Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.2 #3 (Oct 1861).
The railway, as compared to the old coach road, presents but a monotonous series of bridges, tunnels, embankments, and cuttings: and vast and magnificent as are these works, they fail, in a rapidly passing view, to impress their grandeur upon the eye, which is fatigued with the endless recurrence of gravel, and iron, and brick. Yet, railway works are among the most stupendous of the triumphs wrought by man—trophies of victory gained by energy and intelligence over inert obstructive matter: and, viewed historically, the construction of the works on a single line, such as that from London to Holyhead, will reckon as a feat compared with which the building of the Pyramids, the Appian Way, or the great Roman Aqueducts will appear but insignificant. So it is in writing about Railways; in practice they require solid structure, strength rather than ornament, and in treating of them there is no room for imagination: the description must be minute, and hard, and dry. At starting, therefore, I will state that this article will be entertaining only in proportion to the magnitude of the interests concerned—the railways of the metropolis and the metropolitan population. London is the apple of Great Britain's eye, its centre of action, the focus of its wealth, and the type of its character. The great railways, diverging into the land in all directions, are the arteries carrying the life-blood of the nation from the heart to the extremities. The railway system in London, designed to serve the town itself and to connect the long railways with each other, is as the tissue of the heart, preserving the mutual dependence of the members of the entire body. The railways of the metropolis—the central railways, therefore, of England—after years of discouragement, are now entering on an entirely new phase, and an understanding of the system coming into existence is necessary for a due appreciation of the transport arrangements of the empire.
The success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway having proved the feasibility of George Stephenson's great design, and the speed of five miles an hour, foretold by certain critics as a maximum, having been easily and without danger exceeded, the inevitable effect was that plans for connecting London with the main provincial centres of industry should immediately be formed. The result was the opening, near the time of Queen Victoria's accession, of communications with Liverpool in the north-west, Bristol in the west, Southampton and Dover on the south coast, and with the eastern counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. The projectors of those early lines appear to have considered railways merely as links between distant places, to which journeys would be taken so unfrequently that a mile or two more or less would be of little moment in reaching the place of starting. Adding to this the natural dread of invading land so valuable as the metropolitan suburbs, which would be felt by men who were speculating on an invention then scarcely tried in a commercial sense, there need be little surprise that the terminal points of the first railways were pitched so far from central London as Paddington, Shoreditch, and Nine Elms. Railways, however, were destined to work a revolution in social life equal to that wrought by their agency in the means of transport. After taking a few years to appreciate the novel invention, the London middle classes, the merchants, the large shopkeepers, and the salaried officials—till then content to live with their families over their shops or offices, or in the immediate neighbourhood of town—discovered the necessity of country air for their children, and for themselves places of rural resort when the day's toil was over. The rapid increase in the population and in the commerce of London tending at the same time to raise the rent of every room that could be let as an office to a sum often above the rental of a whole house a few miles from town, acted as an additional incentive to the migration. For twenty years the move has continued, and it is yet far from completed; but thousands enough have spread themselves around their great centre to have created towns of picturesque villas almost wherever there is a railway station—from Reading in the west to Gravesend on the east; from Watford and Hitchin northerly to Reigate, and even farther, on the south. Every week-day morning each of these colonies contributes a gathering of passengers, and each of the great lines of railway pours its tens of thousands into the busy whirlpool of the metropolis: every evening the same workers are re-distributed to their separate homes.
My present object, however, is with the railways, and not with their social effect;—or I might dilate upon the advantages of this change in abodes; the necessary exercise it entails; the acres of fresh air now afforded to our little ones, where formerly they had but square yards; of our wives and daughters among their flowers, instead of listlessly promenading the dreary squares, or seeking interest in too enticing shops;—or I might point out what a curious set these every-day travellers are: how you may know them at a glance from the men who are making unusual journeys; how the latter are interested in the country passed, the rivers crossed, the valleys spanned, while, on the other hand, our season-ticket-holding friend knows every yard of the way, and has no novelty to seek in looking out: how, therefore, he improves the opportunity and reads his paper, if he is going on 'Change; gets up a case, if he be of the long robe; is deep in Dynamics, Herodotus, or Hindustani, if on his way to a London college: how invariably he carries a black leather bag;—or how you may pass along a train, and see carriage after carriage full of occupied, silent men, nearly hidden among the great newspaper sheets they are reading. These are the men who contribute the best profits of the railways.
