TUBE, TRAIN, TRAM, AND CAR
OR
UP-TO-DATE LOCOMOTION

TUBE, TRAIN,
TRAM, AND CAR
OR
UP-TO-DATE LOCOMOTION

BY
ARTHUR H. BEAVAN
AUTHOR OF “MARLBOROUGH HOUSE AND ITS OCCUPANTS,” “IMPERIAL LONDON,”
“CROWNING THE KING,” ETC.
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
And an Introduction
BY
LLEWELLYN PREECE, M.I.E.E.

LONDON
GEO. ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1903
[All rights reserved.]
“THE CHARIOTS RUN LIKE THE LIGHTNING”

PREFACE

THE object of this work is to present the subject of Electrical Locomotion to the public for the first time, the author believes, in a popular form, giving interesting information about Tube, Train, Tram, and Motor-car, but avoiding, as much as possible, technical and scientific detail.

Electrical traction is of national importance, destined perhaps materially to abate the evil of overcrowding, by providing cheap and rapid means of access from centres of industry to country districts and vice versa.

It was predicted by George Stephenson in 1825 that his system would supersede all other methods of conveyance in this country. Similarly can it now be prophesied that throughout the world electrical traction will ultimately supplant all other forms. An age of electricity is dawning, when “power” may be obtained direct from fuel or from the vast store of energy existing in the heated interior of the earth, or even from the atmosphere that surrounds us; when every mountain stream and gleaming waterfall throughout Great Britain, and each tide as it rises and falls, will help to generate the subtle fluid, which, produced on a vast scale abroad, where giant cataracts and mighty rapids abound, may be imported to supplement our home supply, and be utilised in every manufacturing district; when all our main lines will be electric, and “light railways” ubiquitous; when coal-less ships and aerial machines, with perfected accumulators, may possibly traverse sea and ocean, and invade the domain of condor and eagle; when farms will be cultivated by electrical contrivances, and their produce expeditiously conveyed to market, and the sanitation of our streets be ensured by the universal use of horseless vehicles. An age that may witness “current” laid on for domestic purposes to every house in the land as a matter of course; and also as machine-power to village settlements, where artisans engaged in certain kinds of trade may work amidst the pleasant surroundings of home. And thus the abstract principle, “Back to the land,” may become an accomplished fact.

To bring the body of this work precisely up to the date of its publication being obviously impossible, I take the opportunity of making passing reference to the railway disaster on the Métropolitain of Paris, when eighty-four passengers were killed, and which has caused the public mind to be much disturbed by the possibility of danger in the London Tubes.

As regards trams, the London United Tramways Company established a record of traffic during the August Bank Holiday period, the total for the four days being 878,000, that on Monday alone being 330,000 travellers. A serious electric tram accident occurred at Ramsgate in August, when nineteen persons were injured by the colliding of one car with another at a point where the lines converged.

Then, as to motor-cars. The great Gordon-Bennett race in Ireland this summer was won by a German. A tentative Act of Parliament for regulating the traffic, to come into force January 1st next, and to continue for three years, has received the Royal Assent, the speed limit being fixed at twenty miles per hour.

A service of motor hansom cabs is shortly to be established in London. The Fischer “combination” omnibus has successfully passed through repeated private trials, and will probably be adopted by one or both of the metropolitan chief companies.

Motor bath-chairs, to hold two people, and propelled by electricity, will be accomplished facts at the World’s Fair, St. Louis, next year.

I have now to acknowledge, with thanks, the assistance of Sir William H. Preece, who kindly read through the proof-sheets of this volume just before he fell seriously ill in August, and of his son, Mr. Llewellyn Preece, who has written the Introduction, and I now leave “Tube, Train, Tram, and Car” to receive the verdict of those who travel.

ARTHUR H. BEAVAN

September, 1903.

INTRODUCTION
BY LLEWELLYN PREECE, M.I.E.E.

THE object of this book is to give the public a general idea as to the progress now being made in the application of electricity for transport purposes, and it was intended that Sir William Preece should write the introduction and correct the author so far as any technical misstatements were concerned. Unhappily, Sir William Preece has fallen victim to a very severe illness, which entirely incapacitates him from any work, and will prevent him from doing anything for some months to come. Just before his illness, however, he had gone through the proofs and made certain corrections, all of which, the author tells me, have been accepted, but owing to the great delay in the publication of this book which has already been incurred, and to the impossibility of discussing these matters with my father, I have not been able to check the proofs since the alterations were made.

The advances which, within the last few years, have been made in the application of electricity for the purpose of transportation are shown very clearly in this book, and if the author has made one or two flights on the wings of fancy regarding the future which may be somewhat startling to the reader, it must be remembered that if many things which are of everyday occurrence had been suggested to any of us fifty years ago, and if we had been told that it would be possible to travel at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, we should have been somewhat inclined to laugh. As the reader will learn, such travelling is to be very shortly a fact.

At the same time I do not believe that it will be so much with the high-speed work as with the tramway and light railway work that electricity will be of the greatest service to the public in the future.

I look forward to the time when there will be a network of light railways surrounding every town in the kingdom, enabling the population to spread itself out once again in the country.

Central power stations distributing electric current over a radius of fifteen or twenty miles will enable these railways to work at very low cost, and therefore carry passengers considerable distances at low fares.

The tendency at the present time being to reduce the hours of labour, whether mental or manual, the time at the disposal of a workman for travelling will increase, so that with an eight hours working day and cheap electric light railways, there will be no reason why the poorest labourer should not live in the country, and at least sleep in a pure atmosphere.

The adaptability of electricity to motor-car work has hardly yet been sufficiently realised. People see the luxurious electric brougham, described in this book, running on the streets of London and other large cities, but few have any idea that not only the wealthy aristocrat, but everyone will, before long, be able to ride in such carriages, possibly not so luxuriousy fitted up, but equally comfortable and speedy.

The usual cry at present is that electric cars are very nice, but the owners have great difficulties with the batteries. Undoubtedly batteries have given trouble in the past, and still do so to some extent. But if a man buys a horse and gives it in charge of the gardener’s boy, he is likely to have trouble with his horse. In the same way, if a man buys an electric carriage and expects his coachman to look after it, he only naturally does have considerable trouble. There are several companies prepared to look after and maintain in continuous use, not only the batteries, but the complete carriages, and this is greatly improving the reliability of the electric car, and allaying the fears of those anxious to have such carriages.

Besides this, the battery itself is making great strides forward: its capacity per cwt. has largely increased, its life is much longer, and its reliability under great variations of discharge has considerably improved. In fact, it may be safely said that even now the electric car is more reliable than either the petrol or the steam car. At present it will not do the same distance on one charge, nor will it do the great speed other cars will, but this is the great reason why it should appeal to the British public. The craze for high speeds does not affect the majority of people. I believe that it is only a question of a few years for the petrol and steam cars to be placed in museums and shown as monstrosities of the past, like the mammoth elephant, and that every cab, omnibus, and private carriage throughout the country will use electricity as the motive power.

In fact I do not think it unwarrantable to assert that, so far as this country is concerned, many of us will see the day when the only form of energy used for transportation will be that known as electricity.

LLEWELLYN PREECE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Tube, Train, Tram, and Car

CHAPTER I
THE OLD AND THE NEW ORDER OF RAILWAY LOCOMOTION

“The thinking minds of all nations call for change.”—Carlyle.

STEAM—THE OLD ORDER

AN immutable law of nature has decreed that whatever attains to perfection is doomed to perish, for

“The world exists by change, and but for that
All matter would to chaos back,
To form a pillow for a sleeping god.”

Thus it came to pass that in the period 1825 to 1835, when the main roads of Great Britain were at their best, when the then mode of travelling, though on a limited scale, had, as regards speed, punctuality, and organisation, reached the highest possible pitch of perfection, a little cloud like a man’s hand, presaging the new order of locomotion, arose at the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and overshadowed the old method. So effective was the competition of the “iron horse,” that in lieu of the fifty-four splendidly equipped vehicles which in 1835 carried His Majesty’s mails throughout England, not a single coach left the General Post Office, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, in the year 1844; while the kings highways had become almost deserted.

Though this was barely sixty years ago, railways have evolved themselves out of their embryonic state into a condition approaching the fateful one of perfect development.

In early days, first-class passengers were boxed up in replicas of old stage-coaches, the second-class in open carriages exposed to the weather, and the third-class huddled together in seatless cattle-trucks. Contrast this with our luxurious Pullmans, and our corridor and vestibule trains for all classes, warmed throughout, lighted by electricity, and provided with lavatories, dining-saloons, buffets, and sleeping-cars. “With what further improvements can we allure the public?” ask anxious directors. One answer only is possible. “By bringing the mode of locomotion up to date.”

This means, in the case of old-established railway companies, a complete and costly transformation, or an independent mono-rail track for long distances; under any circumstances entailing much hardship upon the share-holders. For at the moment when railway-engineers—improving so vastly upon George Stephenson’s venerable engine,[1] built in 1822, and still at work for the Hutton Colliery, its weight only fifteen tons, its speed ten miles an hour—have constructed such magnificent locomotives as the “Greater Britain” for the London and North

FIG. 1. QUEEN VICTORIA’S TRAIN ON THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY

Western Railway, or the ten-wheeled giant[2] for the Great Northern Railway, fifty-seven feet over all, weighing 100 tons, and capable of reeling off its 65 miles an hour with ease, electricity steps into the field, displaces the stately engine—resplendent in red, blue, green, or chocolate paint, glossy as the coat of some highly trained racehorse, and gleaming with polished brass and steel, finished in all its parts with exquisite accuracy, the very embodiment of energy under perfect control—and from some unpretentious-looking building afar off, drives our trains with unseen but resistless force, at the rate, if desired, of a hundred miles an hour!

The construction of an ordinary steam locomotive is an intricate operation, necessitating machine-shops, erecting-shops, foundries, forges, etc., covering acres of ground, as at Crewe, Doncaster, Derby, or Swindon. Not a hundred engines are exactly alike in pattern, and each one is supposed to be composed of over five thousand different parts, all of which have to be stowed away in a necessarily limited space.

“How is steam utilised by the locomotive?” is a question asked again and again (and not by children only) ever since Stephenson’s engine started on its triumphant progress from Stockton to Darlington and back, and which, I venture to affirm, only a small percentage of travellers, even in 1903, can answer “right away,” as our American cousins would express it.

