Railway carriage

“ I, and other miserable sinners like unto me, come to town through tunnels, and over the tops of houses, or along cuttings in which one gets an unlovely view of the backs of dirty houses and slovenly yards, in a closely-packed railway carriage, where we can neither talk, nor hear, nor read, and grow nervous as the engine screams and shrieks on all occasions, while the railway porters close the doors with a bang sufficient to send one into a fit. ”

“ From looking out of the carriage windows, I begin to take note of the carriage itself—a real American railway carriage. It is a long car with a passage down the middle. On each side of this passage are seats for two persons, facing the engine; but the backs being reversible, a party of four can sit as in an English carriage, face to face. At each end of the carriage is a stove, and a filter of iced water. The door at each end leads out on to a platform, enabling the conductor to walk through the train from one end to the other. ”

“ If the biggest horses had been Shetland ponies, we should be travelling now in railway carriages to hold two each side at a maximum speed of perhaps twenty miles an hour. There is hardly any reason, beyond this tradition of the horse, why the railway carriage should not be even nine or ten feet wide, the width, that is, of the smallest room in which people can live in comfort, hung on such springs and wheels as would effectually destroy all vibration, and furnished with all the equipment of comfortable chambers. ”

“ To follow further the rapid development of the railroad in America would require many volumes. As the canal building fever had seized the fancy of the American public in preceding years, so a similar enthusiasm was instantly kindled in the new railroad, and railroad travel became immediately the most popular diversion. In a relatively few years a web of track carried the smoking locomotive and its rumbling train of cars throughout the country. Crude, and lacking almost every convenience of the passenger coach of the present day, the early railway carriage served fully its new-born function. ”

“ Before leaving the subject of railway carriages, I may as well give you a description of the travelling cars in ordinary use.
They are forty-two feet long, nine and a half wide, from six to six and a half feet high, and carry from fifty to sixty passengers. Each seat is three feet four inches long, placed at right angles to the window, and has a reversible back. There is a passage through the centre of the car, between the rows of seats. In winter, a stove is always burning in each carriage ”

“ It is satisfactory to find that there is a steadily growing tendency to so construct passenger carriages that their occupants may, by passages or corridors, communicate with all parts of the same carriage or with the adjoining carriages ”

“ A few words on railway travelling in England: it differs from ours essentially. First, the cars on English roads are not so convenient, comfortable, or even so private as the American car. In the English first-class carriage, four persons must sit facing four persons; consequently four must perforce ride backwards, and the four are placed so as to stare directly at their opposite neighbors,—sometimes unpleasant, if all are not acquainted, especially at lunch time, &c. ”

“ Again, if the advantages of carriage by the railway and the common road be compared, it will be found that the proportion is at the rate of about one to seven, also in favour of the railway.
“The economy of carriage on the railway, when fully contrasted with that of the canal, is also much greater. It may now, indeed, be considered as a generally received opinion, that, unless for enabling sea-borne ships to pass from one side of the coast to another, so as to avoid a tedious or dangerous circumnavigation, the railway in every other case is preferable. ”

“ The First Class Trains consist of First Class and Mail Carriages, carrying four inside (one compartment of which is convertible into a Bed Carriage, if required) and of Carriages carrying six inside,—The Mixed Trains consist of First Class Carriages, carrying six inside, and of 2d class carriages open at the side, without linings, cushions, or divisions in the compartments.—The Night Mail Train consists of First Class Carriages carrying six inside, and of Second Class Carriages closed, and entirely protected from the weather.—Each Carriage has a small roof lamp by day and night. ”

“ The royal train is put together by selecting those required from fifteen carriages which are always ready for an imperial journey. If the journey is short, a saloon carriage and refreshment car are deemed sufficient; in case of a long journey the train consists of a buffer carriage in addition, with two saloon cars for the suite and two wagons for the luggage. The train is always accompanied by a high official of the railway, who, with mechanics and spare guard, is in direct telephonic communication with the engine-driver and guard. ”

“ In the next place, and parallel with the motor truck, there will develop the hired or privately owned motor carriage. This, for all except the longest journeys, will add to all the small conveniences of first-class railway travel a fine sense of personal independence. It will be capable of a day's journey of three hundred miles or more, long before the developments to be presently foreshadowed arrive. One will change nothing—unless it is the driver—from stage to stage. ”

“ The out-train having been despatched, we must now beg our readers to be so good as to walk, or rather to scramble, with us from the scene of its departure across five sets of rails, on which are lying, like vessels at anchor in a harbour, crowds of railway-carriages preparing to depart, to the opposite platform, in order to witness the arrival of an incoming train. ”

“ The quick-travelling Carriages on the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, when drawn by the last improved Engines, are extremely easy in their motion.
Is it your opinion, that a road would suffer less injury, from the fore and hind wheels of a Steam Carriage following each other, in the same tracks on the road, than if they run on different tracks?—That depends upon what kind of action the wheels exert on the road ”

“ It is one of the most extensive railway establishments in the kingdom, and the works comprise a large and elegant passenger and arrival shed, with all suitable offices, and adjoining which is a most commodious spare carriage shed, a goods depôt, gas works, water works, and three engine sheds. ”

“ Within the long and apparently endless straight line of railway carriages which bound the platform, are soon seen the faces and caps of various travellers, especially old ones, who with due precaution have taken possession of their seats ”

