Railway Travelling in England
While our facilities in railway travelling have wonderfully improved in the past ten years, it must not be supposed that in conservative England they have stood still entirely. But the improvements in carriage accommodation there have been so steady and gradual that passengers hardly recognize how much more they get for their money now than they did a generation back. For instance, the old first-class carriage of forty years ago was fifteen feet long, six and a half feet broad, and less than five feet high, and this was constructed to seat eighteen passengers; in other words, each person had about twenty-six cubic feet of space. In the carriages built to-day to accommodate ten first-class passengers, each one has ninety cubic feet.
Nor because we in America have such luxurious Pullman and vestibuled cars must it be imagined that the English railway carriages have not comforts and luxuries of their own. Some of them, for example, are built to seat only two or three persons, thus securing complete privacy to a party of that number.
I have never occupied a more comfortable railway carriage than in going, as I did, last September, from Edinburgh to London over the lines of the Caledonian and London and Northwestern railways, on the world-famous train called the “Flying Scotchman”—and a flyer it is. The distance is four hundred miles, and it is run in eight and one-half hours. You leave Edinburgh at 10.15 A.M. and reach Euston square before 7 P.M. As there are several important stations between the two cities at which long stops are made, the train must make between many of the stations much more than fifty miles an hour. The speed was so great at times that it caused unusual vibration, and at times it gave me a slight reminder of sea-sickness.
The carriage was built to seat two persons only. In it there were two large, softly-upholstered, sleep-inviting arm-chairs, one on each side of the car. Between the two chairs at the back was a door leading to a lavatory for the sole use of the two passengers. It was supplied with iced water, washing water, towels, mirror and all the etceteras and conveniences that are desirable in travelling. The car had in all six windows—two at each side and two in front. Between the two front windows was a handsomely-framed bevelled mirror. The floor was richly carpeted and the carriage was supplied with a number of brass brackets and hooks for the travellers’ impedimenta. But more than this—across the front, breast high, was a shelf about six inches wide to hold books and papers, and below this another shelf about the same width for a foot-rest.
The carriage was seven feet square and seven feet high. Here a man and wife or two friends can make themselves about as comfortable as if they were at home in their own drawing-room. You exchange your shoes for slippers, don your smoking jacket and if your companion does not object, you can enjoy a fragrant Havana. To be sure this is against the rules of the company and your indulgence in the weed would cost you forty shillings if you were found out, but the distances are great and the stops few on this “flying Scotchman,” so there is ample time to enjoy a smoke undisturbed. No extra fare is demanded for this most luxurious vehicle; it is simply ranked as a first-class carriage, but you had better write to the station master and engage such a carriage a day or two in advance of your intended journey, for not more than one of these small private cars is by chance attached even to a “flying Scotchman.” No extra charge is made for this engagement in advance.
The complaint years ago that passengers were locked in the cars can seldom now be made. The custom is almost entirely abolished; it caused so many accidents. The aim of each and every passenger on a British railway is to secure a seat with his back to the engine. In this way he avoids draughts of air: draughts from a bottle they never object to. In fact both men and women drink often and deeply during a journey, but it does not seem to affect them.
Time tables are not given away as with us: the charge is a penny, two cents. You never hear “all aboard” at railway stations, but the much pleasanter sounding words, “take your seats, please.”
Luggage and Baggage
You do occasionally get a paper check or receipt for baggage on a continental railway, but in England seldom or never. Still a piece of baggage is seldom lost on an English railway. It gets to its proper destination at last, but it seems to be more by good luck than by good management. Baggage, or “luggage,” as they term it, goes astray sometimes, but on the other hand, the system for tracing and finding it is excellent. They have a “lost luggage” department in the principal stations.
They are very particular as to the quantity of baggage. Each passenger is allowed so many pounds. At every station there is an official who keeps a sharp eye on the porters who handle trunks, and at the slightest suspicion of overweight the official will order a trunk on the scales with which all stations are supplied.
There are strong racks in every car for light luggage, but a great deal of what we should term heavy baggage finds its way on the racks and under the seats. Englishmen travel with an extraordinary quantity of impedimenta. They carry large satchels, also portmanteaus resembling a good-sized trunk—all because no checks are given. Everybody wants to keep his luggage in hand or in sight.
There is a prominent sign posted in some of the large stations to this effect: “Any porter who is discovered accepting a fee will be instantly dismissed.” And yet you can’t get your trunk moved an inch without dropping a few coppers into a porter’s hand. The fee system prevails everywhere, from the station master who furnishes information to the uniformed porter who whistles for a “four-wheeler” or hansom. In many cases the door of the toilet room is only unlocked by dropping a penny in a slot. But this is a better arrangement than exists at stations on the continent, where an old woman stands guard, whom you must fee before you are allowed to leave.
