CHAPTER III

_SOME PIONEER ELECTRIC RAILWAYS_ (_continued_)

A TRIAL TRIP IN THE CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY

One o’clock saw a large party of us, chiefly City men, amongst whom were numerous civil engineers, waiting at King William Street booking-office to descend into the bowels of the earth by one of the semicircular lifts, a novelty in point of size. Our turn having come, we duly filed into the elevator. The telescopic doors clashed upon us, and we stood for a second or two silently expectant, feeling like a batch of condemned criminals on a gigantic scaffold waiting for the hangman to draw back the fatal lever that would launch them into the other world.

Noiselessly the lift descended to an apparently fathomless depth, but in reality, I believe, some 90 or 100 feet. When released by the janitor, we found ourselves in a small, well-lighted, cool, and spotlessly clean, white-tiled station, whence was discernible a couple of small tunnels side by side, leading to unknown regions, seemingly all too narrow to accommodate even the miniature cars waiting for us at one of the narrow platforms.

Inspecting the tunnels, the classical man of our party, a wag in his way, who had hitherto made no remark, was heard to mutter something in Latin, which, on being coerced, he admitted was out of Virgil, and was translated thus: “This is the spot where the way divides in two branches.” In vain we pointed out that the quotation was inappropriate, as the ways were _parallel_. He was obdurate, so we left him to his own reflections.

To most of us accustomed to roomy Pullmans and commodious railway carriages, the cars, though comfortable, seemed cramped, especially in height. The signal given, off we started, when we noticed that the cars fitted the tube with such nicety and economy of space that, could the windows have been let down, we could easily have touched the iron plates of the tunnel. We realised, too, that although there was no smoke or smell, the railway was by no means noiseless; neither, in the opinion of several of the experts present, was the running as steady as on the “Underground.”

A hint had been given us that at some point where the line dipped and rose again the cars might come to a temporary standstill. As we rather uneasily recalled this, the speed gradually slackened, and finally the train stopped altogether, and simultaneously the incandescent lights began to pale, and at last subsided into filaments of sickly red. The situation was not a pleasant one. There we were; many of us with important engagements awaiting us later in the day; most of us with wives and children who would expect us home as usual when evening arrived, and grow anxious at our absence. There we were sealed up in a tube, for all we knew, at a point beneath the Thames. Not a sound reached us from the locomotive, or, indeed, from anywhere. Were we thus to remain indefinitely? For walk out we could not, there being no room outside the carriages. Would some memorial tablet let into the side of London Bridge, months hence, recall the fact that near it a goodly company of highly respectable citizens had perished in a living tomb?

I don’t think we talked much. It was luncheon-time; we were hungry, and we felt like the occupants of the snowed-up cars in one of Mark Twain’s stories, who gloomily eyed one another as starvation threatened, calculating upon whom, by an ingenious and complicated system of voting previously agreed to, would next fall the lot of being sacrificed for the benefit of the rest, and I believe I found myself unconsciously speculating on the plumpness of a youthful stockbroker standing by my side. But after a very few moments of suspense the train rattled on again, the lights reappeared, and presently we drew up at the Borough, the first station on the Surrey side.

Railway booking-offices are not usually things of beauty, least of all those on the Metropolitan, District, and suburban lines. Here, however, was a surprise, for we found quite a picturesque stone-and-brick building on the ground-floor, a cupola surmounting the prettily designed entrance, and a small dome with lantern by way of roof. And this was a sample of all the stations along the line.

The Borough recalled the Marshalsea that once stood close by; and there opposite was St. George’s, Southwark, where Little Dorrit, accidentally locked out of the prison, was allowed by “the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was,” to take refuge in the vestry, where, years afterwards, she signed the marriage register when wedded to Arthur Clennam.

The next stoppage was at the Elephant and Castle--not the tavern of that name, where in the past on Derby Day the superabundant holiday traffic usually became hopelessly congested, but the City and South London’s new station, close to Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, Rabbits’ great boot warehouse, and Tarn’s vast emporium, that seems to occupy most of Newington Causeway. Onwards to Kennington Common, once the place of public executions for Surrey, now a well-kept miniature park. Beyond it, Kennington Oval, associated with cricket all the world over; and finally we arrived at Stockwell, the then terminus of the line, since extended to Clapham, where Tom Hood used to go to school at a house “with ugly windows ten in a row, its chimney in the rear,” a style of architecture of which many specimens still exist round and about the Common.

