Читать книгу The life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Civil Engineer - Brunel Isambard - Страница 13

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND PRIOR TO 1833—THE STOCKTON AND DARLINGTON—THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER—THE LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM—PROPOSED RAILWAY BETWEEN LONDON AND BRISTOL—MR. BRUNEL APPOINTED ENGINEER, MARCH 7, 1833—SURVEY OF THE LINE—UNSUCCESSFUL APPLICATION TO PARLIAMENT IN 1834—SUCCESSFUL APPLICATION IN 1835—REMINISCENCES OF MR. BRUNEL, 1833-1835—EXTRACT FROM MR. BRUNEL’S DIARY, WRITTEN AT THE CLOSE OF 1835.

BEFORE entering upon the history of the Great Western and the other railways of which Mr. Brunel was the engineer, it may be useful to give a brief sketch of the development of the railway system, previous to the period when he first became engaged in works of this description.

The first railway in England designed for the conveyance of general merchandise and passengers, was the Stockton and Darlington. An Act of Parliament authorising the construction of this line was passed in 1821.

In 1823, a further Act was obtained, in which a clause was inserted, at the request of Mr. George Stephenson, then the engineer of the company, taking power to work the railway by locomotive engines, and to employ them for the haulage of passengers. This railway, which consisted of a single line with four sidings in the mile, was opened for traffic on September 27, 1825. Its success led at once to the promotion of similar works in other parts of the country.

Next in order must be noticed the celebrated railway between Liverpool and Manchester. A project for constructing a line of railway between these important towns was discussed as early as the year 1822; but a company for carrying it out was not formed till two years later. In 1825, the directors applied to Parliament for an Act; and after a long contest before a committee of the House of Commons, the preamble approving of the construction of the railway was carried by a majority of one. The Bill was, however, withdrawn, as the first two clauses empowering the company to make the line, and to acquire land for that purpose, were lost.[38] In the following year the Act was obtained, and the works were commenced under the direction of Mr. George Stephenson. The line was opened for traffic on September 15, 1830.

In 1824, Mr. George Stephenson wrote a report on a proposed line connecting Liverpool and Birmingham. Surveys were made, and plans deposited; but the Bill was thrown out on standing orders. A similar fate attended the introduction of a Bill in 1826. In 1830, a new line was surveyed by Mr. Joseph Locke and Mr. Rastrick, under the direction of Mr. George Stephenson. The Act was obtained in 1833, and the railway, which was called the Grand Junction, and is now a part of the London and North-Western system, was constructed by Mr. Locke.[39]

In 1830, surveys were commenced by Mr. Robert Stephenson for a line between London and Birmingham, and a Bill was introduced into Parliament in 1832. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway had now been opened for some time, and the promoters of the Birmingham line had the advantage of being able to give in evidence the results of the working of the earlier undertaking. Those results, it is said, were such as to startle most of those who heard them. It was shown that a speed had been attained double that of the fastest stage-coach, that the cost of travelling had been diminished by one half, and that out of 700,000 persons carried since the opening of the railway, only one had met with a fatal accident. The amount of travelling between Liverpool and Manchester had increased four-fold, and the value of the shares of the railway had risen one hundred per cent. Similar evidence was given as to the results of the working of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and the promoters endeavoured to prove that advantages at least as great would arise from the construction of a railway between Birmingham and London. They were successful in the House of Commons; but, they failed to convince the Upper House that the benefits which such a railway would confer on the country traversed by it were sufficient to entitle its promoters to receive for it the sanction of the legislature. The Bill was again introduced in the following session (1833); and, strange to relate, it passed both Houses almost without opposition.[40]

Meanwhile, the principal merchants of Bristol, who had in 1825 made an attempt to get up a railway company, were urged forward, both by the inadequacy of their communications with the metropolis, and by the success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, to make another effort. In the autumn of 1832 a committee was formed of members of the corporation, and other public bodies of the city of Bristol, to carry out the project of a railway to London.