But, whatever the social effects, the financial effect has been beyond all expectation, and Railway Companies have found that they have only to drive a line among the villages lying within twenty miles of London in any direction, and, in a very few years, traffic developes itself till each station is encircled for a mile with villas—of all shapes, sizes, and pretension. This short traffic, as it is called, pays the Company better than any other portion of their business; and it is a fact, that, on several of the great lines, the dividend on the first thirty miles, could it be taken separately, would exceed thrice that which they are able to pay on their whole systems. But one indispensable condition of this short traffic is, that the London terminus should be readily reached from the places of business of the passengers, as is proved by the comparative absence of such traffic on the Great Western, with its distant Paddington terminus. The South-Western, with a terminus at Nine Elms, had none; but when it pushed forward to Waterloo, the season-tickets were issued year after year in additional thousands. To meet this necessity, the Eastern Counties line made its way to Fenchurch Street; the North-Western joined the North London, and got round to the same point. The South-Western, as stated above, appeared near Waterloo Bridge, and the Great Western advanced half a mile through Westbournia—but making only a half measure, it gained little by the change.
The terminal stations were thus brought more or less to the points where they were required, and the Companies found themselves well repaid by increasing traffic for the great outlay involved. Nevertheless there still remained one serious drawback—that each line fed the City or the West-end, but none fed both; and so the districts served by the North-Western, the Great Western, and, to some extent, by the South-Western, were practically unavailable for men with business in the City; while Kent, Essex, with the Brighton and South-Eastern lines, could receive but few of the West-end daily passengers.
The Brighton Railway set the example in endeavouring to remedy this defect, and, by the spring of 1858, ran trains at once to its City terminus at London Bridge, and as far into the West-end as the foot of Chelsea Suspension Bridge. Parliament had, however, been an obstruction in regard to what it denominated intra-metropolitan lines, and has generally made a decided stand against any tendency to unite the railways at a central station; judging rightly that the best way to lighten the streets of London of their present overwhelming traffic lay, not in drawing that traffic to a central point, the approaches to which must become hopelessly blocked, but rather in distributing it round the metropolis at as many points as possible. In furtherance of this view, the North London Railway had been sanctioned, which, leaving Fenchurch-street, made a circuit of the suburbs to the north as far as Camden Town. The North-Western, Great Northern, and Eastern Counties railways, being connected, through it, with the Docks, the goods from the whole country north of Oxford, intended for shipment in the Thames, could be sent direct for embarkation, without passing through London; and so a considerable step was gained. But, as regarded passengers, the North London very inadequately dealt with the great want. It certainly opened Hackney, Islington, and Hampstead to the City passengers; but it made too great a round, and took too much time to traverse, to be of any use as a feeder to the great lines crossed in its route.
As early as 1853 the idea was started of a subterranean line from Paddington, under the New Road, to the Post-Office, which should give City access to the Great Western, the Great Northern, and the North-Western. But the public mind was not then ripe for a railway the entire course of which was to be through a tunnel; and its promoters in vain attempted to obtain sufficient support. For years Mr. Pearson, the City Solicitor, laboured to excite an interest in its progress; one of his greatest grounds for advocating it being the benefit it would confer on honest working men—in enabling them to remove from crowded filthy dens in the alleys of the City to more healthful air in the suburbs. But, still the capitalists doubted the success of such a mole-like line; and it was not till 1859 that the work fairly commenced—the enormous increase of traffic, and consequent inconvenience in the streets of London, rendering it indispensable that some remedial measure should be adopted. The City became a shareholder to the amount of £200,000—the Great Western and Great Northern gave their support: excavations along the whole line from Paddington to Farringdon Street have been opened. In less, probably, than a year these two railways will have access to a terminus in Farringdon Street, while for merely local transit trains will run thence to Paddington every five minutes, through what should rather be designated a lighted arcade than a tunnel. The new railway, under the name of the Metropolitan, joining east to west, forms a most important link in the system of connecting lines now springing into existence.
No sooner had the conclusion of the Russian war reduced the tightness of the money-market, than numberless schemes for railways to serve London were started; and, from that time to this, there has not been a session in which at least a dozen bills for London lines have not been laid before Parliament. Of course, these have included rival designs for the same purpose, of which the Legislature could only sanction one; and of projected railways, from one cause or another, but a small proportion eventually pass from Bills to Acts conveying a definite bond of execution. Still the railways authorized since 1856 are quite sufficient to inaugurate an entirely new system of intercommunication throughout the metropolis, and constitute an admirable basis for the network of lines necessary to reduce the pressure in London streets to a reasonable limit.
