of surprise to the whole neighbourhood.' Similar results have been observed elsewhere, wherever legitimate enterprise and not wild speculation has been brought into play.

In the following year, two of Stephenson's locomotives were employed in the coal transport on the line in addition to the horses. It was no uncommon sight to see one of these engines drawing behind it a train of loaded wagons, weighing ninety-two tons, at the rate of five miles an hour. In those days steam-whistles had not yet come into use; and the firemen, to give notice of their approach after nightfall, threw up high into the air, from time to time, a shovelful of red-hot cinders, which could be seen at a considerable distance by those moving in the opposite direction. Without a load the speed of the engines was not unfrequently fifteen miles an hour —a most exhilarating rate of travelling, which at that period was regarded as little less than marvellous.

The year 1825 marks one of those periods in history when the speculative mania, always present in a commercial community, and more or less active, suddenly burst into delirium: projects, however visionary, were eagerly taken up; shares in ideal mines were bought and sold with marvellous celerity; and thousands became dupes of their own folly or thirst for gain. Everything was to be done by steam: by means of coal-gas, people were 'to ride among the clouds at the rate of forty miles an hour, and whirl along a turnpike-road at the rate of twelve miles an hour, having relays, at every fifteen miles, of bottled gas instead of relays of horses.' A writer of the day remarks: 'this nondescript gas-breathing animal, something of the velocipede family, is intended to crawl over the ground by protruding from behind it six or eight legs on either side in alternate succession.' And referring to the numerous schemes then put forward for railways, he continues: 'nothing now is heard of but railroads; the daily papers teem with notices of new lines of them in every direction, and pamphlets and paragraphs are thrown before the public eye, recommending nothing short of making them general throughout the kingdom.' All the great towns of the north were to be connected by railways: Liverpool with Birmingham, Birmingham with London, London with Dover. The ironmasters—trade being slack, and having an eye to business-had the credit of fostering the speculative spirit for their own interests. 'All physical obstructions,' as Telford said, 'were forgotten or overlooked amid the splendour of the gigantic undertakings.'

Real enterprise was, however, steadily pursuing its aim amid all the excitement. Application had been made to parliament for leave to lay down a railway from Liverpool to Manchester · -a work then become indispensable to those two increasing and important towns. At that period, and for some time afterwards, canal-boats, and slow, heavy road-wagons were the only available means for the transport of heavy goods or bulky merchandise. The charge for conveyance from London to Yorkshire amounted frequently to £13 per ton, and even at this high cost the service was very imperfect. Beneficial as canals had proved they were becoming inadequate to the growing requirements of trade. Besides the road there were two canals for the traffic between Liverpool and Manchester, the distance by the latter fifty-five miles, and the carriage of goods in some instances £2 per ton. Manchester was so entirely dependent on Liverpool

for supplies of raw material, and the saving of time in transport so much an object, that any measure for an additional route was more a necessity than a speculation. It was notorious that goods were frequently conveyed from Liverpool to New York in less time than to Manchester. To make a third canal was impossible, as the district afforded no more water than sufficed for the two already existing. A thousand tons of merchandise were sent daily between the two towns, and produced a yearly revenue of £200,000 to the carriers. On one of the canals the profits were so great that the proprietors received the amount of their original outlay every alternate year.

Reasonable compliance with their wishes would have satisfied the merchants, who sought only to secure prompt and certain means of transport, not to depreciate canal property. Failing in their object, a railway, which had from time to time been talked about, was again discussed. The 'Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company' was formed, and their prospectus issued in 1824. In the following year the bill came before parliament, and there encountered all the opposition which selfishness could invent or ignorance employ, as may be seen in the parliamentary records of the session. The bill, however, was successfully carried in 1826.

Some years before the Duke of Bridgewater, on hearing the remark: 'You must be making handsomely out with your canals,' replied, somewhat chafed: 'O yes-they will last my time; but I don't like the look of these tram-roads: there's mischief in them.' The mischief-if such it was -was about to be realised. The duke's agent was conferred with on the subject of the railway, and an offer made him of shares, which he met by the churlish answer: 'All or none.' To us in the present day it may not be uninstructive to consider some of the forms under which the spirit of opposition strove to effect its purpose.

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Canal proprietors were among the first to bestir themselves: they consulted Telford as to the most advisable manner of protecting their property;' and the enlargement and extension of the Birmingham and Liverpool, and the Ellesmere canals, were recommended by the eminent engineer as a preliminary measure. To understand the value of this recommendation we must remember that at the period in question railways were generally considered as subordinate or accessory to canals-not as a new resource destined to supersede them.