The first step taken by the committee was the appointment of an engineer to make the preliminary surveys, and to prepare an estimate of the cost of the undertaking.

Among the candidates for the post was Mr. Brunel. He was well known in Bristol as the engineer of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and of the works for the improvement of the Floating Harbour. He had made many friends among the leading citizens, and they used their best exertions to procure his election; but there were several other candidates in the field who had great local interest, and the contest was a close one.

While the issue was yet undecided, an unexpected difficulty arose. Some members of the committee resolved to select their engineer by means of a competition among the candidates, as to which of them would provide the lowest estimate. Upon this being announced, Mr. Brunel declared that he must withdraw his name, as he could not consent to become a party to so objectionable a proceeding. ‘You are holding out,’ he wrote to the committee, ‘a premium to the man who will make you the most flattering promises. It is quite obvious that the man who has either least reputation at stake, or who has most to gain by temporary success, and least to lose by the consequences of disappointment, must be the winner in such a race.’ Happily, this plan was abandoned; Mr. Brunel obtained a majority of votes, and was appointed engineer on March 7, 1833.

He commenced the survey without delay; and in addition to his strictly professional duties, he assisted in forming a committee in London, and took a leading part in the consultations which were held upon various important matters connected with the general interests of the undertaking.

A hasty survey of the country between London and Bristol occupied him till the middle of June; and as soon as it was completed, and the course of the line settled on, preparations were made for placing the scheme before the public.

The first public meeting was held on July 30, 1833. Mr. Brunel thus refers to it in his diary:—‘Got through it very tolerably, which I consider great things. I hate public meetings: it is playing with a tiger, and all you can hope is, that you may not get scratched, or worse.’ The result, however, seems to have been successful, and in a month’s time a company was formally constituted, and the parliamentary survey commenced.

Mr. Brunel organised a staff of assistants, at that time rather a difficult task, and set them to work on various parts of the line. His own duty of superintendence severely taxed his great powers of work. He spent several weeks travelling from place to place by night, and riding about the country by day, directing his assistants, and endeavouring, very frequently without success, to conciliate the landowners on whose property he proposed to trespass.

His diary of this date shows that when he halted at an inn for the night, but little time was spent in rest, and that often he sat up writing letters and reports until it was almost time for his horse to come round to take him on the day’s work. ‘Between ourselves,’ he wrote to Mr. Hammond, his assistant, ‘it is harder work than I like. I am rarely much under twenty hours a day at it.’

A great portion of this labour was for the time thrown away, for as November 30 drew near, it became evident that subscriptions were not coming in to the extent which would enable the directors to lodge a Bill for the whole line in the session of 1834.

The directors therefore determined to apply to Parliament for powers to make a railway from London to Reading, and from Bath to Bristol, ‘as a means of facilitating the ultimate establishment of a railway between London and Bristol;’ postponing till a future session their application for an Act to enable them to complete the undertaking by making the line from Reading to Bath.

The Bill was introduced into the House of Commons, and on March 10, Lord Granville Somerset moved that it be read a second time. This motion was seconded by the Earl of Kerry, and supported by several influential members, amongst whom were Mr. Labouchere (the late Lord Taunton) and Mr. Daniel O’Connell.

The second reading was carried by a majority of ninety in a House of 274 members.

The Bill was then referred to a committee which met on April 16, Lord Granville Somerset being in the chair. Evidence was called to prove the advantages of the railway to the agricultural and trading community of the country through which it would pass, even if only the two proposed divisions of the line were constructed.

