TRAVELLING TWO HUNDRED AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO—THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY—THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE, “ROCKET”—THE GRAND JUNCTION, LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM, AND BIRMINGHAM AND MANCHESTER RAILWAYS—THE MIDLAND RAILWAY—EARLY GRADIENTS, INCREASE IN THEIR STEEPNESS AND IN THE POWER OF THE LOCOMOTIVE—THE CARRIAGE ROAD-WAY PASSES OF THE ALPS—MOUNTAINS OF THE WORLD—THE SŒMMERING AND BRENNER RAILWAYS—THE ROUTE BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS.

When, in 1672, Madame de Sevigny wrote of a journey she had just made from Paris to Marseilles, she was able to inform her correspondent that she had completed it, with great satisfaction to herself, in a month. She travelled over 530 miles of ground; she was therefore able to get over some seventeen to eighteen miles a day. The courier that brought Madame de Sevigny’s letter from Marseilles to Paris travelled twice as fast as she had done. He was only a fortnight on the road. In that year the course of post between London and Edinburgh—130 miles less distance than between Paris and Marseilles—was two months: one month going with a letter, and one month coming back with the answer. Ninety years afterwards the one stage-coach between London and Edinburgh started once a month from each city. But in nine-tenths of a century, speed had been accelerated. It only took a fortnight on the road in each direction. Seventy-five years afterwards—that is, in 1837—the year before any portion of railway between the two capitals was opened for traffic, the mail-coach completed its 400 miles in forty-two hours, or one day eighteen hours. Now-a-days, our limited mail (one of the few “limited” associations of very modern date that has not come to grief) is 7½ hours less time over the road than eighteen hours; and by the time the one day in addition has expired, a course of post from Edinburgh to London, and back again from London to Edinburgh, will have been nearly completed.

On the 14th of September, 1830, we opened our first passenger railway in England worked by the locomotive. The line, thirty-one miles long, was then called the Liverpool and Manchester, but it has long since become part and parcel of the London and North-Western Company. Although the railway between Birmingham and Liverpool was first projected so far back as 1824, its construction was not sanctioned by Parliament until 1833, and it was not completed for traffic until the 6th of July, 1837. The then London and Birmingham Company also got its act of incorporation in 1833, but, owing to the difficult nature of many of its works, and the time required for their construction, it was only on the 20th of September, 1838, that Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham were completely connected with London by railway.

Several of the railways now constituting portions of the Midland Railway Company obtained their acts of incorporation in 1836. These lines, when amalgamated in 1844, comprised 181 miles. On the 1st of September, 1867, the mileage of the Midland Company was 695; and since the 1st of that month the important section between London and Bedford (forty-two miles long) was opened for goods traffic, thus making its present total working length, 737 miles.

By degrees, and notwithstanding the severe blow given to railway enterprise by the over-speculation of 1844-5, the net-work of British railways increased. On the 1st of January, 1843, there were 1,857 miles open for traffic; at the same date of 1849 they had increased to 5,007 miles; on the 1st of January, 1855, they were 8,054 miles; eight years afterwards, that is, on the 1st of January, 1863, they were 11,551; that day twelve months they were 12,322; on the 1st of January, 1865, they were 12,780; 1st January, 1866, 13,289; 1st of January, 1867, 13,882.[1]

We shall refer to the progress of the railway system on the continent of Europe and elsewhere hereafter.

Part of the heavy cost of the earlier railways was no doubt due to the apprehension of engineers on the subject of gradients. And in the then state of our knowledge as regards the powers of the locomotive, this is not to be wondered at. Our first constructed lines had most favourable gradients. The rise from Camden Town to Tring, 1 in 200, or 26 feet in the mile for 31 miles, was considered by the late Mr. Robert Stephenson as the maximum gradient that ought to be ventured upon. Joseph Locke, more daring and venturous, and perhaps more prescient, ventured upon 1 in 100, or 52 feet in the mile for 10 miles; this is on what is known as the Whitmore incline, between Stafford and Crewe. Bucke, the engineer of the line from Crewe to Manchester, originally known as the Manchester and Birmingham, which obtained its act of incorporation in the same year as the Grand Junction, although it was five years later in its opening, determined upon a course the opposite of that which Locke had taken. Bucke therefore made his thirty-one miles nearly level, and no doubt (if we except the exceptional Great Western) there is not a line in England that comprises works better laid out as regards gradient, or more solidly finished than those we are now referring to.

There is a capital run of railway between York and Darlington, forty-four miles, almost level, and nearly straight. It was on this line that, just twenty years ago, most of the experiments and trials were made, instituted to vindicate the narrow gauge as the best for carrying on the traffic of the country. These trials formed one of the many phases of the great battle of the gauges, fought so vigorously by its champions on each side; yet, in the short space of the fifth of a century, how many of these then active and doughty men have passed away from us for ever.