At Stockwell we visited the generating station, recently much extended, and provided with entirely new plant, and, wondering at and admiring all we saw, learned from the chief engineer that the contretemps _en route_ was due to a slight defect in the new and untried power-machinery; and thus at the point where the dip in the line was greatest, the cars stopped.

An excellent luncheon restored us all to eloquence and equanimity, extinguishing the cannibalistic feeling of half an hour ago, and, returning without any incident worth recording, we emerged once more in the City, to be greeted by the noise of the traffic that ever surges around King William the Fourth’s statue.

Those were the “green salad” days of London’s Pioneer Electric Railway Line. Now it runs without a hitch, and has been extended north as far as the historic “Angel,” thus giving a direct route between Clapham and Islington. It has powers to exchange traffic with the Great Northern and the City Railway _viâ_ Old Street, and also to connect itself with the Baker Street and Waterloo Electric Railway at the Elephant and Castle Station; and in a new building at Finsbury Pavement it now has commodious head offices.

At the last half-yearly general meeting the chairman, Mr. C. G. Mott, in the course of his speech, stated that the Board aspired to have a thoroughly first-class terminus in the City of London, and had deposited plans with this view. They proposed to construct this station between the present Bank Station and the King William Street statue.

That the City and South London Railway is most useful and popular is shown by the number of passengers it has carried--some ninety millions since its opening--the returns for last year showing about eighteen millions, over a total route of about seven miles. For the convenience of travellers, it eventually will have subways, connecting its Lombard Street Station with the Bank Station of the Central London Railway, and it already has them from its new London Bridge Station to the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. Finally, it can boast of possessing a station below a church--a unique position, I believe. St. Mary Woolnoth’s foundations were completely removed, the vaults cleared out, and the whole replaced by huge iron girders, whereon the sacred edifice now rests, with the booking-office below.

THE WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY

The month of August, 1898, was unusually warm, and the heat was felt as much in the City as anywhere. Straw hats were universal; the shady side of the street, if there happened to be one, was thronged; secluded alleys and courts were resorted to by the knowing ones who could afford the time to linger there; and even highly respectable merchants were to be found sitting in shirt-sleeves at their writing-tables and wishing, with Sydney Smith, that they could “sit in their bones.”

At the junction of the Poultry with Victoria Street, shadowed by the Mansion House, from each side of the road a mysterious hoarding had just been removed, revealing an iron railing enclosing a small area with a mysterious staircase bearing the announcement that it led to the subway to the new electric railway, connecting the City with Waterloo Station. Descending a few steps, and emerging into a tunnelled incline, the perspiring pedestrian quickly found that here, if anywhere, was a refuge from the heat, the coolest place in London, and that it was well worth while, on the pretence of urgent business across the water, to pay twopence each way, merely to drink in the refreshing air wafted backwards and forwards along subway, platform, and tube.

This was the Waterloo and City Railway, a short deep-level line on the tube principle, nearly 1¾ miles long, burrowing under the Thames’ bed. At the terminus, by rather prolonged inclines and staircases, passengers could walk to the main or suburban platforms of Waterloo Station and catch the trains for Wimbledon, Hampton Court, Surbiton, etc.

Like the City and South London, this railway meets a great want. Before its opening, City men living down the London and South Western line had no alternative but to catch a South Eastern train from Cannon Street or Charing Cross; to take an omnibus _viâ_ the Strand across to Waterloo Bridge; or to cab it by devious routes _viâ_ Blackfriars Bridge. Now they can reach Waterloo with ease, comfort, and economy.

Under agreement, the line is worked by the London and South Western Railway Company. The electrical equipment is by the famous firm of Siemens Brothers, the generating station being up a blind alley adjoining

the dismal arched entrance to Waterloo from York Road. Each train seats 208 passengers; the average speed is 18 miles an hour, and its usefulness is proved by the fact that over two and a half million ordinary passengers were carried by it in one half-year, _i.e._ to December 31st, 1902 (not counting season-ticket holders), while the receipts for that period were £17,400.