The traffic in merchandise between Bristol and London was at this time principally carried on by means of water carriage, consisting, first of the river Avon navigation from Bristol to Bath, next of the Kennet and Avon Canal from Bath to Reading, and lastly of the river Thames from Reading to London. The evidence went to show that the distance between London and Reading, which by railway would be thirty-six miles, amounted by the river to nearly eighty; that the delays and impediments arising from drought, flood, and frosts on the rivers, were such as sometimes to detain barges for several weeks; and that so great were the consequent uncertainties and inconveniences of this navigation, that goods which came as far as Reading by the canal, were frequently sent thence to London by road, although at a great increase of expense. Even under the most advantageous circumstances, goods could not be conveyed from Reading to London in less than three days, or in less than a day by the river Avon from Bath to Bristol. It was therefore contended, that to form a railway which should supersede, or at all events come in aid of, the worst portions of the navigation between London and Bristol, would be an important public benefit.[41] The various advantages of the measure were most fully discussed in an investigation which lasted during fifty-seven days. Against the Bill was arrayed every class of opponent that a private Bill could possibly encounter. Those interested in the canals, rivers, and stage-coaches, opposed it from the fear of competition; the inhabitants of Windsor opposed it, because the railway did not run so near to the town as they wished; the corporation of Maidenhead opposed it, because they thought that all the traffic which paid toll on their bridge over the Thames would be diverted to the railway; landowners and farmers near town opposed it, because they feared it would bring produce to London from a distance, as cheap as that supplied by themselves.

There was another very formidable class of opponents to the Bill, consisting of landed proprietors and owners of houses in the immediate neighbourhood of London.

Many engineers were called by these several opponents, to show that a more advantageous line of railway might have been selected; but, upon sifting the merits of the various new lines proposed, it became apparent that the one chosen by Mr. Brunel was the best. Indeed, although some trifling deviations of his line were suggested, the opposing engineers admitted that in all essential features the railway had been most skilfully laid out. It was generally agreed that the line through the valley of the Thames, and thence in a direction north of the Marlborough Downs, was the only proper course for a railway between Bristol and London, as the levels were much better, and communication could be made with much greater ease with the northern and South Wales districts, than if the route to the south of the Marlborough Downs had been selected.

The plans proposed for entering London raised great opposition. In this respect public feeling has greatly changed, for now no railway is thought complete which has not a terminus in the heart of London; and it is considered an advantage for houses to be within easy reach of a railway station; but in 1834 such a neighbour was looked upon with horror and dismay—a nuisance to be, if possible, absolutely prohibited.

When Mr. Brunel commenced the survey for the London terminus, he had some idea of bringing the railway in on the south side of the Thames; but this was abandoned, as it was found to involve very heavy works, and the line proposed in the first Bill was made to terminate on the north side of the river at Vauxhall Bridge. It was to have been carried on a viaduct 24 feet high, with a parapet 6 feet 6 inches high, to prevent the passengers looking into the windows of the neighbouring houses.

The owners of the land through which this part of the line would pass were influential members of the Upper House, and therefore the directors thought it useless to brave their opposition; accordingly, on the thirteenth day of the hearing, they abandoned the last two miles of the viaduct, and proposed to stop at the ‘Hoop and Toy,’ a public-house near the site of the South Kensington Station of the Metropolitan Railway.

But although the opposition of some of the landowners was conciliated by this concession, that portion of the line through Brompton which had not been abandoned was attacked with unabated energy. The residents in Brompton opposed the Bill from the apprehension that the railway would interfere with their quiet and seclusion; Brompton being at that time considered, at any rate by one of the counsel for the opposition, ‘the most famous of any place in the neighbourhood of London for the salubrity of its air, and calculated for retired residences.’ They could not, indeed, be blamed for indulging in these apprehensions, if they really believed in their counsel’s statement that ‘streams of fire would proceed from the locomotive engines.’

Others objected to the viaduct itself as being an undertaking of so colossal a nature as hardly to be practicable; and the supposed increase of traffic and consequent obstruction in Piccadilly and other leading thoroughfares brought down upon the promoters the opposition of the Commissioners of Metropolitan Roads.

All these objections were made the ground of much argument in committee, and doubtless had great influence over the minds of those who voted against the Bill.

