Rides on Railways Part 2

342 Third-cla.s.s. 1155 Cribb rails.

25 Post-offices. 5150 Sheets.

242 Carriages,--trucks for 162 Cart horses.

letters and newspapers. 41 Parcel carts.

201 Guards' brakes.

Making a grand total rolling stock of 10,663.

The pa.s.senger carriages afford eleven miles of seat room, and would accommodate 40,196 individuals, or the whole population of two such towns as Northampton.

The loading surface of the goods equals eleven acres, and would convey 40,000 tons.

If the tires of all the company's wheels were welded into one ring, they would form a circle of seventy-two miles.

To keep this rolling stock up in number and efficiency, there are two establishments, one at Camden Town, and one at Wolverton.

Camden Town is the great coach house of the line, where goods waggons are built and repaired in one division, where sound locomotives, carriages and trucks are kept ready for use in another.

The waggon building department of Camden is worth visiting, especially by railway shareholders.

Every one is interested in railways being worked economically, for economy gives low rates and increased profits, which both increase trade and multiply railways. Hitherto the details of carrying, especially as to the construction of waggons and trucks, have been much neglected.

On one line running north, it is said that the loss in cheese stolen by the railway servants, amounts to as much as the whole sum paid for carrying agricultural produce, and on the line on which we are travelling, breakages have sometimes amounted to 1,200 pounds a-month.

The fact is, that railway carriers have been content to use rude square boxes on wheels, covered when loaded, if covered at all, with a tarpaulin, without any precautions for draining off the wet, to which it was constantly exposed when out of use,--without "buffers" or other protecting springs, so that the wear and tear of the waggon and its load, from inevitable shocks, was very great.

The imperfect protection of a tarpaulin was, and is, a great temptation to pilferage. These sources of expense, in wear and tear of conveyances, loss of tarpaulin coverings, each worth 6 pounds 6s., breakage, pilferage of goods, combine to sum up a formidable discount from the profits of railway carrying, and, in the case of certain goods, lead the owners to prefer the slower transit of a ca.n.a.l boat. Even iron suffers in market value from exposure to the weather; porcelain and gla.s.s are liable to perpetual smashes, on waggons without buffers, in spite of the most careful packing; while tea, sugar, cheese, and all untraceable eatables are pilfered to an enormous extent, besides more valuable goods.

It was hoped that railway transit would put an end to the dishonesty which was carried on wholesale on the ca.n.a.ls; but, where open trucks are used, this expectation has been only partly realised, for the temptation of opportunity has been too strong, for even the superior cla.s.s of men employed on railways.

In order to meet these evils, Mr. Henson, who has the charge of the waggon- building department at Camden, has built and patented a covered waggon with buffers, which unites with great strength, safety, capacity, and smoothness of motion. The scientific manner in which these waggons are framed, gives them strength in proportion to their weight. The buffers with which they are fitted, and the roof, protecting from the weather, render them altogether durable, and therefore economical; while the construction, as will be seen from our vignette, renders pilferage, unless by collusion with the respectable party who overlooks the unloading, almost impossible.

A diminution of the cost for repairs of rolling stock (on an average equal to 12 pounds per ann.), and of the cost for compensation to customers for breakage and pilferage, should be a leading object with every sensible railway director. Indeed these losses, with deadweight, and lawyer's bills, are the deadly enemies of railway directors.

Further improvements in these waggons have been effected by the use of corrugated iron, which is light and strong at the same time; and the iron waggons have been again improved by employing iron covered with a thin coating of gla.s.s, under a new patent, which renders rust impossible and paint unnecessary. The simple contrivance by which the door and moveable roof is locked and unlocked by one motion, is worthy of the notice of practical men.

600 of these lock-up waggons, with springs and buffers, are in use on the London and North Western Railway.

Mr. Henson has also succeeded in establishing a traffic in gunpowder, by inventing a carriage of sheet iron, lined with wood, in which four-and-a-half tons of gunpowder can be conveyed without fear of explosion either from concussion or external combustion.

The shops at Camden have room for building or repairing 100 waggons. They are to be seen in every stage of progress.