Briefly, then, as follows: Raised up on high is the mighty boiler. Remove its plates, and running through its entire length will be seen a cluster of some two or three hundred brass tubes, in diameter that of a penny-piece. At the rear of the boiler, on a lower level, is the fuel fire-box, with its grate and ash-pan, while in front is the smoke-box, surmounted by the familiar chimney or funnel, called in the United States the “smoke-stack,” in British engines reduced to a minimum of height. Water from the tender surrounds the brass tubes, and when the fire is burning, flames, smoke, and heated gases rush through them, escaping viâ the chimney, but in their passage converting the boiling water into expanding steam, which, when the regulator is opened, is directed by valves into the hollow cylinders—sometimes placed below the boiler, but generally visible outside—forcing by its pressure the pistons backwards and forwards alternately, and, by means of intermediate machinery, transferring its energy to the driving-wheels.

The exhausted steam, after accomplishing its work, joins the smoke in the smoke-box, escaping up the funnel by jerks, which creates a forced draught through the brass boiler-tubes, and hastens the generation of steam.

ELECTRICITY—THE NEW ORDER

Contrast this with electricity, the definition of whose exact nature is a task I must of necessity leave to others, but its adaptation to the purposes of traction can be thus broadly explained:—

Dynamos or generators are situated at some fixed station, more or less distant, generating electrical energy, whence the current is transmitted along a central steel rail, or, in the case of some tramways, viâ overhead wires, returning to its place of birth by another rail or cable, and completing its circuit. It is “picked up” by a small locomotive fitted with motors that work the driving-mechanism, and thus propels the coaches or cars behind it at varying speeds.

The rotation of the dynamos is effected either by a torrent, waterfall, or swift-flowing river, absorbed by turbines, or by steam supplied from ordinary boilers.

In other words, we convert our water and coal into steam, and, indirectly, the heat in the steam into electrical energy; and the heavy locomotive that used to carry its own fuel, and manufacture its steam as it tore along with the train behind it, now leaves tender and boiler at home, and has its driving power, in the form of electric current, forwarded to it per centre rail, to be drawn upon when wanted.

The system is beautifully simple, and the machinery compact and uncomplicated. Smoke defilement is unknown, and the trains are comparatively noiseless. In short, electric traction is the refinement of mechanically applied power.

Now let us visit an electrical power station—a small one—and I have in my mind that of the Waterloo and City Electric Railway.

Hidden away behind a bewildering labyrinth of railway arches, in a cul-de-sac, approached from a back street, not a hundred miles from a great railway station, is a plain, very plain brick building, wherein, for aught one knows to the contrary, such prosaic articles as pots and pans, or cardboard boxes, may be in course of manufacture. Pass through a door, always on the swing, and an unpretending office is reached, furnished in the usual manner, and occupied by clerks engaged upon the ordinary duties of their vocation.

Access to the engineer-in-chief being granted, he courteously conducts us to the power room, whence issues the energy that drives the trains.

Imagination had pictured a great hall, filled with ponderous machinery whose component parts are cranks, steel rods, shafts, and toothed wheels, a wilderness of metal, moving with bewildering rapidity and thunderous power, in an atmosphere redolent of lubricating oil, a vision of whirling wheels, an Ezekiel vision of wheels in the midst of wheels, instinct with life, such as the prophet saw 600 years B.C., by the River Chebar, in the land of the Chaldean.

FIG. 2. NINE WILLANS-SIEMENS DYNAMO SETS FOR ELECTRIC TRACTION, 700 H.P. EACH.

By permission of Willans and Robinson, Ltd., Rugby

Nothing of the kind! One portion of a moderate-sized apartment is devoted to the “fitting” of the motor locomotives, and at the other end, enclosed within a low railing, resting upon a bed of great solidity, and occupying but little space, is the machinery in duplicate, as a safeguard against breakdowns.

It consists of a vertical compound engine, supplied with steam from an adjoining boiler-house, whose cylinder is coupled direct to the fly-wheels of the revolving dynamos that are partly sunk into the flooring. These, with their electro-magnets, are so shut in, and so little can be seen of the working, that it all looks very mysterious and incomprehensible to the uninitiated.

In large power-producing machinery an iron staircase leads up to a platform above the dynamos, giving access to the loftier parts of the apparatus, which then, in its general appearance and compactness, somewhat resembles a modern marine engine. On the walls are endless dials, recording the amount of current generated, localising the exact position of the trains on the line at any given moment, and checking the quantity of current picked up by each engine. There is absolutely no smell, no outward indication of resistless power, while almost Arcadian quiet reigns in the neighbourhood of the machines.

That these small dynamos are capable of driving heavy cars filled with passengers at the rate of many miles an hour seems incredible; but faith, “the evidence of things not seen,” must come into play.

The craving for mere size, however, will be amply gratified when the great power house at Chelsea, built to supply the Metropolitan, District, and other railways, is completed (vide Chapter V.).

But what on earth is a kilowatt, or a volt, an ohm, or an ampère?—expressions that are rapidly becoming as familiar as the word horse-power.

Well, “horse-power” was a term invented long ago by engineers, who blandly asked one to imagine that an ordinary horse was capable of lifting a weight of 33,000 lbs. (or some 14½ tons) one foot high per minute. Now, electricity is a very exact science. There is no mere theory about it; and a unit is a definite quantity of power, known in that science as a “kilowatt hour.” Thus, a kilowatt, or 1,000 watts, is the equivalent in measured work of 1⅓ horse-power, equal to the lifting of 44,000 lbs. per minute, or the doing of so many units of work, either electric lighting, heating, machinery driving, or traction.

VARIOUS FORMS OF ELECTRIC LOCOMOTION

Electricity as a locomotive force is being presented to the public in various forms. There is the ordinary railway, like the Underground, that, cleansing itself, amending its ways, and becoming converted to the new order of traction, has been granted a new lease of life. Then there are new lines laid down, intended from the first to be electrical, with specially designed cars, diving beneath the Thames, and connecting the north and south of London. These are our metropolitan pioneer electric railways. There is also the system of railways specifically and popularly known as Tubes, most important factors in the travelling world of modern Babylon. Another division is the system known as Overhead Electric Railways; that is to say, rails laid upon iron girders supported by columns above the roadway, a notable example of which is the Liverpool Overhead Electric Railway.

Electric tramways are with us in Greater London for good and all, with their network of lines in every direction. Some are locally worked by the various Borough Councils; others on a comprehensive scale by the London County Council, who now strongly advocate also another system, the Shallow-Underground, by which the cars run in a kind of open trench just below the surface in the middle of the street.

Next we have endless provincial and urban council electric tramways, including some very extensive systems for feeding the enormous traffic of cities and large towns in the Midlands and North of England.

Electric Light Railways, originally intended to be worked on rails laid down upon the ordinary highway, form a special class by themselves to serve short-distance traffic in country districts; but to all intents and purposes they are rural electric trams.

Lastly, we have motor-cars, carriages, omnibuses, cabs, vans, and cycles, that with electricity as their means of propulsion, will possibly ere long supersede every other form of traffic in our streets and along our roads and lanes.

To individualise these various outcomes of electrical traction spread over the length and breadth of Great Britain is impossible. Their names and their statistics are enrolled in Garcke’s Manual of Electrical Undertakings, a work that, like Kelly’s London Directory, grows bigger and bigger every year.

I propose, therefore, only to notice some of the principal ones; and, naturally, the pioneer railway lines should have the place of honour.

CHAPTER II
SOME PIONEER ELECTRIC RAILWAYS

“A worthy pioneer.”—Shakespeare.

THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY RAILWAY

IN the month of March, 1883, by the opening of the Giant’s Causeway, Portrush, and Bush Valley Railway, the sister island achieved the honour and glory of showing the way to the “predominant partner” in the matter of electrical traction enterprise; winning, however, only by a head, for in August of the same year the Brighton Beach Electric Railway was inaugurated.

Who amongst us can say they know Ireland well? To the average tourist it still remains an unexplored country. The travelling American, however, as a rule, does it from end to end. Commencing with Dublin, “doing” Killarney, and working round the magnificent west coast, he returns viâ the North Channel, always taking en route on the coast of Antrim the Giant’s Causeway, thundered upon by storms from the wild Atlantic. There, almost within hail of Britain, are those strange groups of basaltic columns so familiar to geological students, intensely interesting, invested with many an old and mystic Celtic legend, yet until recently difficult of access, as other striking regions in Ireland—an island abounding not only in awe-inspiring scenery, but in sequestered spots of sylvan beauty; a fair land of mountains and hills, lakes and waterfalls, crystal streams, and splendid harbours; truly called the Emerald Isle; where the grass is greenest, and rare coniferæ flourish; where the myrtle needs no shelter, and the arbutus blooms and fruits to perfection, and flowers are everywhere, for every little enclosure in due season glows with the brightest of flax and potato blossom; and lanes and open country are gay with star-like marigolds, shamrock, violets, honeysuckle, meadowsweet, catsear, scabious, large purple bugle, and such-like lowly but welcome plants.

FIG. 3. THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.

By permission of Thos. Cook and Son, Ludgate Circus

From Portrush it is easy to reach the Causeway, though once there, one often has to wait for favourable weather before proceeding to explore its cavernous wonders by water.

The present length of the railway is 8½ miles of single line, its gauge being 3 feet. It is worked partly by steam and partly by electricity on the overhead system, the current being derived from a generating station three-quarters of a mile away, where three hydraulic turbines, fed by an adjoining waterfall, operate the dynamo. Although the railway is out of the way and on a small scale, the attractions of the Causeway and the surrounding district result in a respectable passenger traffic of over a hundred thousand per annum.

THE BRIGHTON BEACH RAILWAY

Under the sanction of the Brighton Town Council, the Magnus Volk Co., Ltd., now work the Brighton Beach Electric Tram-railway, which at its opening was regarded as a great novelty and curiosity, constituting an additional attraction and amusement to “London by the sea,” and tens of thousands must have taken a ride in its little open cars since it came into existence twenty years ago. The gauge is but 2 feet 8½ inches, the “feeders” are underground, the propelling system is electric, with a third rail, and its speed is about 12 miles an hour. Starting from the west pier, opposite the Royal Aquarium, it sets out on its one mile and a half route of single line and dips beneath the level of the Marine Parade to a level a little above the beach, passing en route, though hidden from view, many landmarks of old Brighton, such as Park Place and Gardens, Royal Crescent, Marine Square, and Lewes Crescent, and terminating at a point near Black Rock.

This was the eastern end of Old Brighton, noted for many an original character in the “twenties” and “thirties,” not the least interesting of whom were old Martha Gunn, queen of the bathing-machines, and Sak Deen Mahomed, a native of the East, who introduced the art of shampooing into the town, and lived to become a centenarian, his fame being enshrined in verse by James Smith, one of the authors of Rejected Addresses, who humorously predicted his longevity as follows:—

“Sprung doubtless from Abdullah’s son,
Thy miracles thy sire’s outrun,
Thy cures his deaths outnumber;
His coffin soars ’twixt heav’n and earth,
But thou, within that narrow berth,
Immortal, ne’er shall slumber.”