The engineering evidence occupied, as might be expected, the greater part of the forty-two days during which witnesses were examined before the committee, and of these forty-two days no less than eleven were taken up by the cross-examination of Mr. Brunel. So protracted a cross-examination has probably never been heard in any court or committee-room. One of those present thus describes it:—

‘The committee-room was crowded with landowners and others interested in the success or defeat of the Bill, and eager to hear Brunel’s evidence. His knowledge of the country surveyed by him was marvellously great, and the explanations he gave of his plans, and the answers he returned to questions suggested by Dr. Lardner, showed a profound acquaintance with the principles of mechanics. He was rapid in thought, clear in his language, and never said too much, or lost his presence of mind. I do not remember ever having enjoyed so great an intellectual treat as that of listening to Brunel’s examination, and I was told at the time that George Stephenson and many others were much struck by the ability and knowledge shown by him.’

In his evidence, Mr. George Stephenson stated that he did not know any existing line so good as that proposed by Mr. Brunel. ‘I can imagine (he said) a better line, but I do not know of one so good.’[42]

At length, on the fifty-fourth day of the sittings of the committee, Mr. Harrison, K.C., rose to reply on behalf of the promoters, and on the conclusion of his address the Bill was passed.

In the House of Lords the second reading was moved by Lord Wharncliffe. It was opposed, and on a division being taken, the motion was lost by a majority of seventeen (30 content and 47 non-content). The Bill was therefore thrown out.

The directors, undaunted by their defeat, lost no time in making preparations for bringing a Bill before Parliament in the session of 1835, with such improvements as the experience of the past campaign suggested to them. Taking into consideration the various grounds on which opposition had been raised to the plans they had proposed for entering London through the Brompton district, they opened negotiations with the London and Birmingham Railway Company, and arrangements were concluded by which the traffic of the Great Western Railway was to be carried upon the London and Birmingham line for the first four miles out of London, the junction being made a little to the west of the Kensal Green Cemetery.

They had also during the autumn raised money enough to enable them to apply to Parliament for powers to construct the whole of the line from London to Bristol. They thus escaped all the sarcastic observations which had been made upon the scheme of 1834, of which it had been said, that it would be a head and a tail without a body, and neither ‘Great’ nor ‘Western,’ nor even a ‘railway’ at all, but ‘a gross deception, a trick, and a fraud upon the public, in name, in title, and in substance!’

On March 9, the earliest day allowed by the standing orders, the Bill was read a second time and committed. A division being taken on the motion for committal, there appeared in favour of the motion 160, and against it none but the tellers.

Shortly after its first meeting, the committee, of which Mr. Charles Russell, then member for Reading, was chairman, came to the resolution that, inasmuch as the evidence given in the previous year as to the public advantages of a Bristol railway had been referred to them by order of the House, they needed no further evidence on that subject. Counsel were therefore directed to confine their case as much as possible to the merits of the line proposed.

Evidence was called by the opponents chiefly with a view to show the advantages of a proposed line from Basing to Bath, and the inexpediency of granting an entirely new line of 115 miles in length to the Great Western Railway Company, which involved the construction of a ‘monstrous and extraordinary,’ ‘most dangerous and impracticable, tunnel’ at Box, and this, when 44 miles of railway in a western direction—viz. as far as Basingstoke, had already been sanctioned by the legislature in the Southampton Railway Act, passed in the previous session. The promoters of the Bill contended that the levels of the Basing and Bath line were not so good as those proposed for their own, and that the Great Western Railway would approach almost every town of importance situated on the proposed Basing and Bath line, by means of short branches; whilst at the same time it presented the great advantage of being capable of easy extension to Gloucester and Wales, and to Oxford, an object wholly unattainable by the other line. In reply to these assertions, the opponents maintained that although the levels of the Basing and Bath Railway presented greater inclinations than those of the Great Western, yet that they were so balanced as that the rises and falls compensated one for another, so as to render the line practically level. The enunciation of this theory called forth a remark by the chairman that according to this principle the Highlands of Scotland would be as good as any other place for the construction of a railway.

The preamble was voted proved, and the Bill passed the House of Commons without further opposition, and on May 27 was read a first time in the Lords. On June 10, the second reading was carried after a sharp debate, the numbers being 46 contents, and 34 non-contents.

