Rides on Railways by Samuel Sidney Rides on Railways by Samuel Sidney This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset. RIDES ON RAILWAYS by Samuel Sidney. PREFACE. The following pages are an attempt to supply something amusing, instructive, and suggestive to travellers who, not caring particularly where they go, or how long they stay at any particular place, may wish to know something of the towns and districts through which they pass, on their way to Wales, the Lakes of Cumberland, or the Highlands of Scotland; or to those who, having a brief vacation, may wish to employ it among pleasant rural scenes, and in investigating the manufactures, the mines, and other sources of the commerce and influence of this small island and great country. In performing this task, I have relied partly on personal observation, partly on notes and the memory of former journeys; and where needful have used the page 1 / 380 historical information to be found in cyclopaedias, and local guide-books. This must account for, if it does not excuse, the unequal space devoted to districts with equal claims to attention. But it would take years, if not a lifetime, to render the manuscript of so discursive a work complete and correct. I feel that I have been guilty of many faults of commission and omission; but if the friends of those localities to which I have not done justice will take the trouble to forward to me any facts or figures of public general interest, they shall be carefully embodied in any future edition, should the book, as I hope it will, arrive at such an honour and profit. S. S. LONDON, AUGUST, 1851. CONTENTS. LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY EUSTON STATION THE MIXED TRAIN CAMDEN STATION AYLESBURY WOBURN AND BEDFORD page 2 / 380 THE BUCKS RAILWAY BANBURY OXFORD WOLVERTON STATION BLISWORTH, NORTHAMPTON WEEDON RUGBY AND ITS RAILWAYS ARNOLD AND HIS SCHOOL COVENTRY TO BIRMINGHAM BIRMINGHAM WARWICK, LEAMINGTON, KENILWORTH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON SOHO THE BLACK COUNTRY (WALSALL, DUDLEY, WEDNESBURY, DARLASTON) STAFFORD LIVERPOOL MANCHESTER THE ROAD TO YORKSHIRE YORKSHIRE LEEDS THROUGH LINCOLNSHIRE TO SHEFFIELD SHEFFIELD DERBYSHIRE FROM CHESTER TO NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE THE LAKES HOME LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. page 3 / 380 EUSTON SQUARE, LONDON HARROW-ON-THE-HILL VIADUCT OVER THE RIVER COLNE, NEAR WATFORD LOOKING FROM THE HILL ABOVE BOXMOOR STATION TOWARDS BERKHAMSTED BERKHAMSTED STATION LEIGHTON BUZZARD DENBIGH HALL BRIDGE THE WOLVERTON VIADUCT BRIDGE IN THE BLISWORTH EMBANKMENT VIEW FROM TOP OF KILSBY TUNNEL, LOOKING TOWARDS RUGBY COVENTRY THE SHERBORNE VIADUCT, NEAR COVENTRY THE AVON VIADUCT THE ASTON VIADUCT ASTON HALL NEWTON ROAD STATION, NEAR BIRMINGHAM THE RAILWAY NEAR PENKRIDGE STAFFORD VIEW NEAR WHITMORE VALE-ROYAL VIADUCT EXCAVATION AT HARTFORD VIADUCT OVER THE MERSEY AND MERSEY AND IRWELL CANAL, KINGSTON THE DUTTON VIADUCT THE WARRINGTON VIADUCT LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY. page 4 / 380 According to Mr. Punch, one of the greatest authorities of the day on all such subjects, the nearest way to Euston Station is to take a cab; but those who are not in a hurry may take advantage of the omnibuses that start from Gracechurch Street and Charing Cross, traversing the principal thoroughfares and calling at the George and Blue Boar, Holborn, the Green Man and Still, Oxford Street, and the Booking Offices in Regent Circus. 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. What London is to the world, Euston is to Great Britain: there is no part of the country to which railway communication has extended, with the exception of the Dover and Southampton lines, which may not be reached by railway conveyance from Euston station. The Buckinghamshire lines from Bletchley open the way through Oxford to all the Western counties, only interrupted by the break of gauge. The Northampton and Peterborough, from Blisworth, proceeds to the Eastern coast of Norfolk and Lincoln. At Rugby commences one of several roads to the North, either by Leicester, Nottingham, and Lincoln, or by Derby and Sheffield; and at Rugby, too, we may either proceed to Stafford by the direct page 5 / 380 route of the Trent Valley, a line which is rendered classical by the memory of Sir Robert Peel, who turned its first sod with a silver spade and honoured its opening by a celebrated speech; or we may select the old original line through Coventry, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton, passing through a network of little railways