The legislature even was not exempt from incredulity, to choose a mild term. Stephenson's assertion, during his examination before a committee of the House, that it would not be difficult to make a locomotive travel fifteen or twenty miles an hour, provoked one of the members to reply that the engineer could only be fit for a lunatic asylum. If the opposition were to be believed, the laying down of a railway would inevitably reduce the value of land through which it passed, and landholders, by gradual though sure decline, be brought to the verge of ruin. As a million horses would be thrown out of service, no one of course would care about keeping up the breed; and not only were good horses to become as rare as peacocks, but the 8,000,000 acres of land that produced the oats were to return to a state of nature. A Quarterly Reviewer wrote: As to those persons who speculate on making railways general throughout the kingdom, and

superseding all the canals, all the wagons, mail and stage coaches, postchaises, and, in short, every other mode of conveyance by land and by water, we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of notice. The gross exaggerations of the powers of the locomotive steam-engine, or, to speak in plain English, the steam-carriage, may delude for a time, but must end in the mortification of those concerned.' How ridiculous this reads now to us, who see how completely the results are at variance with the confident predictions! and equally ridiculous will our ignorance and prejudice appear to those who come after us.

Parliamentary sanction once obtained, the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad Company set to work upon their novel and important undertaking -novel, inasmuch as its scheme and magnitude exceeded all that had been previously attempted of a similar nature. Stephenson, who had already won a reputation, was appointed engineer, and a chief point determined on was that the line should be as nearly as possible straight between the two towns. In the carrying out of this design the series of engineering difficulties' was first encountered, the overcoming of which has called forth an amount of scientific knowledge, of invention, ingenuity, and mechanical hardihood unprecedented in the history of human labour. Hills were to be pierced or cut through, embankments raised, viaducts built, and four miles of watery and spongy bog converted into a hardened road.

The drainage and solidification of this bog-or Chat Moss, its local name -were among the first operations. It was too soft to be walked on with safety, and in some places an iron rod laid on the surface would sink by its own weight. An embankment twenty feet in height was commenced,

and had been carried some distance across the treacherous soil, when the whole sunk down and disappeared; and not until many thousand tons of earth had been deposited and swallowed up was a secure foundation obtained. At the softest part, known as the 'flow-moss,' hurdles thickly interwoven with heath were laid down, and upon these the earth and gravel for the permanent way. The successful formation of this part of the line was looked upon at the time as no unworthy triumph over physical obstacles. It was but the precursor of still greater enterprises.

Another great work was the tunnel under Liverpool, forming a direct passage to the docks without interfering with the streets. Its length is 2250 yards-nearly a mile and a half-the width 22 feet, and height 16 feet, and for greater part of the distance it pierces the solid red sandstone rock of the district. It was begun in 1826, and finished in September 1828, at a cost of £34,791. Besides this there is a tunnel of smaller dimensions, 290 yards in length, leading to the passenger-station, situated in the higher parts of Liverpool at some distance from the docks.

A more than ordinary interest attaches to the history of these works, from the fact of their being the first of the kind: suffice it, however, to state, that sixty-three bridges were built at different parts of the line, most of them of stone and brick. Two capacious tunnels were excavated, and six cuttings through elevations, out of which were taken more than 3,000,000 cubic yards of earth, stone, and gravel. These materials were used in the formation of embankments, for bridges, and other masonry. The double line of rails weighed 3847 tons, and the chairs which held

them in place 1428 tons; and the total cost amounted to £820,000—four times more than had been estimated.

During the execution of the works a question of considerable importance had to be decided: whether horses, stationary steam-engines, or locomotives, should be the tractive power. A high rate of speed, if not impossible, was, as we have seen, considered unsafe, otherwise the employment of animals would hardly have been thought of. The first two, however, were soon set aside; and early in 1829, when the works of the railway were well advanced, the directors advertised a prize of £500 for the best locomotive engine. The stipulations were, that it should draw at least three times its own weight-the latter limited to six tons-and be supported on springs, and not exceed fifteen feet in height; that it should be worked at a maximum pressure of fifty pounds to the inch, make no smoke, and travel, with its load, not less than ten miles an hour. The appearance of the advertisement elicited afresh the shafts of ridicule, as well as the strictures of practical men. Mr Nicholas Wood, in his Treatise on Railroads,' says: It is far from my purpose to promulgate to the world that the ridiculous expectations, or rather professions, of the enthusiastic speculatist, will be realised, or that we shall see engines travelling at the rate of twelve, sixteen, eighteen, or twenty miles an hour. Nothing could do more harm towards their general adoption than the promulgation of such nonsense.'