Lord Wharncliffe was chairman of the committee.[43] The proceedings began by an opposition on the standing orders, which, after much skirmishing, were voted to have been complied with. The promoters, however, judged from the nature of the first day’s proceedings, that they had to expect a contest of no inconsiderable duration; and the result proved their anticipations to have been correct. For forty days the battle was fought with a degree of earnestness and vigour on both sides, almost unequalled in any similar proceedings.

The committee soon came to the same decision as the House of Commons, that, with regard to the advisability of a Bristol railway, they were satisfied, and needed no further evidence. The case became then one of mere comparison between the relative merits of the two lines proposed.

The case in support of the Bill occupied eighteen days, and was closed with a speech by the Hon. John Talbot.

Mr. Serjeant Merewether, whom the opponents had chosen as their leader in the House of Lords, was then heard on their behalf, and occupied no less than four days in the delivery of his speech, in which certainly no argument that ingenuity could devise was omitted to strengthen his case. There was hardly any conceivable injury which, according to the learned serjeant’s notions, the Great Western Railway would not inflict. It was said that the Thames would be choked up for want of traffic, the drainage of the country destroyed, and Windsor Castle left unsupplied with water. As for Eton College it would be absolutely and entirely ruined: London would pour forth the most abandoned of its inhabitants to come down by the railway and pollute the minds of the scholars, whilst the boys themselves would take advantage of the short interval of their play hours to run up to town, mix in all the dissipation of London life, and return before their absence could be discovered. Moreover, while the beauty of the country and the retirement of private dwellings would be destroyed, the interests of the public would be far more effectually served by the adoption of the Basing and Bath line, and a line from the London and Birmingham Railway to Gloucester. This was in fact the point at issue, and on this the result of the contest depended. The promoters of the Bill had called, in support of their line, in addition to Mr. Brunel, who being engineer to the company might be considered an interested witness, Mr. Locke, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Price, Mr. George Stephenson, and Mr. Vignoles. They expressed their unqualified approbation of the line chosen by Mr. Brunel, and of the estimates he had prepared.

The preamble was proved, and after an unsuccessful opposition the Bill was read a third time, on August 27. The Royal Assent was given on the last day of that month.[44]

During this contest Mr. Brunel made among his fellow-labourers many deep and lasting friendships. One of the most intimate of these friends, Mr. St. George Burke, Q.C., has, in compliance with a request made to him, furnished the following reminiscences of his intercourse with Mr. Brunel during the progress of the Bill through Parliament.

March 9, 1869.

‘My dear Isambard,—You wish me to supply you with reminiscences of my old associations with your father, in order that, in your biography of him, you may present a true picture of those features of his character which so endeared him to his most intimate friends.

‘For many years it was my good fortune to enjoy his friendship, and many of the pleasantest hours of my life were due to it.

‘For a period of nearly three years, viz. during the contest for the Great Western Railway Bill, I think that seldom a day passed without our meeting, whether for purposes of business or pleasure, both of which his buoyant spirits enabled him to combine in a manner which I have seldom seen equalled.

‘It would be wearisome to detail the many incidents which occurred illustrative of the singularly facile manner in which, in the midst of the heaviest and most responsible labours, he could enter into the most boyish pranks and fun, without in the least distracting his attention from the matter of business in which he was engaged; but all who knew him as I did could bear testimony to this characteristic of his disposition.

‘I believe that a more joyous nature, combined with the highest intellectual faculties, was never created, and I love to think of him in the character of the ever gay and kind-hearted friend of my early years, rather than in the more serious professional aspect under which your pages will, no doubt, rightly depict him.

