the hemlock, which grew about, supplied them with abundance of imaginary steam-pipes." His next work was to lead the horses when ploughing, or to hoe turnips and other farm work. When taken on at the colliery and employed to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross, his wages were advanced to sixpence a day, and afterwards to eightpence, when he was set to drive the gin-horse. While driving the gin at Black Callerton Colliery, two miles from Dewley Burn, he indulged his fondness for bird-nesting in the hedgerows as he passed along to and from his work. He also indulged himself in a stock of tame rabbits, and used to pride himself on the superiority of his breed. When fourteen he was appointed assistant fireman to his father at Dewley Burn, at the wage of one shilling a A RAILWAY train, a steamer, or our complicated | clay for their engines in the adjoining bog; and system of telegraphy, are all often triumphantly pointed to as the high-water mark of modern civilisation. While there is nothing wrong in this, it is at the same time self-evident that it is well to bear the thought in mind, that our boasted progress has been a slow growth, that a thousand lives and influences have been used to help it forward, and that the men of the present age are laying down or recreating the foundations of the life, and well-being of the generations to come. When we think of railways and the locomotive, the names of James Watt and of George Stephenson rise to mind. We intend briefly and simply to trace the principal incidents in the career of the latter. To all true workers it is full of stimulus and encouragement, for work done wisely, worthily, and well, anywhere, unites the worker to that great fellow-day. His great ambition at the time was to beship, known or unknown to the world, who labour as in the sight and hope of heaven, and do well the little common duties of every day. come an engineman. When his wages were afterwards raised to twelve shillings a week, at another place, on announcing the fact to his George Stephenson was born on the 9th of fellow-workmen, he added, "I am now a made June 1781, at the village of Wylam, about eight man for life." At seventeen, he had charge of miles west of Newcastle-on-Tyne. His parents a pumping engine at which his father acted as were poor but respectable, and his father, fireman. His duty was to watch the engine Robert Stephenson, was fireman of the pumping and see that it worked well, also that the pumps engine at Wylam, and he is described by Mr were drawing efficiently. But Stephenson was Smiles as of an amiable disposition. While no mere mechanical engineman, he applied himtending his engine fire he would draw around self to the study of its different parts, taking it him the young folks of the village and tell them down and putting it together again, so that he the story of Sindbad the Sailor, or Robinson was soon able to dispense with the assistance of Crusoe. He was partial to birds, and would the engineer of the colliery. When eighteen sometimes go bird-nesting, and once took young years of age, and when in charge of the engine George to see a nestful of young blackbirds, a sight at a wage of twelve shillings a week, he began which he never forgot. None of Stephenson's to remedy his defective education, and comchildren went to school, as his limited income menced to learn to read. His first teacher was would not admit of it. The common two-storied, Robin Cowens, a poor teacher in Walbottle, red-tiled building, where they dwelt, stood just who kept a night school, which was attended beside the wooden tramway on which the coal by a few of the colliers and labourers' sons in waggons were drawn by horses from the coal-pit the district. This school was exchanged for to the loading quay, and one of the duties of one kept by a Scotch dominie, where Stephenson the elder children was to watch and keep the made rapid progress in arithmetic, and also younger ones out of the way of the waggons, learned to write. When twenty years of age he which were daily dragged up and down by had become brakesman at Black Callerton pits. horses. Eight years of his life had passed when The duty of the brakesman was to superintend the Stephenson family removed to Dewley Burn. the working of the engine and machinery by Young Stephenson's first actual employment means of which the coals were drawn out of the was to herd a neighbour's cows at the wage of pit. He also took his turn on the night shift, twopence a day. Like other boys of his age, he and his vacant night hours were either utilised spent much of his time in bird-nesting, in mak-in doing sums, in practising writing, or in shoeing whistles, and in erecting little water-mills in the streams near by. "But his favourite amusement at this early age was in erecting clay engines in conjunction with his chosen playmate, Tom Thirlaway. They found the making or mending. An attachment formed at this time for a young woman named Fanny Henderson, a servant at a neighbouring farmhouse, stimulated him in the extra efforts he was making. He married Fanny Henderson when he was twenty-one; by thrift, sobriety, and industry he was enabled to take up house, although in very humble style, at Willington Ballast Quay. The marriage took place on the 28th November 1802. At his daily work Stephenson continued to study the principles of mechanics, and to master the laws by which his engine worked. His evenings spent at home beside his young wife were always turned to some account. An attempt to discover