Chapter 2
Presently, hurrying on foot, a few passengers arrive; a servant-maid carrying a big box, with the assistance of a little girl; a neat punctual-looking man, probably a banker's clerk on furlough; and a couple of young fellows in shaggy coats, smoking, who seem, by their red eyes and dirty hands, to have made sure of being up early by not going to bed. A rattle announces the first omnibus, with a pile of luggage outside and five inside passengers, two commercial travellers, two who may be curates or schoolmasters, and a brown man with a large sea-chest. At the quarter, the scene thickens; there are few Hansoms, but some night cabs, a vast number of carts of all kinds, from the costermonger's donkey to the dashing butcher's Whitechapel. There is very little medium in parliamentary passengers about luggage, either they have a cart-load or none at all. Children are very plentiful, and the mothers are accompanied with large escorts of female relations, who keep kissing and stuffing the children with real Gibraltar rock and gingerbread to the last moment. Every now and then a well-dressed man hurries past into the booking-office and takes his ticket with a sheepish air as if he was pawning his watch. Sailors arrive with their chests and hammocks. The other day we had the pleasure of meeting a travelling tinker with the instruments of his craft neatly packed; two gentlemen, whose closely cropped hair and pale plump complexion betokened a recent residence in some gaol or philanthropic institution; an economical baronet, of large fortune; a prize fighter, going down to arrange a little affair which was to come off the next day; a half- pay officer, with a genteel wife and twelve children, on his way to a cheap county in the north; a party of seven Irish, father, mother, and five grown- up sons and daughters, on their way to America, after a successful residence in London; a tall young woman and a little man, from Stamford, who had been up to London to buy stone bottles, and carried them back rattling in a box; a handsome dragoon, with a very pretty girl,--her eyes full of tears,--on his arm, to see him off; another female was waiting at the door for the same purpose, when the dragoon bolted, and took refuge in the interior of the station. In a word, a parliamentary train collects,--besides mechanics in search of work, sailors going to join a ship, and soldiers on furlough,--all whose necessities or tastes lead them to travel economically, among which last class are to be found a good many Quakers. It is pleasing to observe the attention the poor women, with large families and piles of packages, receive from the officers of the company, a great contrast to the neglect which meets the poorly clad in stage-coach travelling, as may still be seen in those districts where the rail has not yet made way.
We cannot say that we exactly admire the taste of the three baronets whom a railway superintendent found in one third-class carriage, but we must own that to those to whom economy is really an object, there is much worse travelling than by the Parliamentary. Having on one occasion gone down by first-class, with an Oxford man who had just taken his M.A., an ensign of infantry in his first uniform, a clerk in Somerset House, and a Manchester man who had been visiting a Whig Lord,--and returned third-class, with a tinker, a sailor just returned from Africa, a bird-catcher with his load, and a gentleman in velveteens, rather greasy, who seemed, probably on a private mission, to have visited the misdemeanour wards of all the prisons in England and Scotland; we preferred the return trip, that is to say, vulgar and amusing to dull and genteel. Among other pieces of information gleaned on this occasion, we learned that "for a cove as didn't mine a jolly lot of readin and writin, Readin was prime in winter; plenty of good vittles, and the cells warmed."
It must be remarked that the character of the Parliamentary varies very much according to the station from which it starts. The London trains being the worst, having a large proportion of what are vulgarly called "swells out of luck." In a rural district the gathering of smock-frocks and rosy-faced lasses, the rumbling of carts, and the size, number, and shape of the trunks and parcels, afford a very agreeable and comical scene on a frosty, moonlight, winter's morning, about Christmas time, when visiting commences, or at Whitsuntide. No man who has a taste for studying the phases of life and character should fail to travel at least once by the Parliamentary.
The large cheap load having rumbled off from the south side of the station, about nine o'clock preparations are commenced for the aristocratic Express, which, on this line, is composed of first-class carriages alone, in which, at half the price of the old mail coach fares, the principal stations on the line are reached at railway speed.
To attend the departure of this train, there arrive not only the republican omnibi and cabs, from the damp night crawler to the rattling Hansom, but carriages, with coronets and mitres emblazoned, guarded by the tallest and most obsequious of footmen, and driven by the fattest and most lordly of coachmen; also the neatest of broughams, adorned internally with pale pink and blue butterfly bonnets; dashing dogcarts, with neat grooms behind, mustached guardsmen driving; and stately cabriolets prance in, under the guidance of fresh primrose-coloured gloves.
But, although the passengers by the Express train are, in every respect, a contrast to those by the Parliamentary, the universal and levelling tendency of the railway system is not less plainly exhibited.