Many have been the changes in Brighton since those days. Arundel Terrace, Kemp Town, Ultima Thule in the east; Adelaide Crescent with Palmyra Square, its western boundary. From the fields to the north of that square could be seen, a mile or so off, the village of Hove, the intervening space being dotted with farms. No one could have dreamt that a great railway-station would be built there, with minor ones at Kemp Town, West Brighton, and Hove. Old residents could not have pictured a Grand Aquarium, a Western and Eastern Pier, nor the destruction of their familiar Chain Pier. They would be amazed at the spread of Brighton in every direction, the springing up of palatial hotels like the “Métropole” and “Grand,” and the increase of the population to some hundred and fifty thousand; while the coaching world, headed by the popular Sir St. Vincent Cotton, prince of amateur whips, and all the confraternity of coachmen and hackney-coach drivers, would have thought anyone a lunatic who had dared to prophesy that one day a conveyance drawn without horses or steam power would carry passengers along the Brighton beach!

THE CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY

For many years prior to 1890, in Gracechurch Street, at a point near its junction with Eastcheap, could be seen every day of the week numerous omnibuses arriving between nine and eleven a.m., and departing between five and eight p.m., for the suburbs over the water. These ’buses regularly plied between London and Kennington, Walworth, Camberwell, Stockwell, Clapham, and Brixton (a few journeying to Dulwich and Peckham), for the special accommodation of dwellers in those favourite localities engaged in business during the day. Wealthy “principals” of mercantile and brokers’ firms drove to and from their comfortable Surrey villas in well-equipped carriages, the junior members in smart traps or dogcarts; but the small merchants and smaller brokers, the head clerks and the rank and file who do all the hard work, had to make use of these omnibuses, and when exceptionally bad weather prevented the vehicles running, they had to get to and from their offices as best they could on foot. To the working man, living, say, at Brixton, and engaged upon a City job, the fares—4d. to 8d.—were prohibitive. The time wasted in these conveyances was great, and at the best it was an unpleasant way of travelling; overcrowding was common, and the “fight for the trams” in 1903 is as nothing compared to the frantic rush for those omnibus seats; while on wet days the sight was piteous.

It is true that City men could use the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, to reach these suburbs, but this involved a walk to Blackfriars Station, and the facing of the crush on its dangerous platforms. There were also the alternatives of crossing Blackfriars Bridge and using the London Tramway Company’s horse-cars, or of forcing one’s way over London Bridge, tramping or “bussing” it along the Borough High Street, and, emerging at the “Elephant and Castle,” there tapping the trams.

As a matter of fact, these ingenious alternative routes were seldom made use of. At the close of business, men of all ranks want to get home as fast as they can, and from some station not far from their counting-houses. Therefore, in the days I am describing, how could any of those gentlemen clad in irreproachable frock-coats and new glossy hats, who each day of the week issued from snug offices in Austin Friars, Drapers’ Gardens, or Copthall Court, whose business was transacted over the way at the “House”; how could the brokers of Mark Lane and Mincing Lane, the underwriters at Lloyd’s, the ship-brokers and ship-owners round about Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street, the flourishing bill-brokers of Broad Street, and the smaller mercantile fry; how could any of these, if resident on the Surrey side, be expected to go to and from business by way of Blackfriars?

However, this unsatisfactory means of communication was hardly likely to escape the notice of such astute experts as Mr. J. C. Mott, doyen director of the Great Western Railway, and his far-seeing friends. They took counsel together, and, after the usual hard task of persuading people, plans were matured, and in 1884 an enterprise was organised and incorporated as the City of London and Southwark Subway Company, to construct a line of railway from King William Street to the “Elephant and Castle,” with an intermediate station at Marshalsea Road.

This was the initial stage of the present well-known railway.

At the outset, three points had to be considered. How was the subway to be constructed? What motive power should be employed? And how was the deep level to be reached by the passengers? A subway under the Thames was no novelty. The directors of the new line were not the “first that ever burst into that silent sea” of mud and gravel at the bottom of the swift-flowing river. Brunel had been long before them with his costly Thames Tunnel, and Barlow had years ago laid upon its oozy bed the Tower Subway of iron.

It was decided that a tube, or, rather, two independent tunnels of cast-iron rings, should be driven side by side beneath the bottom of the stream, a little to the west of London Bridge, and continued on the Surrey side.

On this system the work was begun by the contractors, Siemens Brothers and Mather and Platt, and proceeded with quite out of public sight. It was accompanied with many disheartening delays and seemingly insurmountable difficulties; but they were all successfully overcome, and the tubes were brought to a temporary end at the “Swan,” Stockwell, to which charming retreat, by an Act of Parliament, 1887, an extension of the line had been sanctioned, making its length a little over three miles.

The motive power eventually selected was electricity, steam being impracticable, and the funicular or cable system considered unreliable. Access to and from the trains was to be obtained at the stations by means of capacious twin-lifts capable of holding many people at a time.

Then the problem of how best to utilise the ample “power,” generated at the Stockwell Station, for hauling the cars, had to be seriously tackled. It was not a question of a toy line like that on the Brighton beach, but of the driving at fair speed, say 15 miles an hour, of comparatively heavy coaches laden with passengers, and at frequent intervals. Altogether it was a new departure in electric traction.

How the motor locomotives were effectually to pick up the current was the puzzle which had to be solved, or the enterprise might at the last moment collapse and the subscribed capital be lost.

After an infinite amount of anxious experimenting on the part of Mr. Mott and his scientific advisers—the narrative of which, as told me by that veteran, sounded like a romance—by a happy inspiration the way was hit upon; and all other technical difficulties overcome, the line was pronounced to be in working order (1890), after a series of trial trips, at one of which the writer had the privilege of being present.

CHAPTER III
SOME PIONEER ELECTRIC RAILWAYS (continued)

A TRIAL TRIP IN THE CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY

ONE o’clock saw a large party of us, chiefly City men, amongst whom were numerous civil engineers, waiting at King William Street booking-office to descend into the bowels of the earth by one of the semicircular lifts, a novelty in point of size. Our turn having come, we duly filed into the elevator. The telescopic doors clashed upon us, and we stood for a second or two silently expectant, feeling like a batch of condemned criminals on a gigantic scaffold waiting for the hangman to draw back the fatal lever that would launch them into the other world.

Noiselessly the lift descended to an apparently fathomless depth, but in reality, I believe, some 90 or 100 feet. When released by the janitor, we found ourselves in a small, well-lighted, cool, and spotlessly clean, white-tiled station, whence was discernible a couple of small tunnels side by side, leading to unknown regions, seemingly all too narrow to accommodate even the miniature cars waiting for us at one of the narrow platforms.

Inspecting the tunnels, the classical man of our party, a wag in his way, who had hitherto made no remark, was heard to mutter something in Latin, which, on being coerced, he admitted was out of Virgil, and was translated thus: “This is the spot where the way divides in two branches.” In vain we pointed out that the quotation was inappropriate, as the ways were parallel. He was obdurate, so we left him to his own reflections.

To most of us accustomed to roomy Pullmans and commodious railway carriages, the cars, though comfortable, seemed cramped, especially in height. The signal given, off we started, when we noticed that the cars fitted the tube with such nicety and economy of space that, could the windows have been let down, we could easily have touched the iron plates of the tunnel. We realised, too, that although there was no smoke or smell, the railway was by no means noiseless; neither, in the opinion of several of the experts present, was the running as steady as on the “Underground.”

A hint had been given us that at some point where the line dipped and rose again the cars might come to a temporary standstill. As we rather uneasily recalled this, the speed gradually slackened, and finally the train stopped altogether, and simultaneously the incandescent lights began to pale, and at last subsided into filaments of sickly red. The situation was not a pleasant one. There we were; many of us with important engagements awaiting us later in the day; most of us with wives and children who would expect us home as usual when evening arrived, and grow anxious at our absence. There we were sealed up in a tube, for all we knew, at a point beneath the Thames. Not a sound reached us from the locomotive, or, indeed, from anywhere. Were we thus to remain indefinitely? For walk out we could not, there being no room outside the carriages. Would some memorial tablet let into the side of London Bridge, months hence, recall the fact that near it a goodly company of highly respectable citizens had perished in a living tomb?

I don’t think we talked much. It was luncheon-time; we were hungry, and we felt like the occupants of the snowed-up cars in one of Mark Twain’s stories, who gloomily eyed one another as starvation threatened, calculating upon whom, by an ingenious and complicated system of voting previously agreed to, would next fall the lot of being sacrificed for the benefit of the rest, and I believe I found myself unconsciously speculating on the plumpness of a youthful stockbroker standing by my side. But after a very few moments of suspense the train rattled on again, the lights reappeared, and presently we drew up at the Borough, the first station on the Surrey side.

Railway booking-offices are not usually things of beauty, least of all those on the Metropolitan, District, and suburban lines. Here, however, was a surprise, for we found quite a picturesque stone-and-brick building on the ground-floor, a cupola surmounting the prettily designed entrance, and a small dome with lantern by way of roof. And this was a sample of all the stations along the line.

The Borough recalled the Marshalsea that once stood close by; and there opposite was St. George’s, Southwark, where Little Dorrit, accidentally locked out of the prison, was allowed by “the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was,” to take refuge in the vestry, where, years afterwards, she signed the marriage register when wedded to Arthur Clennam.

The next stoppage was at the Elephant and Castle—not the tavern of that name, where in the past on Derby Day the superabundant holiday traffic usually became hopelessly congested, but the City and South London’s new station, close to Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, Rabbits’ great boot warehouse, and Tarn’s vast emporium, that seems to occupy most of Newington Causeway. Onwards to Kennington Common, once the place of public executions for Surrey, now a well-kept miniature park. Beyond it, Kennington Oval, associated with cricket all the world over; and finally we arrived at Stockwell, the then terminus of the line, since extended to Clapham, where Tom Hood used to go to school at a house “with ugly windows ten in a row, its chimney in the rear,” a style of architecture of which many specimens still exist round and about the Common.

At Stockwell we visited the generating station, recently much extended, and provided with entirely new plant, and, wondering at and admiring all we saw, learned from the chief engineer that the contretemps en route was due to a slight defect in the new and untried power-machinery; and thus at the point where the dip in the line was greatest, the cars stopped.

An excellent luncheon restored us all to eloquence and equanimity, extinguishing the cannibalistic feeling of half an hour ago, and, returning without any incident worth recording, we emerged once more in the City, to be greeted by the noise of the traffic that ever surges around King William the Fourth’s statue.