perpetual motion, although it did not succeed, certainly helped to awake his inventive faculties. Having taken his own clock to pieces and cleaned it, and this becoming known in the neighbourhood, he soon had plenty to do in the same line. His only son Robert was born at Willington Quay on the 16th October 1803. After working for about three years as a brakesman at Willington, he removed, in 1804, to West Moor Colliery, Killingworth, to a similar situation. Killing. worth lies about seven miles north of Newcastle, and it was here that his practical ability as a workman and engineer began to be recognised by his employers. Shortly after his settlement in his new home, to his great sorrow, his wife died. An engagement to superintend the working of one of Boulton & Watt's engine at Montrose, in Scotland, took him away from Killingworth for about a year. On his return he had greatly increased his practical knowledge, and had also saved about £28. The journey both going and returning was accomplished on foot. He found his father had met with an accident, and was in great poverty. George Stephenson paid off his debts and made provision for him. His prospects during the years 1807-8 were very discouraging. Great Britain was engaged in a war, the necessaries of life were heavily taxed, and finally, he was drawn at that time for the militia. He found a substitute, however, by paying a certain sum. So down-hearted was he at this time that he meditated emigrating to the United States. An opportunity was not long in occurring, which, being taken advantage of, materially helped him forward. The engineers of that time, as Mr Smiles tells us, worked very much in the dark, and, for the most part, without any knowledge of the principles of mechanics. An atmospheric or Newcomen engine, made by Smeaton, had proved a failure, and no engineer or workman could put it right. A speech which Stephenson had made being reported to the head-viewer of the pit as to his ability to "alter her and make her draw," and he being dead beat at the time, he at once entrusted him with the work. "Well, George," said the viewer, "they tell me you think you can put the engine at the High Pit to rights." "Yes, sir," said George, "I think I could." "If that's the case, I'll give you a fair trial; and you must set to work immediately. We are clean drowned out, and cannot get a step further. The engineers are all beat, and if you really succeed in accomplishing what they cannot do, yor may'depend upon it I will make you a man for life." The repairs occupied Stephenson about four days, and were done, if roughly, yet on scientific principles; and before the end of the same week the pit was so far clear of water that the miners could be sent to the bottom. For the successful accomplishment of this work, Stephenson received the sum of £10, with which he was highly gratified. In addition, he was appointed engineman at the High Pit on good wages. His success in doctoring the engine led to his being very extensively consulted by the owners of wheezy and ineffectual pumping-machines in the neighbourhood; and in his treatment of them he is said to have left the regular engineers far behind. Robert Stephenson was meanwhile receiving as good an education as his father could afford. After the village school of Long Benton had done something for him, he was sent to Bruce's Academy, Newcastle, to which place he rode backwards and forwards on a donkey. To his home, near West Moor Pit, Killingworth, which originally consisted of but one apartment on the ground floor, Stephenson gradually added until he made it a comfortable four-roomed dwelling. In the garden attached, it was his pride to cultivate gigantic leeks and large cabbages. In his leisure time he was still fond of displays of feats of strength and agility, at which he often distanced his competitors. In 1812, the engine-wright at Killingworth was killed by an accident, when George Stephenson was promoted to his post at a salary of £100 a year. This relieved him from the routine of manual labour, but his brain and his hands were kept as busy as ever. The first winding-engine for drawing the coals out of the pit, and the first pumping-engine erected by hini for Long Benton Colliery, were both successful. In some evidence which he gave before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1835, he thus spoke of his life at this time: "After making some improvements in the steam-engines above ground, I was then requested by the manager of the colliery to go underground along with him to see if any improvement could be made in the mines by employing machinery as a substitute for manual labour and horse-power in bringing the coals out of the deeper workings of the mine. On my first going down the Killingworth pit, there was a steam-engine underground for the purpose of drawing water from a pit that was sunk at some distance from the first shaft. The Killingworth coalfield is considerably dislocated. After the colliery was opened, at a very short distance from the shaft, one of these dislocations was met with. The coal was thrown down about forty yards. Considerable time was spent in sinking another pit to this depth. And on my going down to examine the work, I proposed making the engine (which had been erected some Q time previously) to draw the coals up an inclined plane, which descended immediately from the place where it was fixed. A considerable change was accordingly made in the mode of working the colliery, not only in applying the machinery, but employing putters