‘In 1833 your father and I occupied chambers facing each other in Parliament Street, and as my duties involved the superintendence, as Parliamentary agent, of the compliance with all the Standing Orders of Parliament, and very frequent interviews and negotiations with the landowners on the line, we were of necessity constantly thrown together. To facilitate our intercourse, it occurred to your father to carry a string across Parliament Street, from his chambers to mine, to be there connected with a bell, by which he could either call me to the window to receive his telegraphic signals, or, more frequently, to wake me up in the morning when we had occasion to go into the country together, which, it is needless to observe, was of frequent occurrence; and great was the astonishment of the neighbours at this device, the object of which they were unable to comprehend.

‘I believe that at that time he scarcely ever went to bed, though I never remember to have seen him tired or out of spirits. He was a very constant smoker, and would take his nap in an arm-chair, very frequently with a cigar in his mouth; and if we were to start out of town at five or six o’clock in the morning, it was his frequent practice to rouse me out of bed about three, by means of the bell, when I would invariably find him up and dressed, and in great glee at the fun of having curtailed my slumbers by two or three hours more than necessary.

‘No one would have supposed that during the night he had been poring over plans and estimates, and engrossed in serious labours, which to most men would have proved destructive of their energies during the following day; but I never saw him otherwise than full of gaiety, and apparently as ready for work as though he had been sleeping through the night.

‘In those days we had not the advantage of railways, and were obliged to adopt the slower, though perhaps not less agreeable, mode of travelling with post-horses. Your father had a britzska, so arranged as to carry his plans and engineering instruments, besides some creature comforts, never forgetting the inevitable cigar-case among them; and we would start by daybreak, or sometimes earlier, on our country excursions, which still live in my remembrance as some of the pleasantest I have ever enjoyed; though I think I may safely say that, pleasurable as they were, we never lost sight of the business in which we were engaged, and for which our excursions were undertaken.

‘I have never known a man who, possessing courage which to many would appear almost like rashness, was less disposed to trust to chance or to throw away any opportunity of attaining his object than was your father. I doubt not that this quality will be fully exemplified in the details which you will have received of his engineering experiments; but I speak of him also in the character of a diplomatist, in which he was as wary and cautious as any man I ever knew.

‘We canvassed many landowners together, and I had plenty of opportunities of judging of his skill and caution in our discussions with them, though we had many a good laugh afterwards at the arguments which had been addressed to us as to the inutility and impolicy of the scheme in which we were engaged, and the utter ruin it would be sure to entail on its promoters, as well as on the country affected by it.

‘I frequently accompanied him to the west of England, and into Gloucestershire and South Wales, when public meetings were held in support of the measures in which he was engaged, and I had occasion to observe the enormous popularity which he everywhere enjoyed. The moment he rose to address a meeting he was received with loud cheers, and he never failed to elicit applause at the end of his address, which was distinguished as much by simplicity of language and modesty of pretension as by accurate knowledge of his subject.

Yours very truly,

St. George Burke.

Isambard Brunel, Esq.’

The following is an extract from Mr. Brunel’s diary, written at the end of the year 1835:—

53 Parliament Street, December 26.

What a blank in my journal [the last entry is dated January 1834], and during the most eventful part of my life. When last I wrote in this book I was just emerging from obscurity. I had been toiling most unprofitably at numerous things, unprofitably, at least, at the moment. The railway was certainly being thought of, but still very uncertain. What a change. The railway now is in progress. I am thus engineer to the finest work in England. A handsome salary, on excellent terms with my directors, and all going smoothly. But what a fight we have had, and how near defeat, and what a ruinous defeat it would have been. It is like looking back upon a fearful pass; but we have succeeded.

And it is not this alone, but everything I have been engaged in has been successful. Clifton bridge—my first child, my darling, is actually going on: recommenced work last Monday—glorious!! [Here follows a list of the undertakings on which he was then engaged.] I think this forms a pretty list of real sound professional work, unsought for on my part, that is, given to me fairly by the respective parties—all, except the Wear Docks, resulting from the Clifton bridge, which I fought hard for, and gained only by persevering struggles.... And this at the age of twenty-nine. I really can hardly believe it, when I think of it. I am just leaving 53 Parliament Street, where I may say I have made my fortune, or, rather, the foundation of it, and I have taken 18 Duke Street.