Railway excursion

“ After the warning whistle the train starts slowly on its journey—the grandest sensation of the whole trip to the ordinary traveller. The most magnificent scenery is soon spread before the tourist. No other three miles of railway in the world affords such a succession of wild and startling views as the passenger has on his mountain ride on this iron line up the steep inclination of this mighty summit of the great northern range. We get glimpses of the wide valley below, the bold landscape ever changing, yet always filled with grand and startling outlines. Up and up we go. ”

“ Before the bold and bustling railway noisily elbowed its way into the affections of travel and commerce and pushed aside the patient wagon of the nation-builders, the tens of thousands of hurried travelers enjoyed (or endured) the hospitality of its rocking thorough-braces as they, hour by hour, day after day, and night after night, and even week after week in the longer journeys, sat atop or inside this leviathan of the sand-ocean making the most rapid trip possible and under safe guidance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her own quick wits, aided by those of a gallant fellow passenger, give the two officers an unlooked-for and exciting "run for their money." One hardly realizes till now the dramatic possibilities of a railway train, and what an opportunity for excitement may be afforded by a joint railway station for two or more roads. ”

“ Spread out before and beneath us is a large and fertile plain, fields and woodlands, as far as ever the eye can reach, all slumbering in the sweet summer sunshine. In the distance a train is speeding along, we can trace it by its trailing smoke. I had almost forgotten we lived in the days of railway trains. There is a redbrick village on the hilltop straight ahead of us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chief duty, no doubt, of a railroad is to convey its passengers as rapidly as may be to their destination; but then, this is not the whole of its duty. After all, a railway journey is a slice out of one’s existence, and we have a right to ask that it should be made as pleasant as possible. If travelling were more comfortable, there would be more travellers. On our main lines, competition secures decent treatment for a traveller. ”

“ One seldom gets the real sentiment and beauty of a place in approaching it by railway. I am speaking, of course, of the tourist who endeavors to crowd as much as he can into a comparatively short time. To the one who remains several days in a place, railroad traveling is less objectionable. My remarks concerning railroad travel in England are made merely from the point of comparison with a pleasure journey by motor, and having covered the greater part of the country in both ways, I am qualified to some extent to speak from experience. ”

“ And along the road which skirts the shore there go men and women, horses and vehicles, and there is always something strange to note in costume and appearance. And close by runs the railway, its course marked by the painted wicker balloons hanging aloft on the signal posts, and the bright colour of the jutting rocks through which the way is hewn, or by a train dashing past with echoing snort and tail of cloud. ”

“ A man on horseback, carrying a flag, having taken up his position in front of the 'Locomotion' to head the procession, the starting word was given, and with a hiss of steam, half drowned in the shouting of the crowd, the first railway journey ever made in England was begun. ”

“ I also decided that the reason why we think nothing of starting out on long trips, is because our comfort is so well looked after, that living on a first-class railway train is as comfortable as living at a first-class hotel. The English railway carriages are wretchedly heated. One's feet will be burning on the foot-warmer while one's back will be freezing in the cold air above. If one should be taken suddenly ill in an English railway compartment, it would be a very serious matter. ”

“ Other travellers were becoming jammed in the corridor of the train, their tempers taking the tone of acerbity easy to those about to start on a railway journey. A determined young woman came up the step, and supported the conductor in an appeal for order, addressing herself more particularly to the English passengers ”

“ Railway travelers escape that difficulty, for they can only go where the rails are laid; but we belong to the great company of tramps who wander aimlessly, and rarely know in the morning where they will rest at night. ”

“ Into the very heart and depth of this, and politely bending with the bends of it, your railway introduces its close-clinging attention. The rocks are not big enough to be tunnelled, they are cheerily blasted away; the brook is not wide enough to be bridged, it is comfortably covered in, and is thence-forward no physical obstacle to an enterprising Railway Company. ”

“ As a departing railway-train, like a vessel sailing out of harbour, proceeds on its course, its rate rapidly increases, until, in a very short time, it has attained its full speed, and men of business are then intently reading the “City news,” and men of pleasure the leading article of their respective newspapers, when this runaway street of passengers—men, women, and children—unexpectedly find themselves in sudden darkness, visible only by a feeble and hitherto unappreciated lamp, which, like the pale moon after a fiery sunset, modestly shines over their head. ”

“ The railway has a central rail which is cogged, and into this endless cog fits a wheel underneath the engine. This is really the driving wheel by which it slowly moves up the steep gradient. We passed farms, orchards and plantations, up and up. It is a curious sensation to find yourself steadily moving up without any effort of your own, but still up we went until we landed on a lovely plateau, with a charming hotel. The view from this mountain height was beyond description. We left the train and wandered into the woods and viewed our surroundings. ”

“ A roadside enigma that doubtless puzzled our forefathers, and afforded food for discussion when journeying in these parts, the railway traveller misses them and much else besides as he is whirled through the land at a speed that only permits of a blurred impression of fields and woods, of rivers and hills, of church towers, towns, hamlets, and farmsteads—that is, when the train is not rushing through a cutting, or plunging into a darksome tunnel. In a scenic sense between the Great North Road and the Great Northern Railway is a vast gulf! ”