instead of horses in bringing the coals from the hewers; and by those changes, the number of horses in the pit was reduced from about 100 to 15 or 16. During the time I was engaged in making these important alterations, I went round the work ings in the pit with the viewer almost every time that he went into the mine, not only at Killingworth, but at Mountmoor, Derwentcrook, Southmoor, all of which collieries belonged to Lord Ravensworth and his partners; and the whole of the machinery in these collieries was put under my charge." The fact of his son Robert being a member of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Institution was of some assistance to his father. He brought home books, or failing that, drawings from scientific articles, which were talked over between the father and son at home, and made to conduce to the improvement of both. Before we come to the details of George Stephenson's improvements on the locomotive, it might be well to glance at the EARLY HISTORY OF THE RAILWAY. Two centuries ago, in the life of Lord Keeper Guildford, we read the following: "When men have pieces of ground between the colliery and the river, they sell leave to lead coals over their ground, and so dear, that the owner of a rood of ground will expect £20 per annum for this leave. The manner of the carriage is by laying rails of timber from the colliery down to the river, exactly straight and parallel; and bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these rails, whereby the carriage is so easy that one horse will draw down four or five chaldrons of coals, and is an immense benefit to the coal merchants." There is mention made of tramways as early as 1602; but there is some convenience in accepting the period of two centuries as the starting-point in noticing the history of railways. The tramways described in the above extract were of wood, and it was not till the opening of the eighteenth century, that the wood came to be protected with iron. In the early part of that century many tramways appear to have been laid down to connect collieries with the ports whence the coal was shipped. One of these has obtained some historical interest; namely, the railway between Tranent colliery and its port of Cockenzie, in East Lothian-a railway still in existence-part of the embankment of which was used as a position for his cannon by "Johnny Cope" in the battle of • As given in "A Book about Travelling, Past and Present." W. P. Nimmo, London and Edinburgh. Prestonpans in 1745. In the travels of St Fond it is mentioned that coals could be imported from England at Marseilles cheaper than French coals of inferior quality, and the facilities for conveying coals to the ports in this country, by the use of the tramways, and the method of shipping direct from the waggons, is believed to have had some share in bringing about this result. One of the earliest records of the use of iron to protect the wooden trams is in connection with the ironworks at Colebrookdale, in Shropshire, subsequently celebrated for the erection of the first considerable iron bridge, and where, about 1760, iron plates were nailed to the wooden rails, as well to diminish friction as to prevent abrasion. This soon led to the substitution of rails of solid iron, which was attended with rapid success, and adopted in various parts of the country. There was, for instance, a railway five miles long, from the collieries in the vicinity of Derby into that town; there was another called the Park Forest Railway, about six miles long; and another, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire, which had four miles of double and eight miles of single rails. Towards the beginning of the present century, railways had made their way into all coal and mining districts, and their progress was so rapid that in 1811 there were in South Wales not less than 150 miles of railways, of which the Merthyr Tydvil Company possessed thirty miles. Amongst personal reminiscences of these primitive railways by persons living to our own day, it may be interesting to quote those of Mr Robert Reid, who was born in 1772. In his interesting memoirs of "Old Glasgow," he says: "I remember the coal quay, which stood at the present ferry, west end of Windmill Croft. It was built by the Dumbarton Glass Work Company to convey coals from the lands of Little Govan to their works at Dumbarton. The river was then deeper at the coal quay than at the Broomielaw. There was a timber tramway from the Little Govan works to the said quay, which ran through the lands of Kingston, and by the road on the east side of Springfield. I have walked upon this tramroad, which I believe was the first of our Glasgow railways. The Dumbarton Glass Work Company also possessed a tramroad on the north side of the Clyde, from the coal works in the neighbourhood of Gartnavel." But while in regard to the transit and shipment of coals this considerable advance was made, the other branches of traffic, depending on the wretched country roads of last century, remained for half-a-century longer in the depths of barbarity. "I observed to-day," says Boswell, in his "Tour to the Hebrides," "that the common way of carrying home their grain here is in loads, on horseback. They have also a few sleds or cars, as we call them in Ayrshire, clumsily made and rarely used." An aged East Lothian farmer, recently dead, informed the writer that in his youth the mode of bringing grain to the market at Haddington was on pack horses. This was within recent memory, before there were