Those were the “green salad” days of London’s Pioneer Electric Railway Line. Now it runs without a hitch, and has been extended north as far as the historic “Angel,” thus giving a direct route between Clapham and Islington. It has powers to exchange traffic with the Great Northern and the City Railway viâ Old Street, and also to connect itself with the Baker Street and Waterloo Electric Railway at the Elephant and Castle Station; and in a new building at Finsbury Pavement it now has commodious head offices.

At the last half-yearly general meeting the chairman, Mr. C. G. Mott, in the course of his speech, stated that the Board aspired to have a thoroughly first-class terminus in the City of London, and had deposited plans with this view. They proposed to construct this station between the present Bank Station and the King William Street statue.

That the City and South London Railway is most useful and popular is shown by the number of passengers it has carried—some ninety millions since its opening—the returns for last year showing about eighteen millions, over a total route of about seven miles. For the convenience of travellers, it eventually will have subways, connecting its Lombard Street Station with the Bank Station of the Central London Railway, and it already has them from its new London Bridge Station to the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. Finally, it can boast of possessing a station below a church—a unique position, I believe. St. Mary Woolnoth’s foundations were completely removed, the vaults cleared out, and the whole replaced by huge iron girders, whereon the sacred edifice now rests, with the booking-office below.

THE WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY

The month of August, 1898, was unusually warm, and the heat was felt as much in the City as anywhere. Straw hats were universal; the shady side of the street, if there happened to be one, was thronged; secluded alleys and courts were resorted to by the knowing ones who could afford the time to linger there; and even highly respectable merchants were to be found sitting in shirt-sleeves at their writing-tables and wishing, with Sydney Smith, that they could “sit in their bones.”

At the junction of the Poultry with Victoria Street, shadowed by the Mansion House, from each side of the road a mysterious hoarding had just been removed, revealing an iron railing enclosing a small area with a mysterious staircase bearing the announcement that it led to the subway to the new electric railway, connecting the City with Waterloo Station. Descending a few steps, and emerging into a tunnelled incline, the perspiring pedestrian quickly found that here, if anywhere, was a refuge from the heat, the coolest place in London, and that it was well worth while, on the pretence of urgent business across the water, to pay twopence each way, merely to drink in the refreshing air wafted backwards and forwards along subway, platform, and tube.

This was the Waterloo and City Railway, a short deep-level line on the tube principle, nearly 1¾ miles long, burrowing under the Thames’ bed. At the terminus, by rather prolonged inclines and staircases, passengers could walk to the main or suburban platforms of Waterloo Station and catch the trains for Wimbledon, Hampton Court, Surbiton, etc.

Like the City and South London, this railway meets a great want. Before its opening, City men living down the London and South Western line had no alternative but to catch a South Eastern train from Cannon Street or Charing Cross; to take an omnibus viâ the Strand across to Waterloo Bridge; or to cab it by devious routes viâ Blackfriars Bridge. Now they can reach Waterloo with ease, comfort, and economy.

Under agreement, the line is worked by the London and South Western Railway Company. The electrical equipment is by the famous firm of Siemens Brothers, the generating station being up a blind alley adjoining

FIG. 4. WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY’S NEW PATTERN CAR

By permission of the “Tramway and Railway World” Publishing Co., London

the dismal arched entrance to Waterloo from York Road. Each train seats 208 passengers; the average speed is 18 miles an hour, and its usefulness is proved by the fact that over two and a half million ordinary passengers were carried by it in one half-year, i.e. to December 31st, 1902 (not counting season-ticket holders), while the receipts for that period were £17,400.

During the busy hours of morning and evening the large trains are used and always fill up rapidly, but in the slack times of midday single motor-cars, each carrying 50 passengers, are sufficient to cope with the traffic. The cars are rather stuffy, and, like the train cars, are narrow and low. At each end is a small partitioned-off “cab,” where sits a motor-man. No tickets are issued from the booking-office; but, as in an omnibus, the conductor comes round and collects the fares, giving a punched voucher in return, which is retained by the traveller.

THE LIVERPOOL OVERHEAD ELECTRIC RAILWAY

There are few overhead, or, rather, elevated, railways in the world. Somehow they do not seem to be popular, and the tendency, in England at least, is rather towards burrowing like the mole, than soaring above the street level.

In Germany there is a wonderful instance of electrically driven overhead line between Elberfeld and Barmen, on the mono-rail principle, the trains hanging from tracks suspended high above rivers and public roads. At the great Beckton gas works there has been in use since 1894 an iron-built miniature railway elevated on pillars, and it is a curious sight to witness busy little engines incessantly hauling coal trucks from the pier to the retort houses. An ingenious example of the elevated principle is to be seen at the Victoria Station, Manchester, where a railway on a very reduced scale conveys passengers’ luggage from one platform to another, and idlers are never tired of watching it. The track, a double one, is suspended from the roof and runs between platforms five and six. The motive power is electricity, and the motor is placed between the wheels and the track, and it lifts and lowers a basket which holds about 15 cwt. of luggage.

A wonderful instance of a very elevated railway existed at Beachy Head while the new lighthouse was being built 600 feet distant from the base of the cliff, at that point 400 feet high. It conveyed material to the site, the descending load drawing up the ascending empty “skip” on the overhead suspension principle.

Our New York cousins have, in their elevated steam railway, long been familiarised with the system, but for Londoners it possesses the fatal objection that the occupants of the cars as they pass along can look into the front windows of the houses and spy upon the occupants. Running along docks, however, elevated railways are not objectionable; and the earliest example, in this or any other country, of electricity applied to overhead traction is at Liverpool.

Extending along the Mersey—that noble river whose tidal movement is said to be four times the outfall of the Mississippi—for a distance of 6½ miles are the Liverpool Docks, in importance undoubtedly the first in the world, but, until the Overhead Railway was opened, exasperatingly inaccessible to business men whose time was valuable, and bewildering to strangers by reason of their immensity.

Along the line of dock, it is true, ran broad-wheeled omnibuses built to run on the low-level dock railway, but so slow, in consequence of the pressure of traffic and the necessity for frequent shuntings for the passage of goods trains, that to reach the farthest dock usually occupied over an hour. To improve upon this it was proposed, as far back as 1852, to construct a high-level railway; but nothing practical came of it until 1888, when the Liverpool Overhead Railway Company took over the parliamentary powers obtained by the Dock Board, and setting steadily to work, created their line for passengers only, and, from the first, achieved a great success, the number of travellers amounting to many millions annually.

On the 4th of February, 1893, the railway was appropriately opened by the ex-Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, whose devotion to the science of electricity is well known. Pressing a button at the base of a silver inkstand (subsequently presented to the Marquis as a memento), the engines that generated the electric current were set in motion, and by special train his lordship was conveyed over the seven miles of line, and afterwards entertained at a banquet by the Mayor, when, in an excellent speech, he dilated upon the prospect of electricity becoming the motive power of the age.

In the following month the railway was opened for public traffic, and, with its thirteen stations, its five minutes’ service, and its cheap fares, practically extinguished the omnibuses, light or heavy.

From the Overhead Railway a splendid view is obtained of the busiest locality perhaps in the empire. Below are the railway trucks packed close with imported merchandise of all kinds: cotton from America and the East; grain from the ends of the earth; beef, bacon, cheese, butter, flour, and fruit from the New World; wool and tallow from Australia and Argentina. Waggons

FIG. 5. THE LIVERPOOL OVERHEAD ELECTRIC RAILWAY

By permission of the Liverpool Overhead Electric Railway Co.

and carts filled with Manchester goods, hardware, machinery, chemicals, and every imaginable kind of manufactured goods are alongside the big liners that come into port, discharge their cargoes, load up, and are out in the Mersey and off to sea again in a few days. Truly Liverpool is a wonderful place, and although her greatness as a seaport has been threatened by the opening of the Ship Canal to Manchester, it will be a long day before she surrenders her claim to be the chief marine approach to Great Britain.

CHAPTER IV
REMARKABLE ELECTRIC RAILWAYS

“Behold they shall come with speed swiftly.”—Isaiah v. 26.

MONO-RAILWAYS

A ONE-RAIL railway! What kind of novelty can that be, emanating no doubt from the prolific brain of some enthusiastic engineer possessed with an idea, a fad, a craze—call it what you will! We are accustomed to highly respectable trains running in an orthodox manner on double rails. A projected, many-railed track we have also heard of to carry ships bodily across the Isthmus of Panama. But the idea of a single-rail “Flying Dutchman” or “Wild Irishman” seems chimerical.

It is not so, however, and the system has been solemnly and deliberately sanctioned by Act of Parliament.

Nowadays one need not be astonished at anything. Take cycling, for instance. Long ago, when velocipedes—three or four-wheeled, uncanny machines—were mere toys wherewith youths loved to dislocate their joints on the lower terraces of the Crystal Palace, no one dreamt that bicycles, outraging all the laws of gravitation and practically mono-wheeled, would ere long be used on road and field and moor, on mountain-side, on steppe and desert, over barren Asiatic tundras and snow-clad Yukon plains—in short, wherever adventurous mankind has penetrated.

The mono-rail train, like a bicycle, runs on one linear track, but, unlike that hopelessly collapsible machine, requires no balancing, and cannot capsize, and under proper conditions is the safest known method of travelling at very great speed.

“Faire prose sans le savoir” is a familiar aphorism of Molière, but perhaps it would astonish most of us to be calmly told by modern engineers that all our lives we have, without knowing it, been travelling on mono-railways! They assert that although it is true that the ordinary engine with its coaches rests on a pair of rails, the fact that the space between the rails is cut away is immaterial, as it is rendered a single track by the rigidity of the carriage axles, and if these were loose, of course the train would overturn.

Nature has no example of mono-railwayism (to coin an expression), unless it be the gossamer or shooting spider, that upon a single invisible thread spun from its body ascends to aerial heights on a kind of self-manufactured mono-rail, Dame Nature being too lavish and too wise, in the perfect freedom she accords to birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, to restrict their movements to one undeviating path.

In the moral world there have always been mono-railists, men of one fixed idea, from which they could not, or would not, budge—apostles of an ambition, a creed, a theory, a political conviction. The world has had its Alexander the Great, its Napoleon, Buddha, St. Paul, Mahomet, Martin Luther, Ignatius Loyola, Wycliffe, its Palissy, George Stephenson, Mungo Park, John Bright, and Cobden.

It has been left to the inventive mechanical genius of the nineteenth century to develop the mono-rail system. Doubtless those inscrutable people, the Chinese, knew of it, and applied it in some way long ago; and perhaps the yet more mysterious dwellers in ancient Egypt—whence all wisdom seems to have descended—utilised it after some unknown fashion.