“ He gave the Preacher the name of a man who could be secured as a guide, helped him make out a list of eatables, brought over his caribou blanket, tent, dishes, etc., and bright and early the next morning the train going north carried a passenger bound for Blue Rock Pool.
Did you ever notice with what reluctance the average vehicle of transportation moves when it has a fisherman on board? If you use a horse, he’ll go to sleep; an auto is sure to throw a fit, and a railway train almost invariably stops and goes backward for a good share of the time. ”

“ Instantly a number of men surrounded the carriage. “There is not an instant to lose, another train is upon you, they may not be able to stop it,”—and we were all dragged out and up the steep bank of the railway cutting. ”

“ I will close this series of observations with a little list of benefits the railway gives you, many of which would not have occurred to you but for my ingenuity, some of which you may have thought of at some moment or other, and yet would never have retained but for my patient labour in this.
The railway gives you seclusion. If you are in an express alone you are in the only spot in Western Europe where you can be certain of two or three hours to yourself. At home in the dead of night you may be wakened by a policeman or a sleep-walker or a dog. The heaths are populous. ”

“ It may not be without interest to look back at the record of a generation ago, along the identical route by which the railway has since conveyed, in ease and comfort, hundreds of thousands, and will continue to convey millions of passengers, througfh one of the great mountain regions of the globe. ”

“ The railway as a means of rapid transportation and general intercommunication is one of the most important factors in the development of modern commerce and civilization, and, after reviewing what it has done and become in the nineteenth century, one cannot help wishing for the opportunity to review the railway wonders of the twentieth century. ”

“ They force the sentimental tourist again and again to ask himself whether, in consideration of such mortal an- noyances, the game is worth the candle. Fortunately, a railway journey is a good deal like a sea voyage; its miseries fade from the mind as soon as you arrive. That is why I completed, to my great satisfaction, my little tour in France. Let this small effusion of ill-nature be my first and last tribute to the whole despotic gare: the deadly salle d'attente, the insuffer- able delays over one's luggage, the porterless platform, the overcrowded and illiberal train. ”

“ AT HOME I THE Don railway. A quiet, cheerless station, white and solitary in the steppe, with its walls baking in the sun, without a speck of shade, and, it seems, without a human being. The train goes on after leaving one here; the sound of it is scarcely audible and dies away at last. ”

“ The intelligent English traveller, in this fortunate age for him, is aware that, half-way between Boulogne and Paris, there is a complex railway-station, into which his train, in its relaxing speed, rolls him with many more than the average number of bangs and bumps prepared, in the access of every important French gare, to startle the drowsy or distrait passenger into a sense of his situation. ”

“ The railway grows wider and permits a longer and even more varied journey than was ours. Cars can be fitted up as we fitted ours or in a way as much better as you like. Year by year the facilities for wayside comforts and short branch-excursions are multiplied, with the increase of population and culture. ”

“ The railway carriage suddenly grows like night—with lamps, of course, unless you are in a slow local train, in which case lamps are not always provided. Then by and by the darkness outside the carriage window is touched by puffs of cloudy whiteness, then you see a blue light on the walls of the tunnel, then the sound of the moving train changes once more, and you are out in the good open air again, and grown-ups let the straps go. ”

“ How pleasant it can be, alone in a first-class railway carriage, on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station. You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. ”

“ Railway annoyances do not belong to the order of troubles that are soon forgotten. On the contrary, the traveller has time to brood over them to his heart’s content or discontent, as he is jolted along mile after mile and hour after hour. For my own part, I do not consider railway journeying to be conducive to pleasing reflections. ”

“ He knew that Europe and America were welcoming the railway, and that it was promising to link together the whole civilized world.
“Of the ‘profit’ of his labours to humanity I scarcely venture to speak, since it cannot possibly be told in a few words. The railway system has revolutionised society. It has powerfully affected every class, every interest and department of life. It has given an incredible impulse to commerce, quickened human thought, created a new language, new habits, tastes and pleasures. It has opened up fields of industry and enterprise inaccessible and unknown before. ”

“ Others will have whole weeks and months of rest. The railway trains are being laden with passengers and baggage on their way to the mountains and the lakes and the sea-shore. Multitudes of our citizens are packing their trunks for a restorative absence. ”

“ Some of the grandest267 scenery to be seen on the European continent is unfolded to the train as it glides in and out among the mountain rifts, and consequently, from the tourist point of view, the route possesses illimitable attractions, inasmuch as it offers facilities to gain some of the most beautiful parts of the country, which hitherto have been unapproachable, except in the face of an arduous and tedious journey by primitive means of conveyance. ”

“ EFFECTS OF CONSTANT RAILWAY TRAVELLING.
A writer in Cassell’s Magazine remarks:—“We hear individuals now and then talking of the ease with which the season-ticket holder journeys backwards and forwards daily from Brighton. By the young, healthy man, no doubt, the journey is done without fatigue; but, after a certain time of life, the process of being conveyed by express fifty miles night and morning is anything but refreshing. The shaking and jolting of the best constructed carriage is not such as we experience in a coach on an ordinary road ”