Euston Station

“ In America, these short seats are not only cushioned, but each seat has its two elbows and its cushioned back.
Another English annoyance, is the ticket-taking. If all the wrath which is poured out on the heads of the railway directors during this formality could take effect, they would be among the most miserable and unfortunate of mortals. Arrived at Euston Station, we will say, by the last train from the north—some sleepy, some hungry, and all tired—the passengers are anxious to wend their several ways as quickly as possible ”

“ Euston, including its dependency, Camden Station, is the greatest railway port in England, or indeed in the world. It is the principal gate through which flows and reflows the traffic of a line which has cost more than twenty-two millions sterling; which annually earns more than two millions and a-half for the conveyance of passengers, and merchandise, and live stock; and which directly employs more than ten thousand servants, beside the tens of thousands to whom, in mills or mines, in ironworks, in steam-boats and coasters, it gives indirect employment. ”

“ This need had had twenty minutes, the afternoon before, to find out where it stood, and the time was fully accounted for by the charm of the demonstration. He had arrived at Euston at five, having wired her from Liverpool the moment he landed, and she had quickly decided to meet him at the station, whatever publicity might attend such an act. When he had praised her for it on alighting from his train she had answered frankly enough that such things should be taken at a jump. She didn't care to-day who saw her, and she profited by it for her joy. ”

“ Aside from the romance that is indigenous to all railway stations, there are peculiar characteristics of the great London termini that are of absorbing interest. And so strong are the claims each puts forth for pre-eminence, it is indeed difficult to award a palm.
Euston has its columns, Charing Cross its Tribute to Queen Eleanor, St. Pancras a spacious roominess, and Victoria a wofully-crowded and limited space. Each station has its own sort of people, and, though indubitably they must mingle upon occasion, yet the type of crowd at each station is invariably the same. ”

“ The Propylæum, or architectural gateway, with its lodges, separating the station from the public street, is remarkable for its magnitude and its strictly classical character. A drawing was in the Academy in 1837 (see Bourne and Britton, Drawings of the London and Birmingham Railway, p. 14, and drawing ii. engraving by C. F. Cheffins; plate in Companion to the Almanack, 1839, p. 233) . The great hall at Euston station was afterwards added, from designs by Hardwick's son, Mr. P. C. Hardwick. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At five o'clock on the evening of the 18th of March in the year already mentioned a train left Euston Station for Manchester. It was a rainy, squally day, which grew wilder as it progressed, so it was by no means the weather in which anyone would travel who was not driven to do so by necessity. The train, however, is a favourite one among Manchester business men who are returning from town, for it does the journey in four hours and twenty minutes, with only three stoppages upon the way. ”

“ Close to each departure-gate there is stationed a person whose duty it is to write down in a book the number of each cabman carrying away a passenger, as well as the place to which he is conveying him, which two facts each driver is required to exclaim as he trots by; and thus any traveller desirous to complain of a cabman, or who may have left any property in a carriage from Euston Station, has only to state on what day and by what train he arrived, also whither he was conveyed, and from these data the driver’s name can at any lapse of time be readily ascertained. ”

“ The station-master leaned over the table. The eyes of the man who sat there were perfectly wide-open, but there was something unnatural in their fixed stare,—something unnatural, too, in the drawn grayness of his face.
“This is Euston, sir,” the station-master began,—“the terminus—”
Then he broke off in the middle of his sentence. A cold shiver was creeping through his veins. He, too, began to stare; he felt the color leaving his own cheeks. ”

“ They there know quite well what they are waiting for, and have no desire to move. Indeed, it is a Pickwickian fact, well known to cab-drivers, that their horses travel unwillingly from the station, but always pull hard coming back, simply because it is during the waiting-time at Euston Station that their nose-bags are put on—or, in other words, that they are fed. ”

“ The place is not a baby, but it has hardly taken the trouble to grow up. It has a post-office of truly German stability and magnitude. It has a well-organised railway station, and it has the merit of being in Adderley Street, the main thoroughfare of the city: imagine it even possible to bring Euston into the Strand, and you will get an idea of the absence of push and crush in Capetown. ”

“ It is so hard to prove a negative. There was Jessie's aunt, who bore out the statement of the counsel for the defence. There were the porters who saw him leave Euston by the 7.15 train for Liverpool, and arrive just too late for the 5.15; there was the cabman (2138) , who drove him to Euston just in time, he (witness) thought, to catch the 5.15 a.m. Under cross-examination, the cabman got a little confused; he was asked whether, if he really picked up the prisoner at Bow Railway Station at about 4.30, he ought not to have caught the first train at Euston. ”

“ In the autumn of 1913 when the Stratford, Ont., yard limits were extended and reorganized to conform to the requirements of the new “Grand Trunk” station, opened in December of that year, the old eastend ducat, (dovecote-do’ecot) , in which young Edison is said to have served a part of his apprenticeship as an operator, was torn down to make way for a modern signal tower.
Every railroad telegrapher is said to experience once, sooner or later during his career, being temporarily petrified with alarm on finding he has ordered two trains to pass “head on” or from the rear on a single track. ”

“ Sixty freight cars can be loaded there at one time. One thinks what emotions that glass-roofed shed must have seen in Civil War times. I suppose many a train of men in blue said good-by to mothers and sweethearts along those platforms. That thought was with me as I stood inside the old station, which in spite of its bustle of freight is filled with the haunting sadness of all places that are old and decayed and echoing with the whispers of long ago. Does it seem absurd to sentimentalize over a railway station less than seventy years old? ”