Blondin, in his marvellous feat of trundling a wheel-barrow containing a man along the high-level rope, used a hempen mono-rail; and the wire cables stretching across the Thames at the reconstructed bridges at Kew and Vauxhall, acting as travelling ways to convey the excavated soil from the coffer-dams in large iron “skips” or buckets, were another species of mono-rail; while at home in brickfields, and in mines, and on plantations in distant lands, miniature railways have been used for years to carry clay, ore, and produce, over plain and hill and dale.

In India a peculiar kind of tramway truck has been in use for some time, with two or three flanged wheels which run on a single rail, and a large balance-wheel on one side of the truck to prevent it toppling over. Produce of all kinds can easily be drawn upon it by a couple of coolies, and its efficiency on country roads has been highly spoken of.

Germany presents us with a recent and curious example of the application of the principle to locomotion. In the Wupper Valley near Dusseldorf and Cologne there are two towns, Barmen and Elberfeld, about eight miles apart, mutually engaged in chemical and textile industries, and this separation of the sister-towns was an obvious disadvantage to both. But now they are joined by a wonderful railway, constructed on an elevated line running six miles of its course above the River Wupper, a tributary of the Rhine, some sixty to a hundred feet wide. The carriages are suspended, and work upon a single rail, a development of the travelling cable-way system. This rail is rigidly fastened to an iron framework of girders, and supports the cars hanging therefrom by means of two steel “bogies” with two wheels. Thus they can pass round sharp curves without slackening speed and with the greatest safety, its motive power, electricity, being applied by two motors on each carriage which drive both wheels with equal force at a speed fixed at thirty-one miles an hour, and attainable fifteen seconds after starting.

As elevated railways of this type are somewhat costly, and a simpler and cheaper form would be a desideratum, a short line across country was built as an experiment at Cologne-Deutz. The stays, measuring from 9·6 feet to 28·5 feet, were made either of wood, or of iron tubes, and met at the top in a cap, from which was jointed the sheet-iron supports that carried the mono-rail. By means of this jointed connection, the strain was always of a central character, and, therefore, more easily borne. At intervals of about 660 feet a couple of stays were firmly braced together, in order to give stability to the overhead structure and to take up the longitudinal thrust. In consequence, even with light locomotives, the traction power was very high, and on the line at Deutz it was found that a locomotive drawing two carriages full of passengers could ascend a gradient of 1 in 6 with perfect safety.

But a means of adapting a mono-rail to every condition had some time before been thought out. In 1883-4 Charles Lartigue, the eminent French engineer, developing the principle conceived by the great Telford, constructed some small lines in Tunis and Algeria for carrying esparto grass. The cars were drawn by animals in a special form of mono-rail, the model upon which Mr. F. B. Behr, ASS. INST. C.E.—who modestly disclaims all originality in the matter—has worked for years, greatly improving in practical details the original design, and constructing for the first time mono-rail trains that have been successful in the carriage of both goods and passengers by steam and electricity.

FIG. 6. PLAN OF A BEHR MONO-RAILWAY CAR

By permission of Mr. F. B. Behr, Ass. Inst. C.E.

The Lartigue single-rail system, as perfected by Mr. Behr, is as follows, but of necessity my description is a mere outline.

Dismissing all preconceived ideas of rails laid down upon the ground, we must imagine a heavy double-headed steel rail firmly bolted on to the summit of a girder supported by trestles, the whole rigidly framed upon massive sleepers. We thus have a permanent way somewhat resembling a continuous A-shaped metal viaduct, raised about five feet from the surface, or a succession of iron barriers—such as road-menders make use of to divert the traffic—set ends on, secured to each other and to the ground. Now take an ordinary railway car with seats arranged as in an omnibus, but with two additional rows back to back in the centre. Remove the axles and wheels, extending the sides and ends of the car almost down to the ground level, thus providing beneath the flooring an enclosure with ample room for the locomotive machinery. All along the bottom of this enclosure is an opening or space, about five feet high—extending between the middle rows of seats—that fits the A-shaped viaduct, so that the car is suspended, or, as it were, sits upon the mono-rail, whereon roll six vertical grooved wheels that, when set in motion by the electric current, propel the cars. Thus we have a train apparently without wheels, these together with the apparatus being completely hidden away between and beneath the passengers’ seats. On each side of the A-shaped trestle are fixed two guide-rails fitting close into horizontal grooved wheels effectually checking all oscillation. In front is the bogie locomotive motor with a pointed bow, the stern of the car also being pointed, so that the entire arrangement resembles when seen from above a great stickless rocket with a sharp and flexible snout.

As the sister isle was the first to adopt electricity to a railway (vide Chapter II.), so was she the pioneer of mono-railism. In County Kerry, Munster, near the Shannon’s mouth, stands the little town of Listowel, and 9½ miles distant is Ballybunion. To connect these a mono-railway for passenger and goods traffic was opened on March 1st, 1888, and has worked ever since without any difficulty. The trains are drawn by a steam locomotive divided in two, one on each side of the mono-rail—a kind of twin-screw arrangement—and with their smoke-stacks and giant lantern between them, present a strange and rather comical appearance, while the track meandering at its own sweet will across country without fencing of any kind, adds to the novelty of the little line.

Its great safety has been amply demonstrated by the only mishap that has occurred to it. Some miscreant had deliberately removed the fastenings from over thirty yards of the line at a critical point where a reverse curve began, and close to a bridge. At full speed, a train carrying 200 passengers came up to the loosened rail, which gave way, breaking the coupling chains and, luckily, bringing into action the automatic Westinghouse brake. The permanent way was ruined by the shock, but the fall absorbed the force of the reaction, and deposited the carriages quietly on the ground without injury to anyone, and without even breaking a window. On an ordinary line the train would have been thrown off the metals into the river with terrible consequences. Shortly after the line was opened, the Lartigue system was adopted in France, from Tours to Pannissieres in the Loire Department.

The Ballybunion and Listowel Railway is the indirect father of a modified form of mono-rail which is expected to appear this year at the Crystal Palace. It is called the Electric Mid-Railway, the invention of Mr. W. R. Smith, and as the line is to connect the existing railway station with various points in the grounds, it should be well patronised at the modest penny fare which is to be charged. Being an entire novelty, it has a specially good chance of success in this particular situation. The single rail is placed below the carriage, the weight of which is balanced upon it after the fashion of a bicycle. On each side of this single track runs a trestle carrying a rail on a level with the centre of gravity of each carriage. This rail serves the necessary purpose of supporting the carriage and of also preventing derailing.

A similar device had been suggested—and possibly has been carried into effect on the New York and Washington D. C. Line—when it was proposed to elevate a track above the earth on a single line of upright beams, the trains to be kept steady by an auxiliary rail on either side, but which would only come into play on rounding curves.

HIGH-SPEED ELECTRIC RAILWAYS

In Belgium, Mr. Behr, who throughout his labours there received the personal encouragement and patronage of King Leopold II., successfully built an experimental high-speed mono-rail line at Tervueren in the neighbourhood of Brussels, as an annexe to the Exhibition of 1897. To find suitable ground was the great difficulty. The line had to cross ten public roads, and in the absence of compulsory powers, leases for the land had to be arranged with grasping occupiers and owners. The soil was bad, big cuttings and embankment were unavoidable, and finally the line consisted of nothing but steep, up-and-down gradients. In fact, all the conditions were most unfavourable, notwithstanding which, the result of the experiment was conclusive in showing that with the mono-rail and perfected electrical traction, very high speed, double that of existing passenger express trains, could be attained with absolute safety, a principle which Mr. Behr had for a long time past been particularly impressed with, but which he maintains is not possible on the ordinary two-rail track, even with electricity as a motive power.

In November, 1901, Mr. Behr went to Berlin, and investigated the experiments carried out during forty days by a number of engineering experts on a military track laid down between the German capital and Zossen. It was hoped that a speed of 160 miles an hour would be attained and maintained, and, as a matter of fact, starting from a low speed, the train gradually reached that of 87 miles; then, for a moment only, 95 miles; and for an instant of time, 100 miles per hour; but it was at once discernible that the ordinary two-rail permanent way, though straight, could not bear the terrific strain imposed upon it; the rails bent at many places, while the hundred-miles-an-hour rate had so destructive an effect as to render impracticable any attempt to create a higher record. The air resistance was found to be considerable. With a square-fronted instead of a pointed coach, it was appreciable, and the suction behind the train resembled the pressure of the water at the stern of a mail steamer, and was calculated to equal two-thirds of the “bow” resistance. These experiments went to prove that for excessive velocity an ordinary railway was absolutely unsafe.

A year before this, a steam locomotive train had been tried in America by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Company, on the Adams principle of reducing the atmospheric resistance to a minimum. It consisted of six cars, a tender, and an engine of fifty-seven tons. The entire train was sheathed down to within eight inches of the track. There were no projections, and all the windows were flush; the cars were coupled close together, and the rear one was run off to a point, the train resembling one long sinuous and flexible carriage.

With this comparatively light engine it is said that the forty miles between Baltimore and Washington were covered in thirty-seven and a half minutes. But it was claimed that with a more powerful locomotive the train could have been easily run at the rate of one mile in thirty-five seconds, or nearly two miles a minute.

These speeds appear tremendous, but custom would soon reconcile us to them. Our forefathers thought fifteen miles an hour terrific; and one of the objections to Stephenson’s ideas was, that at such a speed, not to mention a twenty-or twenty-five-mile rate, no human being could draw breath.

Since then we have quietly acquiesced in and equally welcomed a style of travelling varying from 35 to an average of 58 miles an hour, and even consider it no great feat to run a special viceregal train from Euston to Holyhead—263½ miles—in five hours without stopping, and are not astonished to read of last year’s record run of the mail express from Boulogne to Paris—168 miles—at an average speed of 68 miles an hour!

Still, 120 miles every sixty minutes without stopping is a large order, and in practice would give some remarkable results. For instance, a resident at Putney could be whisked from the station nearest to him, and thence to a point adjoining his office—say in Seething Lane, some seven miles off—in less than five minutes. Brighton could be reached from town in twenty-five minutes; Dover, in forty; Edinburgh, in three hours twenty minutes. Inverness—663 miles away—could be arrived at from Euston in six hours twenty minutes, instead of the fifteen hours thirty-five minutes of the ordinary express; and Paris—allowing one hour thirty minutes for the Channel passage—in three hours forty-two minutes.

THE MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL ELECTRIC EXPRESS RAILWAY

Now, the contention of the advocates of the monorail principle is, that only by that system can very high speed be safely attained; and when one comes to closely examine the cars in which this hundred-and-ten-miles-per-hour travelling is achieved, confidence is at once inspired, because of their low centre of gravity and consequent unlikeliness of derailment.