Having now come to the period when the locomotive engine figures prominently in railway history, we must take a brief survey of the origin and development of this important and interesting invention. Excepting the machines made for Kanghi—to be hereafter mentioned-Leupold's appears to have been the earliest steam-engine applicable to locomotive purposes; but the first practical idea of applying steam-power to wheeled carriages is due to Dr Robison, by whom it was communicated to Watt in 1759. Some time afterwards the latter made a model of a high-pressure locomotive, and described its principle in his fourth patent in 1784, which, among certain improvements, specified a portable steam-engine, and machinery for moving wheel-carriages.' Watt, however, had doubts as to the safety of his machine, and mentioned the subject to one of his friends, Murdoch, who three years afterwards constructed a model of a locomotive which proved the correctness of the previous calculations. This engine,' we are told, 'was made in 1787, and persons are still alive who saw it in that year drive a small wagon round a room at his house at Redruth, in Cornwall. Among those who saw it was Richard Trevithick, who, in 1802, took out a patent for a similar invention.'

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Singularly enough, a similar model was exhibited the same year at the opposite end of the kingdom. Symington's locomotive was then shewn in the house of Mr Gilbert Measom at Edinburgh. He pursued the experiment, and in 1795 worked a steam-engine on a line of turnpike-road in Lanarkshire and the adjoining county. Then followed that by Trevithick and Vivian in 1802, which ran on the Merthyr tram-way, and drew a load of ten tons at the rate of five miles an hour. Slight ridges were left in the edge of the wheels and on the trams, to prevent their slipping round, and to insure a forward movement. That without this precaution

there could be adhesion or advance was an idea that long prevailed. The cause of this slipping lay in the construction of the engine, which had but one cylinder, and the crank having to pass two centres during one revolution of the wheel, the consequence was an occasional slow, dragging motion. Trevithick, who was a man of great ability, and one to whom steamlocomotion is much indebted, afterwards made a carriage to run on common roads which combined several of the arrangements now in use. The fireplace was surrounded by water, and the waste steam blown off through the smoke - pipe to produce a draught. The cylinder was placed inside the boiler for economy of heat, and the fore-wheels made to turn by cranks connected with the piston-rod, but with one cylinder only the motion was very irregular. This engine was exhibited on one of the roads in Lambeth in 1806, without, however, exciting more than a temporary interest. Three years previously another locomotive by Trevithick had blown up— an accident which created so much dread of high-pressure steam-carriages that a feeling of alarm arose respecting their use, which in some quarters is not even yet entirely dissipated.

Blenkinsop, of Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, constructed a locomotive in 1811, the wheels of which were cogged and ran in toothed rails; a noisy contrivance, intended to overcome the imaginary difficulty-want of bite -and effectually preventing rapid motion by its enormous friction. The engine had two cylinders, and so far was an improvement on those which preceded it, and laboured along at five miles an hour. The Chapmans came next with a new plan: a chain stretched from one end to the other along the middle of a tram-way was passed once round a wheel fixed beneath the carriage, and this wheel being made to revolve by the action of machinery, its bite on the chain caused the whole to move forwards. This method involved so great an amount of friction that it was abandoned almost as soon as tried. Brunton followed in 1813 with mechanical legs and feet attached to the rear of his engine, intended by their alternate walking motion to propel it continually onwards, and prevent the slipping of the wheels on the rails. Considerable ingenuity was displayed in this contrivance, which performed well, and in certain cases might be employed with advantage, but was not well adapted to locomotive propulsion. The difficulty against which it was especially applied was soon proved to have no existence.

During the same year Blackett repeated Trevithick's experiments at Wylam, in Northumberland; and the fact was satisfactorily demonstrated that, in ordinary circumstances, and with clean rails, the adhesion between the wheel and the rail was sufficient to cause a progressive motion. It would have been proved long before had the engines and tram-plates been heavier both were too light; and the slipping so much complained of had been an accidental, not a necessary consequence.

Meantime Stephenson was busy at Killingworth, in another part of Northumberland, making and testing locomotives. In 1814 he verified the experiments of other inventors, and went beyond them all in the perfection and performance of his machinery. He took out patents in the two following years for engines, that with a load of twenty tons, and on smooth rails, would travel five miles an hour, and ten miles without a load. No better result at that time was looked for. The possibility of