During the busy hours of morning and evening the large trains are used and always fill up rapidly, but in the slack times of midday single motor-cars, each carrying 50 passengers, are sufficient to cope with the traffic. The cars are rather stuffy, and, like the train cars, are narrow and low. At each end is a small partitioned-off “cab,” where sits a motor-man. No tickets are issued from the booking-office; but, as in an omnibus, the conductor comes round and collects the fares, giving a punched voucher in return, which is retained by the traveller.

THE LIVERPOOL OVERHEAD ELECTRIC RAILWAY

There are few overhead, or, rather, elevated, railways in the world. Somehow they do not seem to be popular, and the tendency, in England at least, is rather towards burrowing like the mole, than soaring above the street level.

In Germany there is a wonderful instance of electrically driven overhead line between Elberfeld and Barmen, on the mono-rail principle, the trains hanging from tracks suspended high above rivers and public roads. At the great Beckton gas works there has been in use since 1894 an iron-built miniature railway elevated on pillars, and it is a curious sight to witness busy little engines incessantly hauling coal trucks from the pier to the retort houses. An ingenious example of the elevated principle is to be seen at the Victoria Station, Manchester, where a railway on a very reduced scale conveys passengers’ luggage from one platform to another, and idlers are never tired of watching it. The track, a double one, is suspended from the roof and runs between platforms five and six. The motive power is electricity, and the motor is placed between the wheels and the track, and it lifts and lowers a basket which holds about 15 cwt. of luggage.

A wonderful instance of a _very_ elevated railway existed at Beachy Head while the new lighthouse was being built 600 feet distant from the base of the cliff, at that point 400 feet high. It conveyed material to the site, the descending load drawing up the ascending empty “skip” on the overhead suspension principle.

Our New York cousins have, in their elevated steam railway, long been familiarised with the system, but for Londoners it possesses the fatal objection that the occupants of the cars as they pass along can look into the front windows of the houses and spy upon the occupants. Running along docks, however, elevated railways are not objectionable; and the earliest example, in this or any other country, of electricity applied to overhead traction is at Liverpool.

Extending along the Mersey--that noble river whose tidal movement is said to be four times the outfall of the Mississippi--for a distance of 6½ miles are the Liverpool Docks, in importance undoubtedly the first in the world, but, until the Overhead Railway was opened, exasperatingly inaccessible to business men whose time was valuable, and bewildering to strangers by reason of their immensity.

Along the line of dock, it is true, ran broad-wheeled omnibuses built to run on the low-level dock railway, but so slow, in consequence of the pressure of traffic and the necessity for frequent shuntings for the passage of goods trains, that to reach the farthest dock usually occupied over an hour. To improve upon this it was proposed, as far back as 1852, to construct a high-level railway; but nothing practical came of it until 1888, when the Liverpool Overhead Railway Company took over the parliamentary powers obtained by the Dock Board, and setting steadily to work, created their line for passengers only, and, from the first, achieved a great success, the number of travellers amounting to many millions annually.

On the 4th of February, 1893, the railway was appropriately opened by the ex-Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, whose devotion to the science of electricity is well known. Pressing a button at the base of a silver inkstand (subsequently presented to the Marquis as a memento), the engines that generated the electric current were set in motion, and by special train his lordship was conveyed over the seven miles of line, and afterwards entertained at a banquet by the Mayor, when, in an excellent speech, he dilated upon the prospect of electricity becoming the motive power of the age.

In the following month the railway was opened for public traffic, and, with its thirteen stations, its five minutes’ service, and its cheap fares, practically extinguished the omnibuses, light or heavy.

From the Overhead Railway a splendid view is obtained of the busiest locality perhaps in the empire. Below are the railway trucks packed close with imported merchandise of all kinds: cotton from America and the East; grain from the ends of the earth; beef, bacon, cheese, butter, flour, and fruit from the New World; wool and tallow from Australia and Argentina. Waggons

and carts filled with Manchester goods, hardware, machinery, chemicals, and every imaginable kind of manufactured goods are alongside the big liners that come into port, discharge their cargoes, load up, and are out in the Mersey and off to sea again in a few days. Truly Liverpool is a wonderful place, and although her greatness as a seaport has been threatened by the opening of the Ship Canal to Manchester, it will be a long day before she surrenders her claim to be the chief marine approach to Great Britain.