By degrees, as the railway system progressed, we made less flat gradients, and we made larger and more powerful locomotives. The result from the action of these two elements has been, that in present times we have got here and there to gradients of 1 in 45, 112 feet in the mile, more than four times as steep as Stephenson’s incline between Tring and Camden. It was on the 6th of October, 1829, that George Stephenson’s engine, “Rocket,” was first tried on a short length of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in the presence of thousands, poured in from the adjacent country. Since then the weight of the engine has risen tenfold, from six tons to sixty; its speed not quite three-fold, from twenty miles an hour to something under sixty. Additional weight has been essentially used for overcoming stiff gradients. The stiffest, as has just been said, 1 in 45, with a moderate load; a Titanic locomotive, unfettered with any weights behind her, can go up 1 in 25, or 211 feet in the mile; no steeper.[2]

But this rate of inclination, of 1 in 45, acquired on some few elevated ridges, as will be seen presently, at an enormous cost, was incapable of general application. Nevertheless, railways had hardly been established on low lands before men’s minds ran upon constructing them over mountains. It is now fully twenty years since the first idea of placing an iron road upon the bed of one or more of the carriage roadway passes of the Alps was promulgated. Of course it found favour, and created interest. Nor can this be matter of wonder when we remember that communication across them has, for centuries, been of world-wide importance. Even if we study the traces that still exist of man’s earliest history in mid and southern Europe, we find that the passage of the great barrier which for more than 500 miles separates north from south, had occupied men’s thoughts and actions from the remotest period. Etruscan tools, coins, and sacred images, have, as we learn from Dr. Ferdinand Keller’s recent work on the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, been found frequently and in abundance, not only on the northern slopes of the actual Alps, but far northward beyond them. We know too, that the ancient Helvites and Gauls were ever seeking the traverse of the snow-capped mountains, that they might exchange their own cold and sterile plains for those on the sunny side, which gave them warmth and luxurious cultivation. By degrees, the early few, savage, daring, and intrepid, increased in numbers; they became masses,—they became colonies. They obtained possession of, and held the districts which in modern times we knew as Venetia, Lombardy, and Savoy; but now they form the northern boundaries of undivided Italy.

In the early Roman period, the northern limit of Roman territory extended to the Po, and no farther. Beyond was CisalpeÀ, and so it continued until Augustus CÆsar Imperator finally subdued, some thirty years before the birth of Christ, the whole of the warlike tribes, and brought them under Roman subjection. History records but one solitary instance of the vanquished erecting a monument to do honour to their conqueror. This was at Susa, and the inscription on the Porta CÆsaris Augusti tells us why it was erected, and what deed it was intended to perpetuate.

Hannibal’s was the first army that made a passage across the Alps, but the exact part at which he effected it is still matter of historic doubt. The balance of worthful opinion is however strongly in favour of its being by what we now call the Pass of the Little St. Bernard. The army would appear not to have been subjected to great difficulties in reaching its summit, notwithstanding that the 19th of October is believed to be the day on which the ascent was commenced, but the horrors to which his hourly thinned ranks were exposed, all occurred after they had attained the summit, and were within sight of the plains in which the autumnal foliage still spread a rich and glowing landscape before them. That some few of the army of ninety elephants with which Hannibal started from Spain completed the Alpine traverse is more than probable, but that one accomplished it is undoubted, for we have it on record that the Carthaginian General crossed the marshes of Clusium (which will be traversed by the railway train of the new and comparatively shorter line between Florence and Rome, to be opened for traffic a few months hence) upon the only elephant that was still spared to him.

Brockedon, whose illustrated work on Alpine Passes was published in 1828, states that there were ten passes traversable as carriage roads. The actual number has not been added to since then, but the trackway along many of the other passes has been greatly improved, and many, that at that period were only dangerous and very narrow mule paths, have now become available for chars, and possess other facilities and accommodation for traversing them that were quite unknown forty years ago. A very brief recapitulation of them may not be inappropriate. More full details of them can be obtained in The Alps and the Eastern Mails, a little work which we published a few months ago.

Commencing at the extreme west, we find the Col di Tenda, an easy pass for three-fourths of its ascent, when the mountain abruptly assumes a cone-like shape, and in a space of some two miles and a-half, rises on one side 1,200 feet. The descent on the other is of nearly equal length, and is nearly equally precipitous. Next comes Mont Genevre, the lowest of the Alpine passes that verge upon the Mediterranean. It is but a short giant’s step from Mont Genevre to the Mont Cenis. Next after, comes the Little St. Bernard, perhaps the easiest of all the passes over the Alps that connect important places together, for the construction of a carriage roadway. Napoleon, however, did not view it in this light, his great roads, being the Mont Cenis and the Simplon. Before we reach this last-named pass, we have that of the Great St. Bernard, one of the loftiest in the whole range, being in immediate proximity to the three highest mountains in Europe, Mont Blanc, 15,732 feet above the level of the sea, Mont Rosa, 15,130 feet, and Mont Cezvin, 14,835 feet.[3] It was by the Great St. Bernard that Napoleon crossed with an army from Switzerland into Italy, in the winter of 1800, and, by a fall from his mule, narrowly escaped being hurled from the precipice of St. Pierre into the abyss beneath it.