either made roads or railways! The solid iron rails mentioned as having been introduced at Colebrookdale were called "scantlings," and consisted of five feet long pieces, four inches in breadth, which were laid down under the wheel, simply to decrease friction, as the wooden trams had previously been. The next stage, that of casting rails with an upright flange to keep the wheels on the track, was reached about 1776, in connection with a colliery belonging to the Duke of Norfolk, near Sheffield. Though the flange was subsequently taken from the rail and put on the wheel, the first century of railway history closes with the adoption of the two chief features of the railway as a travelling track-the use of cross sleepers on which to fasten the rails, and the introduction of the flange to keep the cars upon the track. A quarter of a century brought the invention of the oval rail, with a grooved tire upon the wheels, another step towards the realisation of subsequent success. This "edge railway," as it was called, was first used at Lord Penrhyn's slate quarries in Wales. It being found that the oval rail wore into the wheel and caused it to stick, the next step was to make the surface of the rail and the edge of the wheel flat, and, viola tout, the railway as we know it was made. There have been many improvements in the mode of manufacture, in the kinds of sleepers used (stone or wood), in the method of fastening | them, in the introduction of steel rails; in the discovery, very recently, that iron rails can be made even more durable and less expensive than steel. But the fundamental condition of the rail remains unchanged, and on the plan thus întroduced early in the century all our great progress of to-day has been made. Mr R. L. Edgeworth, writing in Nicholson's Journal of the Arts, in 1802, describes a project formed by him many years before for laying iron railways for baggage waggons on the great roads of England. Objections as to first cost and maintenance had deterred him from promoting it, and to obviate the latter he proposed to use a series of smaller cars-the modern "train "-in order to save the wear of the rails. In 1768 he obtained the Society of Arts' gold medal, for models of his carriages, and twenty years later be made four carriages which were used for some time on a wooden line of rails to convey lime for farming purposes. Besides using his proposed railways for heavy waggons at a slow pace, Mr Edgeworth thought means might be found of enabling stage-coaches to go six miles an hour, and post-chaises and gentlemen's travelling carriages at eight miles an hour, both with one horse. Another proposal he made was that small (stationary) engines placed from distance to distance might by means of circulating chains be made to draw the carriages along roads with a great diminution of horse labour and expense. An attempt to take a systematical commercial view of the utility of railways was made in 1800, by Dr James Anderson, in the fourth volume of his "Recreations in Agriculture." He proposed to construct railways by the side of the turnpike roads, so as to follow the ordinary levels and lines of traffic: to commence with the highway from London to Bath. Where the road ascended a hill, the level was to be sought by going round its base, constructing a viaduct, or piercing a tunnel; and so carefully were these contingencies discussed, that, with the exception of horses being the moving power, his plans and arguments might be accepted as the description of a railway of the present day. One point particularly insisted on was, that the railways should be managed by Government, not by private companies, who would unite monopoly with speculation; but should "be kept open and patent to all alike who shall choose to employ them, as the king's highway, under such regulations as it shall be found necessary to subject them by law." No immediate result followed the publication of Dr Anderson's views; no one had then thought of railways independent of other thoroughfares, and to border the latter by iron routes, was not to be entertained. There is another name connected with the rise of railways which cannot be left unnoticedThomas Gray of Leeds. Hearing, while on the Continent in 1816, that a canal had been projected to connect the coalfields of Belgium with the frontier of Holland, he recommended the making of a railway instead. His mind had been for some time directed to the subject; and in 1818 he showed to his friends a manuscript containing observations on a railroad for the whole of Europe. Soon after he returned to England for the purpose of making his scheme public, and in 1820 he published a volume eutitled, "Observations on a General Iron Railway, or Land Steam Conveyance, to supersede the Necessity of Horses in all Public Vehicles: Showing its vast Superiority in every respect over the Present Pitiful Methods of Conveyance by Turnpike-Roads and Canals." In this work, among advantages to result from the new system, Gray showed that fish, vegetables, agricultural and other perishable produce might be rapidly carried from place to place; that two post deliveries in the day would be feasible; and that insurance companies would be able to promote their own interests by keeping railway fire-engines, ready to be transported to the scene of a conflagration at a moment's warning. The cost of construction was calculated at £12,000 a mile; and his plan included a trunk line from fifteen or sixteen hundredweight. And if no greater inclination than six inches and a