The earl or duke, whose dignity formerly compelled him to post in a coupe and four, at a cost of some five or six shillings a mile, and an immense consumption of horse-flesh, wax-lights, and landladies' curtsies on the road, now takes his place unnoticed in a first-class carriage next to a gentleman who travels for a great claret and champagne house, and opposite another going down express to report a railway meeting at Birmingham for a morning paper. If you see a lady carefully and courteously escorted to a carriage marked "engaged," on a blackboard, it is probably not a countess but the wife of one of the principal officers of the company. A bishop in a greatcoat creates no sensation; but a tremendous rush of porters and superintendents towards one carriage, announces that a director or well-known engineer is about to take his seat. In fact, civility to all, gentle and simple, is the rule introduced by the English railway system; every porter with a number on his coat is, for the time, the passenger's servant. Special attention is bestowed on those who are personally known, and no one can grumble at that. Some people, who have never visited the continent, or only visited it for pleasure, travelling at their leisure, make comparisons with the railways of France and Germany, unfavourable to the English system. Our railways are dearer than the foreign, so is our government,--we make both ourselves; but compare the military system of the continental railways; the quarter of an hour for admission before the starting of the train, during which, if too early or too late, you are locked out; the weighing of every piece of baggage; the lordly commanding airs of all the officials if any relaxation of rules be required; the insouciance with which the few porters move about, leaving ladies and gentlemen to drag their own luggage;--compare all this with the rapid manner in which the loads of half-a-dozen cabs, driving up from some other railway at the last moment, are transferred to the departing Express; compare the speed, the universal civility, attention, and honesty, that distinguish our railway travelling, and you cannot fail to come to the conclusion that for a commercial people to whom time is of value, ours is the best article, and if we had not been a lawyer-ridden people we might also have had the cheapest article.
Before starting the Express train, we must not fail to note one new class of passengers, recruited by the speed of railways, viz., the number of gentlemen in breeches, boots, and spurs, with their pinks just peeping from under their rough jackets, who, during the season, get down to Aylesbury, Bletchley, and even Wolverton, to hunt, and back home again to dinner. But the signal sounds. The express train moves off; two gentlemen at the last moment are, in vain, crying out for Punch and the Times, while an unheeded hammering at the closed door of the booking-office announces that somebody is too late. There is always some one too late. On this occasion it was a young gentleman in a pair of light top-boots, and a mamma and papa with half-a-dozen children and two nursery-maids in a slow capacious fly.
We cannot bestow unqualified praise upon the station arrangements at Euston. Comfort has been sacrificed to magnificence. The platform arrangements for departing and arriving trains are good, simple, and comprehensive; but the waiting-rooms, refreshment stand, and other conveniences are as ill-contrived as possible; while a vast hall with magnificent roof and scagliola pillars, appears to have swallowed up all the money and all the light of the establishment.
The first-class waiting-room is dull to a fearful degree, and furnished in the dowdiest style of economy. The second-class room is a dark cavern, with nothing better than a borrowed light.
The refreshment counters are enclosed in a sort of circular glazed pew, open to all the drafts of a grand, cold, uncomfortable hall, into which few ladies will venture.
A refreshment-room should be the ante-room to the waiting-room, and the two should be so arranged with reference to the booking-office and cloak-rooms, that strangers find their way without asking a dozen questions from busy porters and musing policemen.
Euston Station reminds us of an architect's house, where a magnificent portico and hall leads to dungeon-like dining-room, and mean drawing-room. Why are our architects so inferior to our engineers?
On the platform is the door of the telegraph office, which also has offices for receiving and transmitting messages at all the principal stations.
THE MIXED TRAIN.
The Mixed train on this line holds an intermediate rank between the Parliamentary and the Express, consisting as it does of first and second- class carriages, at lower fares than the one and higher than the other, stopping at fewer stations than the Parliamentary, and at more than the Express; but worth notice on the present occasion, because it is by these trains only that horses and carriages are allowed to be conveyed.
Carriages require very careful packing on a truck. At the principal stations this may be very well left to the practised porters, but at road-side stations it is a point which should be looked to; for it has not unfrequently happened that the jogging, lateral motion of the railway has heated the axles of a carriage or truck, so that at the end of the journey the wheels have been found as fast as if they had been welded, and quite unfit to travel.
Travelling in a carriage on a truck is by no means safe: some years since Lady Zetland and her maids were nearly burned to death, sparks from the engine having set fire to their luggage. The maid threw herself off the truck, and had an extraordinary escape.
