Читать книгу Rides on Railways - Samuel Sidney - Страница 7

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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 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.