“ How the five millions of people in London “get about” to their daily avocations and homes is a mystery to those who have not made the subject a study. So I have gathered some information which will throw a little light on it.
Let me start out with the statement that besides the ten large terminal stations, like the Euston Square and the Midland, both in Euston Road, there are four hundred and thirty railway stations within the metropolis, and the under-ground lines alone carry annually one hundred and twenty-five millions of passengers. ”

“ Did you get into a carriage that had a lamp, sir?”
“I’ve seen some bungling at railway stations before now,” said Harold, “but bang me if I ever met the equal of this.”
“This isn’t properly speaking a station, sir, it’s a junction,” said the official, mildly, but with the force of a man who has said the last word.
“That simply means that greater bungling may be found at a junction than at a station,” said Harold. “Is it not customary to give some notice of the departure of a train at a junction as well as a station, my good man?” ”

“ The sudden change from the dreary lifelessness of the veldt to the exciting crush and bustle of the station platform crowd is almost bewildering, because it is so different from what is expected in interior Africa. The station, a magnificent structure of stone and iron, presents more animated scenes whenever trains arrive than the Grand Central in New York or the Victoria in London, because every passenger is invariably met at the train by all his friends and as many of their friends as the station platform will accommodate. ”

“ As he walked along, considering, his attention was caught by some red and green lights a little way off, to one side of the town, and the sound of the puffing and snorting of engines and the banging of shunted trucks fell on his ear. "Aha!" he thought, "this is a piece of luck! A railway station is the thing I want most in the whole world at this moment ”

“ Away they sped, by London Bridge, the Borough, the “Elephant and Castle,” Kennington Park Road, the Oval, and Stockwell, but the guard did not call out the names of these stations, and only when the terminus was reached did Lilian rouse herself from her reverie, and stepping out of the station after giving up her ticket, gazed aghast, not at the “Angel,” Islington, which she knew was a locality nearly all bricks and mortar, but upon a large open space—Clapham Common! ”

“ He and I met accidentally, about nine o'clock on a hot, sultry evening, at a flag railroad station about twenty miles west of Springfield, on my return from a great meeting at Petersburg in Menard County. He had been driven to the station in a buggy and left there alone. I was already there. The train that we intended to take for Springfield was about due. After vainly waiting for half an hour for its arrival, a thunderstorm compelled us to take refuge in an empty freight-car standing on a side track, there being no buildings of any sort at the station. ”

“ As a rule, however, nobody looks as if he liked being in a railway station or would stop there if he could go anywhere else. I trust the Ministry of Reconstruction will see to it that the railway stations of the country are rebuilt and vivified. One does not really wish to stop at any station at all except one's own station. ”

“ There are hurried good-byes, gathering together of souvenirs, wistful eyes of those who cannot yet go, watching those who can. Cars are brought round to the side entrance, stretchers slipped into their grooves, and the convoy is off to the station. The long train, already half filled, lies waiting. There is a last little passage across the platform, coming and going of bearers, the inevitable argument with the R.T.O., a warning shriek from the engine, and the train to the base has gone. [Pg 45]
II
'Do you think that sort of thing matters now?'
A clearing station is just what its name denotes. ”

“ Owen, of Glansevern, who was accompanied by some lady friends and Mr. Brace, and at another point by Mr. Whalley, the chairman of the company. These arrivals were acknowledged with vociferous cheering. The procession, like a rolling snowball, gained bulk as it proceeded, and before it reached the station, comprehended a very large proportion of the inhabitants,—ladies and gentlemen,—with a good sprinkling of their neighbours. At the station there was a considerable delay, awaiting the arrival of the train from Newtown. ”

“ Peter could best have enlightened the Respectable Old Gentleman, to whom stations were stations, neither more nor less. Euston was her terminus for Thatch Lane; and on the many occasions that Stuart had accompanied her thither, they had taken to their hearts the grim portals and endless echoing approach, the labyrinth of platform and grey mystery of booking-hall, the infinite possibilities in its stretching regions and sinister corners. ”

“ The station-master told the ganger of the four navvies who went by on their trolly down the line to work. At the end of their four-mile length they told the ration-carrier of Eubindal station, who happened to call in at their camp for a drink of tea. He hurried off to the head-station with the news, and on his way told three teamsters, an inspector of selections, and a black boy belonging to Mylong station, whom he happened to meet on the road. ”

“ Upon alighting from the train one sees old bits of paper lying about, banana skins, peanut shells, dirt, dust, everything unpleasant and incidentally a very untidy looking station building. The whole appearance around the place is suggestive not merely of newness, but worn-out newness. I felt that life in Bethlehem, judging by the look of the station, would be extremely depressing. ”

“ Every one meets at the railroad station. They are all as smart looking as can be, there is no sign of "rough" clothes anywhere, though nothing in the least like a jewel case or parasol is to be seen. At the end of somewhere between eight and eighteen hours, they arrive at a shed which sits at the edge of the single track and is labelled Dustville Junction, and hurrying down the narrow platform is their host. ”

“ As noon approached, train after train deposited at the Aston station hundreds and thousands of gaily-attired Black Country people. Special trains ran from New Street as fast as they could be got in order; all the approaches to the park were crammed with serried lines—three or four abreast—of omnibuses, waggons, cabs, carts, and every other imaginable vehicle; whilst thousands upon thousands of dusty pedestrians jostled each other in the crowded roads. ”