The arrangements of the boxes for carrying horses are now very complete, and when once a horse, not of a naturally nervous disposition, has been accustomed to travel by rail, it will often be found better to take him on to hunt at a distance than to send him overnight to a strange place with all the disadvantages of change of food, and temptations to neglect in the way of the groom. It is, however, a class of traffic to which few of the railway companies have paid much attention; yet, in our opinion, capable of great development under a system of moderate fares, and day tickets. The rates are not always stated in the time tables, but on the London and North Western a day ticket for a horse costs fourteen shillings for thirty miles.
Besides horses, packs of hounds, and even red deer are occasionally sent by rail. But deer travel in their own private carriages. Hounds are generally accompanied by the huntsman, or whip, to keep them in order. And on the Great Western line a few years ago a huntsman was nearly stifled in this way. The van had been made too snug and close for travelling comfortably with twenty couple of warm fox-hounds.
If there is the slightest doubt about a horse entering the van quietly, the best way is to blindfold him before he becomes suspicious. Among other pursuits, horse racing has been completely revolutionised by the rail. The posting race-horse van was a luxury in which only the wealthiest could indulge to a limited extent, but now the owner of a string of thoroughbreds, or a single plater, can train in the South or the North, and in four and twenty hours reach any leading course in the kingdom; carrying with him, if deemed needful, hay, straw, and water.
As we move slowly off toward Camden Station, by the fourth of the eighteen passenger trains which daily depart from Euston, and emerging with light whirl along within sight of rows of capital houses, whose gardens descend to the edge of the cuttings, we are reminded that under the original act for taking up Euston, it was specially provided, at the instance of Lord Southampton, that no locomotive should be allowed to proceed further to the south than Camden Town, lest his building land should remain neglected garden land for ever. This promise was accepted with little reluctance by the company, because in 1833 it was popularly considered that the ascent to reach Camden Town could not be easily overcome by a heavily loaded locomotive. Consequently a pair of stationary engines were erected at Camden Town, and a pair of tall chimneys to carry off their smoke and steam.
But the objections in taste, and difficulties in science, have vanished. On this line, as on all others, tenants are readily found for houses fringing a cutting; locomotives run up even such ascents as the Bromsgrove Lickey, between Worcester and Birmingham, with a load of 500 tons. So ten minutes have been saved in time, and much expense, by doing away with the rope traction system. The stationary engines have been sold, and are now doing duty in a flax mill in Russia, and the two tall columns, after slumbering for several years as monuments of prejudices and obstacles overcome, were swept away to make room for other improvements.
It is, however, very odd, and not very creditable to human nature, that whenever a railway is planned, the proprietors are assailed by unreasonable demands for compensation, in cases where past experience has proved that the works will be an advantageous, and often an ornamental addition.
In 1846 a Sheffield line was vehemently opposed by a Liverpool gentleman, on the ground that it would materially injure the prospect from a mansion, which had been the seat of his ancestors for centuries. The tale was well told, and seemed most pitiful; an impression was produced on the committee that the privacy of something like Hatfield, or Knebworth, was about to be infringed on by the "abominable railway." A stiff cross-examination brought out the reluctant fact, however, that this "house of my ancestors," this beautiful Elizabethan mansion had been for many years let as a Lunatic Asylum at 36 pound per annum.
In another instance a railway director sold a pretty country seat, because the grounds were about to be intersected by a railway embankment; two years after the completion of the railway he wished to buy it back again, for he found that his successor, by turfing and planting the slope, had very much increased the original beauty of the gardens.
CAMDEN STATION.
But thus gossiping, we have reached Camden Station, and must take advantage of an unusual halt to look into the arrangements for building waggons and trucks, and conveying coals, merchandise, goods, and all live stock included between pigs and bullocks.
Not without difficulty did Mr. Robert Stephenson succeed in inducing the directors to purchase thirty acres of land here; it was only by urging, that, if unused, the surplus could be sold at a profit, that he carried out his views. Genius can foresee results which, to ordinary capacities, are dark and incomprehensible. Since 1845 it has been found necessary to take in an additional plot of three more acres, all now fully occupied.
In no respect were the calculations of parties engaged in the construction of railways more at fault than with regard to the station accommodation needed for goods traffic, which, on the principal lines, has added full twenty-five per cent. to the original estimates. George Stephenson calculated the cost of getting over Chat Moss at 40,000 pounds; his opponent proved that it would cost four hundred thousand: but it was executed at exactly the sum Stephenson set down, while the capital involved in providing Station Room for merchandise at Liverpool and at Manchester, has probably exceeded the original estimate for the whole line.