There remains only one question—Cui bono? What useful purpose can be served by being able to get from Liverpool to Manchester in twenty minutes instead of over an hour? On an emergency, such as a sudden necessity for the services of a medical specialist, a matter of life or death perhaps, or on the occasion of any crisis in domestic or mercantile life when the instant presence of some one distant individual is imperative, it might be of immense service. But in the usual course of business, do not existing railways bring merchant and broker, importer and manufacturer, face to face quickly enough, and are not telephones and telegraphs and the post sufficient to carry through big transactions between the centre of the cotton trade and the great city on the banks of the Mersey? Public opinion, which demands increasing speed in every phase of life, especially in travelling, declares they are not sufficient; for we live in an impatient age when every hour of detention on a transatlantic passage is begrudged.

Therefore it is not to be wondered at that in 1900-1, after the most exhaustive inquiries and criticisms, the royal assent was given August 17th, 1901, to the Manchester and Liverpool Electric Express Railway, which was duly authorised by Act of Parliament. It must be premised that the line, like our London Tube, does not provide for goods traffic; that the time occupied by the journey being so short, neither luggage-van, lavatory, or refreshment buffet is required, and that all trains consist of a single car, couplings being a source of danger at so great a rate of speed. But as the trains run every ten minutes, and carry about forty persons each time, a large passenger traffic is provided for.

Well—a broker has been telephoned for by his client, a wealthy cotton-spinner in Manchester, anxious to consult with him personally; so he at once leaves the flags of the Exchange, and after an eight minutes’ walk arrives at the Express Railway Station, near the entrance gate of the Blue Coat Hospital in School Lane. He considers that in getting into and out of the lift he has lost two minutes, but he just catches his car and starts for a run of 34½ miles to Manchester, and since it is his first experience of lightning travelling, he notices everything connected with the new line. There are many curves, he finds, all necessary in order to avoid conflict with the vested interests of other railway companies; the gradients, he observes, at points about three-quarters of a mile from the Liverpool and Manchester stations, are steep—1 in 25, and 1 in 30—but of service in accelerating and breaking the trains.

Unlike the Listowel mono-rail line, the Manchester and Liverpool express is fenced from end to end with an unclimbable barrier, and as there are no level-crossings and no means of access, there is no possibility of trespassing. 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. Collisions, our broker quickly perceives, are impossible, there being no switches, and notwithstanding the multitude of passengers (some twenty thousand per day) there are never more than two cars on the line at a time, and there are no stoppages between the two termini.

For signalling purposes, the line is divided into four sections of about five miles each, and as the train passes by, its electric motor automatically operates the signal and immediately “blocks” the section behind it, so that the train following cannot advance until its leader has cleared the five-mile division.

The driver and conductor are both together in the front part of the train, so that the conductor has ample time to look out for the signals, to apply the brakes, and assist his mate. The brakes are of the Westinghouse pattern, and the two combined can stop the cars in about 800 yards, even at the speed of 110 miles an hour. These can be aided by Mr. Behr’s ingenious device, which Sir William H. Preece considers quite practicable, viz. louvres or shutters, which, when opened, materially increase the air resistance.

Past Toxteth Park, Garston, Halewood, Widnes (whose only rival in sheer ugliness is perhaps London’s Stratford-by-Bow), and exactly half-way, Warrington, conspicuous for the inkiness of its river Mersey, and noted for its glass, wire, and chemical industries; famed for its network of waterways, especially for the great but evil-smelling ship-canal; noted in history—when but a hamlet, with a clear trout-yielding stream—as the camping-ground of the young Pretender when on his march to Derby in 1745; and associated with Mrs. Gaskell (whose “Cranford” is identified with Knutsford, a neighbouring village), the two Bishops Claughton, Viscount Cross, Luke Fildes, R.A., and “Warrington” Wood, the sculptor.

Close by, in the parish of Great Sankey, is the power-generating station of the railway, the current obtained being 15,000 volts on the triphase alternating system, converted in five sub-stations placed along the line, into a continuous 650 volt current. Every car has four traction motors arranged in pairs, each with a full-speed capacity of 160 h.p., equal to 110 miles an hour. The cars are comfortably upholstered; the seats are separated and placed back to back in the middle, those along the sides facing inwards, as in the Twopenny Tube. The lighting is, of course, excellent, and the ventilation perfect, though to prevent accident the windows are fixed, and the doors, while the train is in motion, are automatically locked.

FIG. 7. INTERIOR OF A BEHR MONO-RAILWAY CAR

By permission of Mr. F. B. Behr, Ass. Inst. C. E.

As regards the cost of this novel undertaking, our Liverpool friend had beforehand ascertained that the capital had been fixed at £2,800,000, and that an average of eight persons per train would more than cover the expense of the enterprise.

Swiftly leaving Warrington in the distance, the express shoots onwards—past Eccles, Pendleton, and Salford—and reaches the terminus at the west side of Deansgate, in the busiest part of Cottonopolis, where, again using the lift, our honest broker speeds to the Exchange in another eight minutes, and in forty-five minutes after leaving Liverpool is in deep business conference with his principal at Manchester.

Contrast this with the existing facilities of the old system for rapid transit between the two places; and those who know their Manchester and Liverpool well, will at once be able to decide whether or not the electric express better meets the requirements of those to whom every minute is of consequence.

The London and North Western Railway (which has a perfectly straight bit of track to Manchester, unequalled, except on the Great Eastern between Littleford and Lynn—21 miles—and on the South Eastern between Nutfield and Ashford—32 miles) runs expresses without stopping from Lime Street and Edge Hill to the Exchange Station, Manchester, doing the journey in forty minutes.

The Great Central Railway, by an indirect route, viâ Garston and Widnes, runs expresses from their Liverpool station (St. James’s) direct to the Manchester Central, in from forty to forty-five minutes; but on neither line is there such a thing as a ten minutes’ service, the intervals between the direct expresses ranging from forty-five minutes to so much as four hours.

Plans, it is said, have been submitted to the Board of Trade for a mono-railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The proposed construction is similar to that of the Behr mono-railway between Liverpool and Manchester. It is quite unlike the canny Scot to rush into sensational experiments for a speed of 117 miles per hour, especially as a few years’ waiting for the completion of the Liverpool line would prove or disprove the possibility of the scheme.

CHAPTER V
REJUVENATING THE METROPOLITAN INNER CIRCLE

“So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”—Ps. ciii. 5.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE METROPOLITAN AND METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAILWAYS

CAN anything be satisfactorily rejuvenated? Is there any truth in the Medean story that old age can revert to the vigour of young manhood?

In 1903 the usual reply is “No.” If a theatre becomes dilapidated, it is pulled down. If a railway-station gets much out of repair, the company proceeds to reconstruct, and not to patch up. If a macadamised thoroughfare gives signs of too much wear and tear, it is broken up and relaid with wood blocks.

In fact, rejuvenation on a large scale is so seldom attempted that the scheme for renovating and electrifying the Inner Circle Railway may be regarded as something remarkable.

For convenience we will call it the Inner Circle, but, as we all know, it is a dual concern controlled by the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District, both of them old enough to have a respectable history.

Fifty years ago railways within the boundaries of Inner London were non-existent, the nearest points approached by the country lines being at Battersea, Euston, St. Pancras, Shoreditch, Paddington, London Bridge, and Waterloo—miles away from the central districts.

It was an ideal time for omnibus companies, who charged pretty well what they liked: and for cabmen, whose fare was nominally restricted to eightpence a mile, but who were masters of the situation when passengers with luggage had to be conveyed from the termini. Yet, although many suggestions were made, including that of a great central station where all the lines might converge, the travelling world was considerably startled in 1854 by a proposition laid before Parliament to construct an underground line from Farringdon Street to Bishop’s Road, Paddington; and so astonished were capitalists that although the bill passed, the money was so slow in coming in that work could not be begun until six years later!

In planning the route a golden opportunity was lost of anticipating the Twopenny Tube; but the opposition of Oxford Street was so fierce that the line had to be poked away beneath the Marylebone Road in the north-west of London, convenient for residents in Paddington and Bayswater, but useless to other districts, and, what was more important, it did not go to the Bank, the centre of the business world.

However, we, then as now, were but a slow people, therefore really comprehensive schemes found little favour in the “fifties” and “sixties.” For three years the Marylebone and Euston roads were closed to traffic, and presented the appearance of a besieged city’s outskirts where deep trenches and fortifications were being made. The roadway was removed to a great depth; pipes and sewers were taken away and replaced; foundations were underpinned, and a series of solid brick tunnels were slowly and laboriously constructed and covered up. The plank pathways, the noise, and the smells, drove householders along the route to desperation; and, on nearing the City, the problem of dealing with the old Fleet Ditch was at one period thought insoluble. No wonder that, what with compensation to owners of damaged property, the acquisition of necessary land, and engineering difficulties, the cost of the line at some points mounted up to a million sterling per mile!

At last the first section was completed; and in September, 1862, a trial trip was made. A contemporary picture represents the train passing Portland Road Station, its open trucks in the rear full of enthusiastic guests waving flags and tall hats—after luncheon probably—evidently delighted with the success of the undertaking. But at the formal opening, January 9th, 1863, a grand banquet was given in the Farringdon Street Station, three long tables occupying the rail and platform space, with a [ shaped table on a daïs for the principal guests.

The following day thirty thousand passengers journeyed over the line, and everybody in London talked about the Underground as somewhat of a marvel. But people exhibited strange ignorance on the subject, nervous people preparing for wonderful possibilities, imagining that the cellars would collapse as the trains thundered by, or that the houses would tumble through on to the line, flinging their occupants before some passing engine!

Yet, after all, the Underground was only an ordinary tunnel (such as pierce a score of hills), placed in an exceptional position in the midst of London.

Bit by bit, as years went by, the Metropolitan Railway extended itself eastward and westward to High Street, Kensington, whence the District Railway that had sprung into existence went ahead and got as far as Westminster, its line being partly open and partly tunnelled. There the District stuck for three years, and then found its way into the City (a great boon as an alternative route). At the Mansion House Station it seemed determined to rest for a long period; the Metropolitan showing the same propensity at the Moorgate Street sheds, until City men began to give up all hope of the two ends ever meeting.

It came about at last, however, and the year 1884 witnessed the completion of the irregular Inner Circle—a total length of about 12½ miles—by way of Bishopsgate, Aldgate, Mark Lane, the Monument, and Cannon Street, without any serious disturbance of the traffic, but with much wonderful underpinning of warehouses and offices (a notable instance of this operation being beneath King William the Fourth’s statue, which weighs over 250 tons!).