Next after the Simplon comes the St. Gothard, and then the Lukmanier, although this last can hardly be called a carriage roadway pass. Further east is the Bernardino. The easternmost pass between Switzerland and Italy, is the Splugen. There are as many as twenty passes available for mules and pedestrians between the Splugen and the next carriage road across the Alps, but they are only to be traversed by the knapsack tourist, who combines within himself vigorous health, activity, and endurance.

The Stelvio, the highest carriage road in Europe, 9,272 feet at its summit above the level of the sea, is, at that point, nearly 400 feet higher than the line of perpetual snow. It was constructed by the Austrians to give them direct access from Austria proper to Lombardy. The object in making it was political and military, not commercial; and now that not only Lombardy, but Venetia have become Italian, it is probable that a road, which in magnificence of conception and in grandeur of construction, exceeds even the Simplon, and which could only be maintained at great annual cost, will fall into decay.[4] For all the practical purposes of commerce it is useless, as within a short distance from it is the Brenner, the oldest, and at the same time the lowest carriage road across any of the Alpine passes. It has, in fact, been for centuries the trackway that has connected eastern and southern Germany with Lombardy and Venetia. It likewise can lay claim to the distinction of being the first pass that was made fit for the transport of carriages and of other vehicles, for it was certainly available for them, and was a good carriage road in the early part of the eighteenth century. It was just one hundred years later, that is in 1809, that those deeds of daring and devotion were achieved in the defiles of the Brenner, which have rendered undying the name and fame of Andreas Hofer.

With all Austria’s arrierreism in politics, she is in the foremost rank of continental nations, as regards the world’s modern civiliser, the Railway. She was next after Belgium in determining upon their construction, and although Prussia anticipated her as regards actual opening, railway works have been accomplished within the Austrian dominions, the like of which cannot be seen within those of her great rival, no matter whether these dominions belong to her de jure divino, or by that of conquest.

To Austria, undoubtedly, belongs the honour of having constructed the first, which until the 18th of August, 1867, was the only iron road traversed by the locomotive through an Alpine pass. At a heavy expense it is true, for the cost of the double line over the Soemmering was at the rate of £98,000 an English mile. The great line of railway which connects Vienna with its sea port Trieste, now more important and valuable to Austria than ever, is 362 miles long; and at Glognitz, exactly forty-seven miles from Vienna, the pass commences. Although the actual distance from one foot of the pass to the other is not more than sixteen miles, the length of the railway, owing to the numerous twists and zig-zags it was necessary to make to overcome the elevation with gradients that the engine could climb up, is twenty-six miles. Yet, in this short distance, there are no less than twelve tunnels and eleven vaulted galleries, the aggregate length of which is 14,867 feet, or nearly three miles. The longest tunnel—4,695 feet—is at the summit, which is 2,893 feet above the level of the sea. The gradients vary from 1 in 40 for two miles and a-half to 1 in 54 for three miles and a-half. The average gradient is 1 in 47 on the north side, and 1 in 50 on the south. The foot of the mountain is 1,562 feet above the sea. The elevation to overcome was, therefore, only an average of 112 feet to the mile; nevertheless the difficulties in working the traffic have been very great. It was a considerable time before the present form of engine was adopted by M. Engerth, the locomotive engineer of the line. Its total heating surface is 1,660 square feet, its total weight, when filled with water and loaded with fuel, is fifty-five tons and a-half. This unfortunately is a weight most destructive both to rail and to roadway. The cost per train mile run averages 6s. 2d. the English mile down the pass as well as up it, whilst the average cost on the ordinary portions of the line is under 3s. per English mile. The time allowed for passenger trains is one hour and fifty minutes, being an average of fourteen miles an hour; for goods trains, two hours thirty minutes, or at the average rate of about ten miles an hour.

There was until just recently, a race running between the engineers at the Brenner and at the Mont Cenis, and it was, until the beginning of August, 1867, uncertain which of them would have the honour of being the second railway upon which the locomotive had crossed the Alps. But the Brenner has won by a length of eight days. The two lines differ in several respects, both as regard construction and working. The Brenner does not take a portion of the existing road for its road-bed. This is formed in the ordinary mode of construction; the company has made its own bridges, culverts, and viaducts, its own embankments and cuttings, its own tunnels and galleries, and in this way it has succeeded in constructing a railway of much less elevation at its summit than the adjacent carriage roadway. It has done so, however, at great cost, but it is anticipated that the saving in working charges will more than compensate for the additional outlay which this species, as it were, of independent construction has rendered unavoidable. The line will be worked on the ordinary system, that is, with engines and other rolling stock similar to those on the plain, with the exception that the engines must and will be of great additional weight, to give them the power and adhesion required to overcome the very severe gradients they will have to contend against. “The opening of the Brenner Railway,” says the Times, “places not only Austria, but Bavaria and all Southern Germany, almost in contact with Lombardy, Venetia, and all Northern Italy. It recovers all the importance that the Brenner Pass possessed from the remotest Roman and Germanic ages, as the most direct and easy route across the main Alpine chain, as the natural highway from the Valley of the Inn, to that of the Adige, and which constituted it the key to the strong position of the March of Verona, which the Germans, from its erection into an imperial fief, under Otho I, in the 10th century, denominated ‘the Gate of Italy.’”[5]

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