On this railway the increase of the goods traffic has been of very recent date. At a very early period after the opening of the line, the merchandise department became the monopoly of the great carriers, who found it answer their purpose to divide the profits afforded by the discount allowed to carriers by the railway company, without seeking to develop an increase of occupation. Under this system, while carriers grew rich, the goods traffic remained stationary. But when the amalgamation with the Grand Junction, which had always been its own carrier, took place, a great reduction in rates was made, as well as arrangements for encouraging the conveyance of every kind of saleable article. The company became a common carrier, but employing Messrs. Pickford, and Chaplin and Horne to collect goods.
The result was a marvellous increase, which has been progressing ever since.
A regular trade is now carried on between London and the most remote parts of the kingdom in every conceivable thing that will bear moving. Sheep have been sent from Perth to London, and Covent Garden has supplied tons of the finer description of vegetables to the citizens of Glasgow; every Saturday five tons of the best fish in season are despatched from Billingsgate to Birmingham, and milk is conveyed in padlocked tins, from and beyond Harrow, at the rate of about one penny per gallon. In articles which are imported into both Liverpool and London, there is a constant interchange, according to the state of the market; thus a penny per pound difference may bring a hundred chests of congou up, or send as many of hyson down the line. All graziers within a day of the rail are able to compete in the London market, the probability of any extraordinary demand increases the number of beasts arriving weekly at Camden Station from the average of 500 to 2000, and the sheep from 2000 to 6000; and these animals can be brought from the furthest grazing grounds in the kingdom without any loss of weight, and in much better condition than the fat oxen were formerly driven to Smithfield from the rich pastures round Aylesbury, or the Valley of the Thames.
Camden station, under the alterations effected in 1848-9, has a double line, for goods waggons only, 2,500 feet in length, entirely clear of the main line. The length of single lines, exclusive of the main line, exceeds twelve miles.
To describe it in detail would be a very unsatisfactory task; because, in the first place, it can ill be understood without a map, and in the next, changes are constantly taking place, and still greater changes will be forced on the company by the increase of goods traffic, which, great as it is, is only in its infancy. Even now freights are paid to the London and North Western for all the way to China. But, as an agricultural implement of commerce, the locomotive has been comparatively as little used as the stationary engine, although hundreds of trades of a semi-rural character are drawing toward the railway lines, and away from the country towns, which were formerly the centre of rural commerce, because standing on the highways or near canals. But such a revolution can only be effected slowly.
At Camden will be found a large yard for the reception of the Midland Counties' coal, the introduction of which has had a considerable effect in bringing down the price of sea-borne coal.
The cattle pens have lately been altered and enlarged. Just before Christmas this place is almost as amusing and exciting as a Spanish bull-fight; although, as a general rule, the silence of a place where, during every quarter of an hour, of day and night, so enormous a business is being carried on, is very surprising.
Twenty-four steam waggon horses, or engines, for heavy loads are kept in a circular engine-house, or stable, 160 feet in diameter, with an iron roof. This form renders every engine accessible at a moment's notice. The steam race-horses for the passenger work are kept in an oblong building opposite the carters. The demand being more regular, there is no need for the expensive circular arrangement of stables for this class of engines. In a large boiler-house, boiling water and red-hot coke are kept ready night and day, so that on the occasion of any sudden demand no time need be lost in getting up steam. There is besides a waggon-building department, a shop for executing such trifling repairs in the locomotives as need no reference to the great workshop at Wolverton. The passenger carriages are most of them built at Euston station, by Mr. Wright.
The carrying department is very conveniently situated close to the Regent's Canal, so as to have easy communication with inland as well as sea navigation. A series of sheds occupy an area of 135,000 superficial feet, and the platforms to receive goods from railway trucks on one side and from waggons on the other, occupy 30,000 feet. These platforms and sheds are provided with 110 cranes, for loading and unloading, with a power varying from one ton and a half to twenty tons. By these appliances, work of the most miscellaneous character goes on all day, and part of the night.
The railway trucks and waggons are moved about by horses: it is amusing to see the activity with which the heavy brutes often bring a waggon up at a trot, jump out of the way just at the right moment, and allow the waggon to roll up to the right spot by its own momentum.
The horses are lodged in stables in the underground vaults, which we cannot commend, as they are dark, damp, full of draughts, and yet ill ventilated; but it was necessary to use these vaults, and difficult to find stabling for such a number of horses close at hand.
The carrying department at Camden is very miscellaneous, and moves everything, from the contents of a nursery ground to a full grown locomotive, but they do not impress a stranger so much as the arrangements at Manchester and Liverpool. The annual consumption of gas at Camden exceeds six million cubic feet.