At first there were no smoking-carriages, but the numerous complaints on the subject induced the directors to alter their rules, and they went to the other extreme, so that now non-smokers think there seem to be more smoking-carriages than any others.

In its young days the Metropolitan was clean and its atmosphere tolerable. In fact, it had been proposed to use smokeless engines, but for some reason the idea was abandoned, and, as the main railway lines began to send out feelers towards the inner districts of London, they sought for, and obtained, running powers over the Underground, junctions being made with the Great Northern Railway and Great Western, the London and North Western, and the Midland. Consequently, the number of trains immensely increased, and the smoke nuisance was intensified. Ventilating shafts were adopted, and afforded some relief, but the imprisoned fog of winter precipitated the “blacks,” and summer weather only made the atmosphere still more stifling; while Baker Street, Gower Street, and King’s Cross stations and tunnels were positive infernos, and for how many deaths from asthma and bronchitis they were responsible no one knows!

The rolling-stock of the Metropolitan became dirtier and dirtier, grime and disfigurement settled down upon it, and everybody’s experience of it resembled that of Mrs. Lilian Rosamond, described in Chapter VIII.

THE NEW DISTRICT RAILWAY

Just opposite St. Mark’s College, Chelsea, is a narrow thoroughfare called Lot’s Road, leading to a creek that separates the Borough from Fulham. Tradition says that the locality was formerly known as “The Lots” (about four acres in extent), and was granted to a Sir Arthur Gorges by the lord of the manor, in lieu of certain rights over land which he gave up for the formation of the Kensington Canal; but incredulous old folk dismissed this tradition with contempt, and maintained that there was a Chelsea personage named Lot, very distantly related to the patriarch’s nephew, who pitched his tent in the fertile Jordan Valley, and that the dismal Chelsea wastes so much resembled the desolateness of the fatal plains, that diligent search therein might even result in the discovery of the Pillar of Salt, brought over to this country at some remote period by a pious descendant! But whoever, or whatever, the name Lot may represent, it is now associated with one of the greatest electrical undertakings of the age—the huge generating station of the Underground Electric Railway Company of London, Limited, who, as at present arranged, will supply the District and other railways with power.

At the bottom of Lot’s Road, and at a point on the Middlesex bank of Battersea Reach, facing the ugly parish church of St. Mary, is the mouth of Chelsea Creek, filled twice a day by the muddy waters of the Thames, and here the Electrical Works are being erected. They are in sight of an obscure cottage in Cheyne Walk where the painter Turner lived in concealment, and where he died. The building, with its four great chimney-shafts, is unæsthetic to a degree, and Turner would probably have thought it ruined his favourite landscape. But it represents something more valuable than æsthetic effect.

When Matthew Doulton, in the infancy of steam, took the Russian Prince Potemkin round the works at Soho, Manchester, the distinguished visitor inquired, “What do you sell here?” “We make and sell here,” replied James Watts’ partner, “that which all the world wants—Power.” And this, on a scale undreamt of by the famous engineer, is what the Underground Electric Railway Company of London will produce, in view of the river scenery so much admired by the chief of impressionists, and which he never wearied of depicting.

This temple of electric force will be the largest in the Old World. In New York, the Manhattan and the Metropolitan companies both have power stations slightly smaller. The Rapid Transit Commission have projected one that will be bigger, while the Waterside station of the Edison Illuminating Company (partially completed) is on a still larger scale. It has, however, been stated that the biggest power scheme on earth will be at Massena, on the St. Lawrence River, Canada, where there will be fifteen Westinghouse machines, equal to a total of 75,000 kilowatts.

Within the temple there will be turbo-generators fifty feet in length and ten feet high, constructed by the British Westinghouse Company at their Trafford Park

FIG. 8. ELECTRICAL POWER HOUSE (THE LARGEST IN THE OLD WORLD) LOT’S ROAD, CHELSEA, TO SUPPLY THE METROPOLITAN DISTRICT AND OTHER RAILWAYS WITH CURRENT

By permission of the Underground Electric Railways Co. of London, Ltd.

Works, Manchester, capable of producing the prodigious quantity of 60,000 electrical kilowatts, at a pressure, or force, technically speaking, of 11,000 volts. In other words, about 100,000 horse-power could be sent out, theoretically equal to the lifting of over 1,000,000 tons a foot high every minute.[3] Six such power stations could, therefore, move the great pyramid of Cheops (over 6,000,000 tons weight), and carry it bodily off on colossal rails, and dump it down anywhere to order.

For condensing purposes, an enormous quantity of water will be required, and every twenty-four hours 19,000,000 gallons of water (at times mounting up to 40,000,000 gallons) will be drawn from the creek for use in the power house.

The force of 11,000 volts will be much too powerful for direct application to the purposes of locomotion. It requires reducing by transformers and rotary converters into the safe and ordinary current of about 550 volts, which will be effected at sub-stations—Earl’s Court, South Kensington, Victoria, Charing Cross, Mansion House, and other places along the line. To these the current will be sent from the power house, and reduced by the transformers into ordinary low-pressure voltage, and the fiery O.P. spirit tamed to a pleasant and portable “under-proof” standard! The current will then be distributed to two conductor-rails, one located between the present running rails, and the other outside them. The motors on the trains will receive the current from one rail by means of a sliding contact-shoe, and return it to the other rail in the same manner. In passing through the motor the electricity causes the armature to revolve, which motion, by means of gearing, is communicated to the carriage axle.

So much for the driving-power of the trains. But what kind of trains do the public expect?

FIG. 9. A 2,000 H.P. WESTINGHOUSE STEAM TURBINE, RESEMBLING THE TURBO-GENERATORS (EACH OF 7,500 H.P.) IN THE CHELSEA POWER HOUSE.

By permission of the Westinghouse Companies, Ltd., London

Surely not the old carriages cleaned up and re-upholstered—made “to last a little longer,” until broken up for firewood and old iron. The public will not be disappointed in the new cars, nothing as yet having been seen in London to equal them.

The trains will be run on the principle of the multiple unit. That is, each will be made up of seven coaches—three long motor-cars and four trail-cars—with a motor-man’s cab at each end, and one in the centre. These eight-wheeled coaches will be rectangular at the sides—not sloping like those of the Waterloo Tube Company—and very roomy, 52 feet long and about 8 feet 2 inches wide inside, and about 8 feet 7 inches from the floor to the middle of the roof.

FIG. 10. A NEW METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAILWAY CAR

By permission of the Underground Electric Railways Co. of London, Ltd.

The arrangement of the seats will be somewhat different from that of the Tube. There will, of course, be corridor cars, which will be entered from the platforms, through telescopic doors; there will be also sliding doors. The gain in leg-space will be great, the centre gangway giving a clear 4 feet, and there will be fewer cross seats. Each train will hold about 338 passengers; the ventilation of the cars will be perfect; and the height sufficient for a giant. As the District tunnels are 25 feet in diameter, and 15 feet 9 inches from the rail level to the crown of the arch, there will be about 2 feet of head-room, about 2 feet 6 inches between each train, and the same between the trains and the sides of the tunnels.

Compare this with the present Inner Circle trains that carry about three hundred passengers, with gangways that, even in the first-class compartments, leave no room for incomers to avoid a leg entanglement, and whose height will hardly admit a tall man in a tall hat to stand upright. Also compare it with the dimensions of the Central’s cars, which are 39 feet long, 8 feet wide, and whose height to the middle of roof is only 7 feet 5 inches, the gangway narrow, with seats in each car for forty-eight people. The space in the cars of the City and South London, and the Waterloo and City, is still more exiguous.

It is proposed to run about twice as many trains as at present, each journey to be made in about two-thirds of the time now required; that is to say, the trains that now run about ten miles an hour will, it is anticipated, work up to at least fifteen miles; the total carrying capacity being estimated at 70,000,000 per annum, increasable, if necessary, to 100,000,000. There may be an all-night service, for the convenience of people engaged at Covent Garden market, and for journalists and others whose work lies in the vicinity of Fleet Street. A somewhat novel and economical feature will be that the trains, during the stock hours of the day, can be run in short lengths, as in the City and Waterloo Railway, and, with their triple motors divided, will resemble those strange Naidæ worms of the Annelida class that possess the power of increasing by mechanical division. They will also be able to go forward and backward without reversing the motor engines.

Brilliant will be the lighting of the cars and stations; the tunnels, too, are to be illuminated. Fresh air will be obtained by the frequent movements of the trains through the tunnels, while smoke and smuts will, of course, become things of the past. The stations, with their wide and roomy platforms, will in some cases be lengthened by fifty feet to accommodate the three-hundred-and-fifty-feet-long trains, and be thoroughly cleansed and repainted, and the tunnels may possibly be whitened by means of “spraying”—the principle adopted at the Chicago Exhibition for the finials of the pavilions.

The question of classes, fares, and tickets has not yet been settled, but we may assume that the system adopted will be somewhat like that of the Tube. The entire project closely resembles the Metropolitan Underground Railway of Paris, and the Boston Subway. Lifts are not at present contemplated, and probably their absence will be no great loss to active travellers, nor even to the “old, subdued, and slow,” for trains will so quickly succeed one another that the missing of one will involve no serious delay. Possibly, however, as time goes on, some new and convenient form of sloping footway may be adopted.

But alas! for the lovers of the beautiful, the directors, we are told, “have not decided that they will be warranted in sacrificing, on æsthetic grounds, the revenue derived from advertisements.”

Then, again, as there will be little or no waiting, even the most impatient of voyageurs will hardly need the diversion obtained by a trial of the omnipresent penny-in-the-slot machines, or the contemplation of the numerous works of art displayed on the station walls. They will not even need the bookstalls, much less to gape at the contents-bills of the daily paper.

And, provided the glass roofs be kept clean, and the atmosphere innocent of smoke and gas, might not the stations—sheltered as they are from the vagaries of weather, and brilliantly lighted—be transformed into modified winter gardens, with sturdy flowers and shrubs filling up nooks and corners, and bold paintings (frequently renewed) of distant lands, seascapes, and historical subjects, in the recesses now covered by “Reckitt’s Blue,” etc.? The frequent stopping of trains would be actually welcomed, and people would travel by the “Circle” for the sake of seeing the novelties! In fact, every station might be converted into a thing of beauty.

One other suggestion for the directors of the new Inner Circle. Cannot something be contrived in the new cars to effectually deaden the sound of the closing and opening of doors, so irritating to modern nerves, and unpleasantly associated with the “banging” in the old carriages, and the “clashing” of the telescopics in the Tubes.