A Royal Railway Trip
When the Queen of England makes a railway journey it is an event of no ordinary importance. With her it is not, as with the President of the United States for example, so simple a matter as climbing up the steps of a Pullman or getting into a Pennsylvania Florida special or Chicago limited, and proceeding without fuss. No, when Queen Victoria is about to travel preparations are made long beforehand and all the regular arrangements of the road are subservient to the accommodation of the royal train.
When Her Majesty journeyed by the Caledonian Railway from Carlisle to Aberdeen, en route to Gosport and Ballater, many days previous there was issued the table of instructions for working the trains over the line on that day. They were intended for the use of the company’s employees only, who were forbidden to make known their contents. A pilot engine was sent over the road twenty minutes before the royal train, in charge of the foreman of the locomotive department. This engine maintained throughout the journey the uniform interval of twenty minutes. No other train, engine or vehicle, except passenger trains, was permitted to travel on the other track between the passing of the pilot and the royal train, and even passenger trains had to slow down to ten miles per hour.
One of the orders issued was this: “Drivers of such trains as are standing on sidings or adjoining lines, waiting for the passing of the royal train, must prevent their engines from emitting smoke or making a noise by blowing off steam when the royal train is passing.”
Brakesmen were enjoined to see that nothing projected from their trains. Each foreman plate-layer, or “section-boss,” as we would say, after examining his length of line, stationed himself at the south end and an assistant at the north; after the pilot had passed they walked till they met, seeing that all was right. The stations were kept clear and the public admitted at one station only, the last. Even here, cheering or other demonstration was forbidden, “the object being that Her Majesty should be perfectly undisturbed during the journey.” These instructions, signed by James Thompson, general manager, and Irvine Kempt, general superintendent, were obeyed in their minutest detail.
It must not be supposed that the company has to pocket the loss when the Queen travels. The royal lady not only does not travel on “passes,” but she pays all expenses incurred. A copy of the instructions printed in gold are presented to the Queen and she cannot fail to be gratified by the care and thought exhibited by the company.
The entire mileage of the Caledonian Railway is one thousand miles; the main line from Carlisle to Aberdeen, over which the queen travelled, is about two hundred and forty miles. It traverses a beautiful country. From this great trunk run out branches and connections by steamer in all directions—reaching to all big towns of the country, most of the small ones, and all the districts famed in Scottish song or history, the highlands, the lochs, the seaboard, etc. The road is a model road and one of the best appointed in Great Britain. The tourist, the student and the sportsman are offered strong inducements to avail themselves of the tours arranged by the Caledonian company.
The Northwestern Railway
One of the largest English railway systems is that of the London & Northwestern. The territory covered by this railway extends from London in the south to Carlisle in the north, and from Cambridge in the east to Holyhead in the west—an area of three hundred miles in breadth. The main office of the government is in London, but the capital, so to speak, is Crewe, a town of thirty-five thousand inhabitants consisting entirely of the employees of the railway and their families. The total number in the railway’s service does not fall far short of sixty thousand. The annual budget amounts to ten million pounds, while the funded debt has reached a total of one hundred million pounds sterling.
The London and Northwestern shops at Crewe have to keep in repair a stock of engines that is worth five million pounds sterling, and while they do not indeed put a girdle round the earth every forty minutes, they do literally every four hours, and in doing so the engines consume a million tons of coal per annum. On an average, it is reckoned that every five days an old engine is withdrawn and replaced by a new one.
Of late years the company has been experimenting on an extensive scale with a system of metallic permanent way. Steel “keys” fasten the rails into steel “chairs,” which in their turn are riveted down to steel sleepers. About thirty miles of line has been laid on this system, with about sixty thousand sleepers. So far the results are understood to be satisfactory. The question involved in the conflict between steel and wooden sleepers is gigantic. A rough calculation shows that to replace the wooden sleepers on existing lines in Great Britain only would require about four million tons of steel, without reckoning the weight of the chairs and keys. And great Britain has only one-fifteenth of the railway mileage of the world.
In some ways the goods traffic arrangements of the road at Liverpool are even more remarkable than those in London. At Liverpool the Northwestern has six goods stations, two of them reached by tunnels each a mile and a quarter in length, constructed for their use alone. One of these stations, Edgehill, is called a goods “yard,” but this yard contains fifty-seven and a half miles of land, covers two hundred acres of ground, and has cost about two million pounds sterling—nearly ten millions of dollars.
The conductors on the New York street cars, like the New York policemen, are sullen and sour; they seem ill-tempered, if not ill-natured. You seldom or never see a smile on their lips, and as for giving utterance to the common and easy phrase, “thank you,” when they receive a fare, they wouldn’t be guilty of such a piece of politeness; not they.
It is different in England, on the Continent, everywhere in Europe. Whether on a steam road, a steamboat, a tram or an omnibus, no officer nor conductor would think of receiving a fare without thanking a passenger audibly, and even when an officer opens the door or looks into the window of a carriage for the purpose of examining tickets, you will not hear the short, sharp, curt demand, “tickets,” as in the States, but “all tickets, please,” in a pleasant and agreeable tone.