men, seeing the immense advantage of such ways, began to suggest the formation of railways, or tramways, to run along the side of our turnpike-roadsa mode of conveyance, by the way, in regard to towns, which thoughtful men are still, ever at the present day of supposed enlightenment, endeavouring to urge upon an unbelieving publica mode of conveyance which we feel very confident will entirely supersede our cumbrous and antiquated bus in a very short time. What, we ask, in the name of science and art and common-sense, is to prevent a tramway being laid from Kensington to the Bank, or elsewhere, which shall be traversed by a succession of roomy carriages following each other every five minutes; which tramway might be crossed and recrossed and run upon, or, in other words, used by all the other vehicles of London except when the rightful carriages were in the way? Nothing prevents, save that same unbelief which has obstructed the development of every good thing from the time that Noah built the ark! But we feel assured that the thing shall be, and those who read this book may perhaps live to see it!
But to return. Among these thoughtful and far-seeing men was one Dr James Anderson, who in 1800 proposed the formation of railways by the roadsides, and he was so correct in his views that the plans which he suggested of keeping the level, by going round the base of hills, or forming viaducts, or cutting tunnels, is precisely the method practised by engineers of the present day. Two years later a Mr Edgeworth announced that he had long before, formed the project of laying iron railways for baggage waggons on the great roads of England, and, in order to prevent tear and wear, he proposed, instead of conveying heavy loads in one huge waggon, to have a train of small waggons. With the modesty of true genius, which never over-estimates or forms wildly sanguine expectations, he thought that each waggon might perhaps carry one ton and a half! Edgeworth also suggested that passengers might travel by such a mode of conveyance. Bold man! What a goose many people of his day must have thought him. If they had been alive now, what geese they might have thought themselves. The Society of Arts, however, were in advance of their time. They rewarded Edgeworth with their gold medal.
This man seems to have been a transcendent genius, because he not only devised and made (on a small scale) iron railways, but proposed to take ordinary vehicles, such as mail-coaches and private carriages, on his trucks, and convey them along his line at the rate of six or eight miles an hour with one horse. He also propounded the idea of the employment of stationary steam-engines (locomotives not having been dreamed of) to drag the trains up steep inclines.
Another semi-prophetic man of these days was Thomas Gray, of Leeds, who in 1820 published a work on what he styled a General Iron Railway, or Land Steam Conveyance, to supersede the necessity of Horses in all public vehicles, showing its vast superiority in every respect over the present pitiful Methods of Conveyance by Turnpike-Roads and Canals. Gray, whose mind appears to have been unusually comprehensive, proposed a system of railway communication between all the important cities and towns in the kingdom, and pointed out the immense advantage that would be gained to commerce by such a ready and rapid means of conveying fish, vegetables, and other perishable articles from place to place. He also showed that two post deliveries in the day would become possible, and that fire insurance companies would be able to promote their interests by keeping railway fire-engines, ready to be transported to scenes of conflagration without delay.
But Gray was not esteemed a prophet. His suggestions were not adopted nor his plans acted on, though unquestionably his wisdom and energy gave an impulse to railway development, of which we are reaping the benefit to-day. His labours were not in vain.
Horse railways soon began to multiply over the country. The first authorised by Act of Parliament was the Surrey Railway in 1801. Twenty years later twenty lines of railway were in operation.
About this time, too, another man of note and of great scientific and mechanical sagacity lent his powerful aid to advance the interests of the railway cause. This was Charles Maclaren, of Edinburgh, editor of the Scotsman newspaper for nearly thirty years. He had long foreseen, and boldly asserted his belief in, the certain success of steam locomotion by rail, at a time when opinions such as his were scouted as wild delusive dreams. But he did more, he brought his able pen to bear on the subject, and in December 1825 published a series of articles in the Scotsman on the subject of railways, which were not only extensively quoted and republished in this country and in America, but were deemed worthy of being translated into French and German, and so disseminated over Europe. Mr Maclaren was thus among the foremost of those who gave a telling impulse to the cause at that critical period when the Iron horse was about to be put on the railthe right horse in the right placefor it was not many years afterwards that that auspicious event took place. Mr Maclaren not only advocated generally the adoption of railways, but logically demonstrated the wonderful powers and capacities of the steam locomotive, arguing, from the experiments on friction made more than half a century before by Vince and Colomb, that by the use of steam-power on railroads a much more rapid and cheaper transit of persons as well as merchandise might be confidently anticipated. He leaped far ahead of many of even the most hopeful advocates of the cause, and with almost prophetic foresight wrote, there is scarcely any limit to the rapidity of movement these iron pathways will enable us to command. And again,We have spoken of vehicles travelling at twenty miles an hour; but we see no reason for thinking that, in the progress of improvement, a much higher velocity might not be found practicable; and in twenty years hence a shopkeeper or mechanic, on the most ordinary occasion, may probably travel with a speed that would leave the fleetest courser behind. Wonderful words these! At a first glance we may not deem them so, being so familiar with the ideas which they convey, but our estimate of them will be more just if we reflect that when they were penned railways had scarcely sprung into being, steam locomotives had only just been born, and not only men in general, but even many learned, scientific and practical men regarded the statement of all such opinions as being little short of insanity. Nevertheless, many deep-thinking men thought differently, and one contemporary, reviewing this subject in after years, said of Mr Maclarens papers, that, they prepared the way for the success of railway projectors.