“ In the early days of railway construction vehicles were used which combined a steam locomotive with an ordinary passenger carriage. After being abandoned for many years, the "steam carriage" was revived, in 1902, by the London and South Western and Great Western railways for local service and the handling of passenger traffic on branch lines. Since that year rail motor-cars have multiplied; some being run by steam, others by petrol engines, and others, again, by electricity generated by petrol engines. ”

“ The railway porters, who attend to the business of transferring the passengers thus from the railway carriages to those of the street, are very numerous all along the platform; and they are very civil and attentive to the passengers, especially to those who come in the first-class cars—and more especially still, according to my observation and experience, if the traveller has an agreeable looking lady under his charge. ”

“ Nobody sees any one as he is, let alone an elderly lady sitting opposite a strange young man in a railway carriage. They see a whole—they see all sorts of things—they see themselves.... ”

“ It is difficult for us to appreciate the popular surprise and delight at that first railway excursion. We are so accustomed to splendid engines, luxurious cars, and high speed, that we think nothing of them; but when all were new—when coaches and carts on highways were the sole reliance for passengers and freight—it was astonishing indeed to see a "travelling engine," in charge of two men, draw a train of forty cars and six hundred people! ”

“ The railways of the country, in their present form, have been built since the close of the Civil War, or in less than fifty years, and are the wonder and admiration of students of the transportation problem who come here from other countries. There are 234,182 miles of railway, and more than 340,000 miles of track in this country, as compared with a trifle less than 300,000 miles of railway in all the other countries of the world combined. There are nearly 58,000 locomotives; more than 45,000 passenger-train cars; nearly 2,200,000 freight- and service-cars. ”

“ A train of carriages was attached to a locomotive engine of the most improved construction, and built by Mr. George Stephenson, in the following order:— (1) Locomotive engine, with the engineer and assistants; (2) tender with coals and water; next six wagons loaded with coals and flour; then an elegant covered coach, with the committee and other proprietors of the railway; then 21 wagons fitted up on the occasion for passengers; and, last of all, six wagons loaded with coals, making altogether a train of 38 carriages, exclusive of the engine and tender. ”

“ Like the steamship, the railway is cosmopolitan in its character. The range of its operations may be as extensive as the globe itself; and throughout that sphere of activity, be it what it may, the locomotive engine is scattering thickly the seeds of civilisation, as well as of wealth. ”

“ The results of these tests will help in designing the dozen or so standard locomotives I have already told you about. Passenger trains are usually thought of as the spectacular part of railway working.
But goods trains too are not without romance. Many who love trains would just as soon be travelling through the Scottish Highlands in the guard’s van of this train as they would be going off on the Golden Arrow for a week in Paris. ”

“ These ten years had witnessed the introduction of breakfast and dining cars on the trains, of parlour cars, long bogie corridor carriages, the lighting of carriages by electricity, the building of railway hotels in tourist districts, the establishment of numerous coach and steamboat tours, the quickening of tourist traffic generally, the adoption of larger locomotives of greatly increased power, the acceleration of the train service, the laying of heavier and smoother permanent way, and a widespread extension of cheap fares—tourist, excursion, week-end, etc. ”

“ The genius loci must look with wonder on the gigantic offspring of the little railway, which has swallowed up its own sire. Lean mules no longer crawl leisurely along the little rails with trucks of stone through Croydon, once perchance during the day, but the whistle and the rush of the locomotive are now heard all day long. ”

“ To see waggons with flat wheels drawn over cast-iron rails one yard long by a horse, cannot fail to interest those who watch the workings of railways, and it most clearly shows the great improvements made and the perseverance which has been required to develop the present gigantic railway system out of such small beginnings. ”

“ On most of the roads in the country passenger trains of whatever nature or importance are all shown in one class, the first. As a result every limited train in the inferior direction on single track has to be given right by train order over opposing local passenger trains in the superior direction. ”

“ Also, for the security of the workmen employed in maintaining the track as on an ordinary railway—the system of “packing” the sleepers and inspecting the various parts being common to all railways—a clear space of three feet is left between the passing trains, and strong posts, ten feet apart, are fixed along the centre of the space for the labourers to hold on by when an express rushes by. ”

“ As passenger carriages pass from one company’s line to another’s, it is essential for the public safety that, although the widths of the carriages on the different lines may differ from each other, the widths across the carriages from the outside of the continuous footboard on one side, to the outside of the continuous footboard on the opposite side, should be identical for the carriages of all railway companies, so that the lines of rails may be laid at the proper distance from the edges of the passenger platforms. ”

“ The flat rails used at first were the cause of numerous accidents. Their ends were cut at an angle to form lap joints, and the pointed ends were occasionally caught by the wheels and driven up through the car floor, impaling the passengers sitting directly over them. Through tickets were unknown, and at the end of each short, independent railway, into which the long routes were at first divided, the passenger was obliged to purchase a new ticket, change cars, and transfer his own baggage. ”

“ If we go no further back than the commencement of the present century, only a few years before the first railway was projected, we find that, although the difficulties of earlier locomotion had been to some extent obviated by the introduction of fast and well-appointed coaches, running between some of the most important cities in the kingdom, the only means of communication between the smaller towns was by means of post-chaises, or private carriages for the wealthy, and, for the less well-to-do, the humble carrier's cart or the slow and ponderous stage waggon. ”

“ The "railway" had the start of the locomotive by a couple of centuries, and derives its parentage from the clumsy wooden way-leaves or tram-roads which were laid down to lessen the labour of dragging the coal-waggons to and from the place of shipment in the Newcastle colleries. ”