THE NEW METROPOLITAN RAILWAY

The Metropolitan Railway will be electrified in a very similar manner to the District Railway, the system being the same, i.e. alternating three-phase, converted at sub-stations into continuous current. Access to the platforms will be by short staircases, and not by lifts. It is said that when steam is abolished the appearance of the stations may possibly be improved, but the advertisements are too important a source of revenue to be removed, and, as the Company says, “they act as a relief to the bare walls, and their withdrawal would answer no good”! An effort will be made to cleanse the tunnels, but it has not yet been decided what method will be adopted.

There exist an abundance of open spaces, ventilating-shafts, and holes, and the frequent passing of trains in contrary directions will necessarily keep the air in motion, and thus, as in the District, the problem of ventilation will solve itself.

The cars will be of the corridor type, seven to a full train, each end car and the middle one having a motor, and if the contingencies of the traffic do not require a large train, it will thus be possible to divide it and run it in two parts. The seating will be both transverse and longitudinal, and considerably over four hundred passengers it is said can be accommodated in each full train. As to day and night services, their frequency, the fares, and the distinction of classes, nothing has yet been decided.

About a mile from Wembly, where “Watkins’ Folly,” as it is locally called—at one time aspiring, like Babel’s, to “reach unto heaven”—shows gauntly against the skyline its first stage of only 150 feet, is Neasden, where, on land belonging to the Metropolitan Railway, is being erected its power house (the most extensive in the kingdom owned by a single railway company), capable of producing some 14,000 kilowatts. Water in abundance will be obtained by means of artesian wells now being bored in the chalk; and coal can be readily supplied. The current will be applied to cars, as on the District, by a conductor-rail placed in the near side of the permanent way, with a return fixed in the centre of the running track. By the end of 1903 it is hoped that the work will be sufficiently advanced for some trains to be run by electricity. Finally, as the Metropolitan’s engineer-in-chief remarks, there will be no marked novelties, but “the very conversion from steam to electric traction will prove a great novelty and an attraction. New cars of the latest type will be introduced, the stations will be bright and cheerful, the atmosphere pure; travel will be undertaken with a greater degree of comfort, and freedom from disagreeable odours. In short, nothing that can reasonably be expected to be performed in the interests of the public will be left undone.”

AMERICAN CAPITAL

A good deal has been said in reference to the source whence the necessary capital has been obtained for rejuvenating the Inner Circle, patriotic people objecting to the so-called Americanising of this great undertaking, though it is hardly a logical objection.

If British capitalists are lacking in enterprise, there is no reason why London should wait until they evince it. The world will not go to sleep while Lombard Street hesitates. As Mr. Perks, M.P., Chairman of the District Company has said, out of the five millions sterling invested in the new Underground Electric Railway Companies of London, Limited, less than two millions were held in America, and three millions on this side the Atlantic. “I do not care,” he said, “where the money comes from, so long as it is good money”—a wise remark, like the non olet of Suetonius. What matters it whence the materials of a sovereign have come? They cannot be ear-marked, and whether its gold is Brazilian, Australian, South African, or American, is of no consequence. It is a legal tender, and worth twenty silver shillings.

Another matter that has engaged public attention is the apparent difference of opinion between the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District Companies, as to the control of the Inner Circle. Nature has designed them to be one, and but for vested and promoters’ interests, they probably would have been one from the first. They are not merely brother and sister, but are united by a closer tie, therefore their motto surely ought to be Quis separabit!

Let us hope that long before the scheme is completed there will be a reconciliation, and a satisfactory working arrangement made “out of court” between these two parties to an unnecessary divorce suit.

The two lines have carried their millions of passengers, and the rejuvenated Inner Circle during its new and beneficent career is destined to carry very many millions more, and prove a great boon to the metropolis.

CHAPTER VI
THE CENTRAL LONDON ELECTRIC RAILWAY

“Tell by what paths, what subterranean ways.”—Blackmore.

HISTORY OF THE RAILWAY AND ITS CITY SUBWAYS

WHEN those electric traction pioneers, the City and South London, and the Waterloo and City Railways, were opened respectively in 1890 and 1898, they were regarded by the public with a certain amount of apathy. But when, in July, 1900, the Central London Railway, inaugurated by the Prince of Wales, was opened for traffic, and it was realised that the line was laid literally in the centre of London, beneath one of the greatest street routes in existence, viz. Cheapside, Newgate Street, Holborn, Oxford Street, Bayswater and Uxbridge roads, and was capable of dealing with a gigantic stream of passengers at a uniform fare for any distance, it arrested universal attention, and for a time nothing was talked about but the deep-level system for metropolitan railways; and by general approbation the Central was forthwith dubbed “The Twopenny Tube,” a name it will always retain.

Like most great enterprises, the Tube Railway had to contend against considerable opposition before legislative sanction could be obtained for its construction. It was incorporated on August 5th, 1891, after a great battle with Parliament and local authorities, in which affray the late Mr. J. H. Greathead, M. INST. C. E. (deviser of one of the methods of shield-excavating for driving tunnels), took a conspicuous part, and the principle of a “free-way-leave” beneath the streets was successfully confirmed.

The original directors were Mr. Henry Tennant (at one time General Manager of the North Eastern Railway Company), Lord Colville of Culross (Director of the Great Eastern Railway Company), Sir Francis Knollys (Director of the Great Northern Railway Company), the Hon. A. H. Mills (of Glyn, Mills, Currie, and Co.), and the Right Hon. D. R. Plunket (Director of the North London Railway Company). Thus the railway element was strongly represented; the financial to a small but very important extent, and Court influence by two prominent members of the households of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

The Company was authorised to construct a double underground line from Liverpool Street to Shepherds Bush (about 6½ miles); but the plan was modified, and the Bank of England became the City starting-point. In their prospectus the directors modestly predicted an annual passenger traffic of some forty-two millions (or seven millions per mile of line); but this estimate has been largely exceeded, the average being about fifty-two millions per annum, or one million per week.

The Company’s capital ultimately reached the sum of nearly four millions sterling, so the line can hardly be called a cheap one in point of construction; for, although the “way-leave” beneath the streets was free, land had to be bought for the surface booking-offices, costly shafts had to be sunk to the requisite depth, and tunnels driven, and numerous subterranean stations had to be built. Thus, apart from the cost of the rolling-stock and installation of a large current-generating station, the initial expenses soon mounted up.

All the booking-offices and stations are built on one principle, each with its great electric lift; but special interest attaches to the City terminus.

It was necessary to make use, somehow, of the open space between the Mansion House, the Bank, and the Royal Exchange—an ideal spot for a central railway station. But how was it to be effected? For years the Civic Fathers had contemplated the construction of subways for the safety and convenience of foot-passengers at this, which has been termed the busiest—as it is almost the most dangerous—spot in the world, though I doubt whether in the year 1903 Piccadilly Circus does not run it hard.

The Central Railway Company approached the Corporation on the subject, and eventually it was agreed between the parties that the Railway Company, in return for being allowed the privilege of constructing their station beneath the open space, without payment, should make the public subways, and hand them over in perpetuity to the City.

So for many months the pavement in front of the Royal Exchange was disfigured by a lofty wooden hoarding, which completely concealed a shaft, wherein some mysterious work was progressing. But beyond this there was no outward indication of what was going on below; and, although the entire roadway in front of the Mansion House was being undermined, the vast traffic continued as usual.

Arranging this station proved to be one of the stiffest bits of engineering work ever attempted. Drain-pipes were ubiquitous—a perfect tangle that had to be diverted. There were old disused and long-forgotten pipes, electric cables, hydraulic power pipes, pneumatic tubes, gas and water mains—a maze and wilderness of underground communications. These were all rearranged in a special pipe-tunnel, 14 feet wide. Then, at a depth of about 20 feet, the booking-office was built, bit by bit, of steel-work, which had previously been temporarily put together in a field to ensure its fitting exactly into the excavation prepared for its accommodation—an area 145 feet one way and 75 feet the other, its outline being on the curve. Its roof, consisting of girders supporting steel troughing, was filled up with concrete, and finally with asphalte, upon which thousands of people pass daily without realising what is below them. Access to the booking-office is gained by numerous entrances viâ the public subway: two on the Royal Exchange pavement, two at the bottom of Mansion House Place, one at the Poultry corner, and one at Walbrook, one in front of the Safe Deposit City buildings, two each at the corners of Princes Street and Cornhill, and one at St. Mary Woolnoth Church. The entire arrangement reminds one of a mole’s subterranean fortress, with its galleries for entrance and exit branching off in various directions.

These subways, immense conveniences which should be adopted at every rond-point in London—though it is a strange fact that habitués of the City seldom use them, they being patronised chiefly by the “work-girl” and by casual visitors to the central “square mile”—are 15 feet wide and 9 feet high, are lined with glazed brick, and have electric-lighted stairways at the above-mentioned places.

DESCRIPTION OF THE RAILWAY

Some fifty feet below the Bank of England Station are the twin-tunnels and their platforms, approached by five lift shafts of twenty feet, and one stairway shaft of eighteen feet diameter; at a deeper level still are the tubes of the City and South London Railway, crossing the City en route to Islington.

These great passenger lifts work with wonderful smoothness (facile descensus Averno est), and without them no fewer than ninety-three steps would have to be painfully descended.

We are all familiar by this time with the other ten surface stations of the Twopenny Tube (at the Post Office, Marble Arch, etc.). They are nearly all alike, and look as if they were waiting for a substantial and lofty building to be erected upon them, and have little claim to architectural beauty. The platforms, necessarily rather contracted in area, are clean and bright, owing to the extensive use of opalite tiling and glazed bricks, ever spotless, and practically indestructible. Each train consists of six eight-wheeled bogie-cars, 45½ feet long, with well-upholstered seats, arranged longitudinally and crosswise, for forty-eight passengers. The lighting is effected by means of eight sixteen-candle-power incandescent lamps, supplemented by small shaded electric lights, excellent for reading by. The windows, of course, do not open, but practicable ventilating louvres are arranged above them. Entrance is obtained at each end of the car, and the telescopic gates are cleverly and expeditiously manipulated by the attendants. Straps are placed along rods on each side of the roof to aid passengers in traversing the cars, and above the seats are racks for parcels, etc.

The electric locomotives[4] are curious in shape, with the driver’s cabin in the middle, and a backward and forward slope for the apparatus looking like gigantic coal-scuttles back to back. They have eight wheels, and are fitted with motors, one for each axle. The current is collected from a central third rail by means of two cast-iron shoes which rub along it, and is led through an automatic circuit-breaker and switched to the controller in the driver’s cabin, thence to the motors, returning to the track rails through the wheels. The total weight of a locomotive is about forty-four tons, and the average speed is about fourteen miles an hour, the running time from the Bank to the western terminus being twenty-four minutes.