half on a hundred feet in length be allowed, the carts will move of themselves, without any external impulse. A single horse may be the means of conveying a greater weight than twenty-two horses of the same strength on the best of common roads." While there was thus a gathering together of testimony as regards the improvement of the roads over which wheeled vehicles were to be drawn, there was gradually being developed the idea of employing another and more powerful agent for the propulsion of the vehicles. There cannot be the least doubt that the numerous attempts to apply steam to navigation acted on the minds of men of skill and invention in order to have the same powerful agent applied to the ordinary requirements of the road. Indeed, the first invention of William Symington was applied to a carriage as well as to a barge, and his London to Plymouth and Falmouth; lines to Portsmouth, Bristol, Dover, and Harwich; an offset from the latter to Norwich, a trunk line from London to Birmingham and Holyhead, another to Edinburgh by Nottingham and Leeds, with secondary lines from Liverpool to Scarborough, and from Birmingham to Norwich. His system was not only remarkable for its simplicity, but comprehended all the important towns of the kingdom, and was in many respects preferable to the lines subsequently made. His plan for Ireland had a grand trunk line from Dublin to Derry, another to Kinsale, and by lesser lines ramifying from these he sought to connect all the chief towns with the Irish capital. Regarding his projects, Sir John Hawkshaw, in his British Association speech (1875), remarked: "No sooner had our ancestors settled down with what comfort was possible in their coaches, well satisfied that twelve miles an hour was the maximum speed to be obtained or that was desirable, than they were told that steam convey-diagram and detail of a steam-carriage were conance on iron railways would supersede their 'present pitiful' methods of conveyance. Such was the opinion of Thomas Gray, the first promoter of railways, who published his work on a general iron railway in 1819. Gray was looked on as little better than a madman. 'When Gray first proposed his great scheme to the public,' said Chevalier Wilson, in a letter to Sir Robert Peel in 1845, 'people were disposed to treat it as an effusion of insanity.' The struggles which preceded the opening of the first railway were brought to a successful issue by the determination of a few able and far-seeing men; and the names of Thomas Gray and Joseph Sandars, of William James and Edward Pease, should always be remembered in connection with the early history of railways, for it was they who first made the nation familiar with the idea." Whatever effect Gray's persevering labours may have had in directing attention to the subject of railways, he himself gained neither reward nor honour. His late years were passed in obscurity as a dealer in glass on commission at Exeter, in which city he died in October 1848 at the age of sixty-one. He died, it is said, "steeped to the lips in poverty." temporary with his invention of a steamship. It was probably in the knowledge that such ideas were being wrought out into practical shape that the lines were written by Dr Darwin, to which the reputation of prophecy has almost attached: "Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or on the wide-waving wings expanded bear The flying chariot through the fields of air!" So wrote Dr Darwin in his Botanic Garden in 1793, and the vision of the "flying chariot" does not appear to-day much more extravagant than did, when these lines were published, the prediction of "rapid" travelling by means of a steam-engine. Yet, nearly a century before, a very fair attempt at the construction of a locomotive steam-engine had been made. The scene of the experiment was Japan, and the actors in it were the Jesuit missionaries, who sought to find favour with the Emperor Kanghi. They caused a waggon of light wood to be made, in the middle of which they placed a brazen vessel full of live coals, and on them an "eolipile," the wind from which issued through a little pipe upon a sort of wheel made like the sail of a windmill. This little wheel turned another with an axle-tree, and by that means the waggon was set a-running for two hours together. This description is rather that of a hot-air engine than a steam-engine, but it was a locomotive, and is the earliest of its race. In an early number of Blackwood's Magazine we have a notice of a railway in Munich nearly contemporary with the proposals of Gray: "We have received a report from Munich, which, if it be not exaggerated, well deserves the attention of our countrymen. A model, on a large scale, of an iron railroad, invented and completed by In the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in the chief counsellor of the mines, Joseph von Paris is preserved the steam-carriage constructed Baader, has been received at the Royal Reposi- by M. Cugnot in 1763, which was a remarkable tory for Mechanical Inventions, which is said to machine, like a long brewer's cart, with a surpass in utility whatever has been seen in Eng- boiler and engine at one end. It went with land; some say by a proportion of two-thirds, such force that it knocked down a wall, and its although it costs less by half. On a space per-power was in consequence considered too great fectly level, laid with this invention, a woman for ordinary use, and it was put aside as a danor a child may draw with ease a cart laden with gerous invention. |