The great object is to combine strength with lightness. If the strength being the same, the saving of a ton can be effected in a waggon, it will amount to from thirty to ninety tons in an ordinary goods train. An important consideration, for deadweight is the great enemy of the railway, and ninety tons of useless weight is equivalent to a loss of 90 pounds in sending a goods train a journey to Birmingham. British oak is the favourite wood for the frames of railway waggons; teak, if of equal quality, is dearer, and the inferior is heavier, without being so strong. If in any of the many countries with which we trade a wood can be discovered as good and as cheap as English oak, the railways which are constantly extending their carrying stock, can afford a steady demand.

About the pa.s.senger carriages, which every one can see and examine for himself, there is not much to be said. On the Continent, where they cannot afford to use mahogany, they use sheet-iron and papier-machee for the panels; in England, mahogany chiefly in the first cla.s.s. When we began, stage coaches were imitated; there are some of the old cramped style still to be seen on the Richmond line; then came enormous cages--pleasant in summer, fearfully cold in winter, without fires, which have not been introduced in England, although they are found in the north of Europe and America. A medium size has now come into favour, of which some fine specimens are to be seen in the Hyde Park Exhibition.

On the Great Northern line some second-cla.s.s carriages have been introduced, varnished, without paint, and very well they look. Economy again, and the increase of branches, have led to the use of composite carriages for first and second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers all on one body. These, which were in use years ago on the northern coal lines, are now revived and improved.

The Camden station has received an entirely new feature by the completion of the line to the docks and to Fenchurch Street, with stations at Islington, Hackney, and Bow. Already an immense omnibus traffic has been obtained--a sort of traffic which produces the same effect on engines as on horses. They are worn out rapidly by the continual stoppages. But horses show wear and tear directly, whereas iron and bra.s.s cannot speak except through increased expenses and diminished dividends.

Leaving Camden, at which trains stop only on arriving, we swiftly pa.s.s Kilburn, where an omnibus station is to be established for the benefit of the rising population of citizens, to Willesden, where the junction line through Acton to the South Western is to commence. Willesden has been rendered cla.s.sic ground, for the Hero-worshippers who take highwaymen within the circle of their miscellaneous sympathies, by Mr. Harrison Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard,"--the "cage" where this ruffian was more than once confined still remains in its original insecurity.

Sudbury affords nothing to detain us. The next station is within a mile of Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its beacon-like church spire. Rich pasture lies around, famous for finishing off bullocks fed in the north. Harrow school is almost as much one of the inst.i.tutions of England as Oxford and Cambridge Universities. It is one of the great public schools, which, if they do not make the ripest scholars, make "men" of our aristocracy. This school was founded by one John Lyon, a farmer of the parish, who died in 1592.

[HARROW-ON-THE-HILL: ill2.jpg]

Attached to it there are four exhibitions of 20 pounds each, and two scholarships of 50 pounds each.

The grand celebrity of the school rests upon the education of those who are not on the foundation. The sons of n.o.blemen and wealthy gentlemen, who in this as in many other instances, have treated those for whose benefit the school was founded, as the young cuckoo treats the hedge sparrow. Among its ill.u.s.trious scholars Harrow numbers Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel.

An old saw runs: "Eton fops, Harrow gentlemen, Winchester scholars, and Westminster blackguards."

Since the palmy days when Dr. Drury was master and Byron and Peel were pupils, Harrow has declined to insignificance, and been by the abilities of Dr. Wordsworth raised again. The term of Harrow gentlemen still deservedly survives, Harrow being still the gate through which the rich son of a parvenu family may most safely pa.s.s on his way to Oxford, if his father desires, as all fathers do in this country, that his son should amalgamate with the landed aristocracy.

At Pinner, the next station, we pa.s.s out of Middles.e.x into Hertfordshire.

Watford, a princ.i.p.al station, is within a mile of the town of that name, on the river Colne. Here Henry VI. encamped with his army before the battle of St. Albans. Ca.s.siobury Park, a favourite spot for picnics, is close to the station. It was the opposition of the late proprietor, the Earl of Ess.e.x, that forced upon the engineer of the line the formidable tunnel, which was once considered an astonishing railway work,--now nothing is astonishing in engineering.

[VIADUCT OVER THE RIVER COLNE: ill3.jpg]

Near King's Langley we pa.s.s the Booksellers' Provident Retreat, erected on ground given by Mr. d.i.c.kenson, the great paper maker, who has seven mills on the neighbouring streams, and reach Boxmoor, only noticeable as the first station opened on the line.