leading to Warwick and Leamington, the result of unprofitable competition. A continuation of the Trent Valley line intersects the Pottery district, where the cheapest Delft and the most exquisite specimens of China ware are produced with equal success; and thus we reach Liverpool and Manchester by the straightest possible line. At Stafford we can turn off to Shrewsbury and Chester, or again following the original route arrive at Crewe, the great workshop and railway town of the London and North Western. Crewe affords an ample choice of routes--1st, to Leeds by Stockport (with a branch to Macclesfield) and Huddersfield, or from Leeds to York, or to Harrogate, and so on by the East Coast line through Durham, Newcastle, and Berwick, to Edinburgh; 2dly, direct to Manchester; 3rdly, to Warrington, Newton, Wigan, and the North, through the salt mining country; and, 4thly, to Chester. At Chester we may either push on to Ireland by way of the Holyhead Railway, crossing the famous Britannia Tubular Bridge, or to Birkenhead, the future rival of Liverpool. At Liverpool steamers for America warranted to reach New York in ten days are at our command; or, leaving commerce, cotton, and wool, we may ride through Proud Preston and Lancaster to Kendal and Windermere and the Lake district; or, pressing forward through "Merry Carlisle," reach Gretna at a pace that defies the competition of fathers and guardians, and enter Scotland on the direct road to Glasgow, and, if necessary, ride on to Aberdeen and Perth. page 6 / 380 A short line from Camden Station opens a communication with the East and West India Docks and the coast of Essex, and another, three miles and a half in length, from Willesden Station, will shortly form a connexion with the South Western, and thereby with all the South and Western lines from Dover to Southampton. The railway system, of which the lines above enumerated form so large a part, is barely twenty-five years old: in that space of time we have not only supplied the home market but taught Europe and America to follow our example; even Egypt and India will soon have their railways, and we now look with no more surprise on the passage of a locomotive with a few hundred passengers or tons of goods than on a wheelbarrow or Patent Hansom Cab. Grouse from Aberdeen, fat cattle from Norfolk, piece goods from Manchester, hardwares from Sheffield, race horses from Newmarket, coals from Leicestershire, and schoolboys from Yorkshire, are despatched and received, for the distance of a few hundred miles, with the most perfect regularity, as a matter of course. We take a ticket to dine with a friend in Chester or Liverpool, or to meet the hounds near Bletchley or Rugby, as calmly as we engage a cab to go a mile; we consider twenty miles an hour disgustingly slow, and grumble awfully at a delay of five minutes in a journey of a hundred miles. Millions have been spent in order to save an hour and a half between London and Liverpool; yet there are plenty of men not much past thirty who remember when all respectable plain practical common sense men looked upon the project for a railway between London and Birmingham as something very wild if not very wicked; and who remember too, that in winter the journey from London to Liverpool often occupied them twenty-two hours, costing 4 pounds inside and 2 page 7 / 380 pounds out, besides having to walk up the steepest hills in Derbyshire,--the same journey which is now completed in six hours at a cost of 2 pounds 5s., and in twelve hours for 16s. 9d., by the Parliamentary train in an enclosed carriage. It may be perhaps a useful wholesome lesson to those who are in the habit of accepting as their just due--without thought, without thankfulness--the last best results of the industry and ingenuity of centuries, if, before entering the massive portals of Euston Station, we dig up a few passages of the early history of railways from dusty Blue Books and forgotten pamphlets. In 1826, the project of a railway from Liverpool to Manchester came before a Committee of the House of Commons, and, after a long investigation, the principle was approved, but the bill thrown out in consequence of defects in the survey. The promoters rested their case entirely on a goods' traffic, to be conveyed at the rate of six or seven miles an hour. The engineer was George Stephenson, the father of the railway system, a man of genius, who, although he clearly foresaw the ultimate results of his project, had neither temper nor tact enough to conciliate the ignorant obstinacy of his opponents; in fact, he was a very bad witness and a very great man.