[LOOKING FROM THE HILL ABOVE BOX MOOR STATION TOWARDS BERKHAMSTED: ill4.jpg]

The next station is Berkhamsted. Cowper the poet was born here, his father was rector of the parish. Berkhamsted Castle is part of the hereditary property of the Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. At this castle William the Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings, met the Abbot of St. Albans with a party of chiefs and prelates, who had prepared to oppose the Norman, and disarmed their hostility by swearing to rule according to the ancient laws and customs of the country. Having, of course, broken his oath, he bestowed the castle on his half-brother, Robert Moreton, Earl of Cornwall. King John strengthened the castle, which was afterwards besieged by the Dauphin of France. When Edward III. created the Black Prince Duke of Cornwall, the castle and manor of Berkhamsted were bestowed upon him "to hold to him, and the heirs of him, and the eldest sons of the kings of England, and the dukes of the said place;" and under these words through civil wars and revolutions, and changes from Plantagenet to Tudor, from Tudor to Stuart, with the interregnum of a republic, an abdication, and the installation of the Brunswick dynasty. The castle is now vested in Albert Prince of Wales.

[BERKHAMSTED STATION: ill5.jpg]

The Chiltern Hills, including the Chiltern Hundreds, the only office under the crown always open to the acceptance of all without distinction of parties, lies within a short distance of Berkhamsted. Ashdridge Park, formerly the seat of the Duke of Bridgewater, the originator and author, with the aid of Brindley and Telford, of our great ca.n.a.l system, lies about a mile to the eastward. The scenery of the park and gardens are fine. The house is modern.

Tring station, a mile and a half from the town, may be reached from London, 31.5 miles, in less than an hour by the express train, and the traveller arrives in as wild a district as any in England. Three miles north of Tring lies the town of Ivinghoe, possessing a large cruciform church, worthy of a visit from the students of "Christian architecture," with an old sculptured timber roof, and containing a tomb with a Norman French inscription,--according to some the tomb of Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, brother of King Stephen. At the Rose and Crown we are informed venison is to be had in perfection at moderate charges during the season. The station is the highest point on the line, being 420 feet above the sea, 300 above Camden Town, and 52 above Birmingham.

In the course of the Tring excavation in the gravel deposits above the chalk, the tusk and teeth of an elephant were found, and in crossing the Icknield or Roman Way, about thirty-three miles, were sixteen human skeletons, and several specimens of Roman pottery: two unique urns are now in the possession of the Antiquarian Society.

Two miles from Tring we pa.s.s from Hertfordshire into Buckinghamshire. It remains a disputed point whether the name of the county is derived from bucken or boccen, a deer, according to Spelman, or with Lysons, boc, a charter, or with Camden from bucken, beech trees, which, as in his time, still abound and flourish. Unfortunately the state of agriculture does not allow the pastors of the country to take the ease and rest that was enjoyed by the celebrated Mr. t.i.tyrus before the repeal of the Roman corn laws, an ease which has cost many an unfortunate schoolboy a flogging.

Our next halt, Cheddington, is noticeable only because it stands on the fork, of which a short branch, nine miles in length, leads to Aylesbury.

AYLESBURY.

Aylesbury, standing on a hill, in the midst of one of the richest, if not the richest, tracts of pasture lands in England, is very ancient without being venerable. The right of returning two members to Parliament is found periodically profitable to the inhabitants, and these two MP's with a little lace, const.i.tute its only manufactures. The loss of the coaching trade by the subst.i.tution of the railroad, was a great blow to its local prosperity.

Among other changes, the Aylesbury butchers often go to London to buy meat, which has pa.s.sed in the shape of oxen through the town to ride to London.

The Berry field, said to be the best field in England, lies in the Vale of Aylesbury. The saying of "good land bad farmers," is not belied among the ma.s.s of those who meet in the markets of Aylesbury. With a few exceptions the farming is as bad as it can be, the farmers miserably poor, and the labourers ignorant to a degree which is a disgrace to the resident clergy and gentry. We had some experience of the peasantry during the railway surveys of 1846, 1847, and found them quite innocent of thinking and reading, with a timid hatred of their employers, and perfect readiness to do anything not likely to be found out, for a pot of beer. They get low wages, live low, and work accordingly. It was round Aylesbury, that for many years, the influence of the insolvent Duke of Buckingham was paramount.

To city sportsmen, Aylesbury has interest as the centre of Baron Rothschild's (stag) hunt; to politicians, because of great meetings of the country party held there.