In 1857, after a fierce struggle, Parliament passed the bill for extending the West-end section of the Brighton Railway to Pimlico. This short line was opened last year, and gives access—crossing the river by a superb bridge—to the Victoria Station, at the head of Victoria Street and but a short distance from Buckingham Palace. The opposition was intense, for the locomotive was to invade the quiet exclusiveness of Belgravia; and the denizens of Cubitt's-land have had to be conciliated by the first half-mile being covered in with glass, while the rails are laid on india-rubber, to deaden the sound of passing trains. The Victoria Station, when connected with other lines, as will presently be shown, will be the great west centre of all traffic, a duty for which its position is well fitted.
The next year of great deeds was 1859, when two railways, each of the utmost importance, were authorized. The first was the Charing Cross Railway, destined to bring the South-Eastern, North Kent, Mid-Kent, and Greenwich Railways to Hungerford Market, and at the same time to furnish a speedy communication between London Bridge and Charing Cross. This line passes, for its whole length, through valuable house property; it has to bridge the river, and to span wide thoroughfares such as the Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridge Roads; and, throughout, its way must be made on arches. Some idea of the cost of such an enterprise may be formed from the fact that St. Thomas's Hospital estate is required to be bought entirely, at a cost of three-quarters of a million, the Governors holding that the site would be useless for an hospital with a railway crossing one corner of it. It is true that the surplus of this and other land is saleable, and that its value will not be diminished by proximity to a railway station. The progress made is already considerable. A long line of arches is rising into existence in the place of demolished houses, from the Thames at Hungerford to Waterloo station, and thence towards the Borough; while at Hungerford Bridge itself the beautiful curves of Brunel are being gradually enveloped in a stupendous scaffolding; enormous iron caissons are being sunk forty feet into the bed of the river, by way of foundations; and columns of iron, filled with concrete, of about equal height, and some eight feet in diameter, are being raised upon them as supports for the future bridge.
Speaking of caissons, this new railway bridge affords opportunities for watching the progress of the works rarely to be met with in London, where such things are usually jealously hidden behind hoardings. Passing over Hungerford Suspension Bridge, the work may be seen at the several piers in all stages. As we come from the Strand, we first encounter pile-drivers fixing pile after pile for the formation of a scaffold, so solid in itself that we might suppose it was intended to bear the railway. At the next pier we see a huge ring of iron, built on the river's bed, being gradually undermined from within by divers, who send up barge-load on barge-load of mud. As the excavation proceeds, the iron ring sinks, a similar one is placed above it, and the mining is continued until that sinks too. In this way, laborious apparently, but simple in the extreme when compared with the old slow and expensive system of coffer-dams, the columns to uphold the bridge are inch by inch built down. One pier more, and we may observe an iron column, sunk to the requisite depth, being fast filled with alternate layers of concrete and brickwork. Nor, in passing the solid buttress of masonry next reached, let us omit to notice the row of small thick rollers, on which the iron girders of the bridge will rest their ends, and the circular motion of which will allow of the expansion or contraction in length incidental to extremes of temperature. Again, nearer the Surrey side, there is a sturdy pillar completed, and undergoing the final test of pressure by several hundred tons of iron rails laid tier on tier above it. Its neighbour has undergone this weighty investigation, and, Atlas-like, has passed the ordeal with a scarcely appreciable sinking. Along the top, workmen are forging, and screwing and riveting together, a tremendous girder—the backbone of the iron way. The new bridge is to carry four lines of rails and a footpath for passengers; but, in beauty, it will bear no comparison with the present light and graceful structure. While, therefore, welcoming to Western London so useful a servant as the railway, we may spare a passing regret at the inexorable law of progress which demands the sacrifice of our beautiful Suspension Bridge, seeking what consolation we may in the fact that its chains are promised a still higher position in mid-air, and a still wider span, in completing that long-outstanding work destined to connect Clifton Downs with the opposite bank of the Avon rolling far below.
While on the subject of the Charing Cross Railway I will anticipate, and say that the legislation of 1861 includes an Act for carrying a branch from it, in the Borough, across the river between Southwark and London Bridges, to a terminus in Cannon Street. This branch will be but half a mile long; but its importance to London can scarcely be over-stated, for it will give access, in seven or eight minutes at most, from Charing Cross to the very heart of the City.
The other line of 1859, of paramount importance, was the West London, intended to bring the Great Western, the North-Western, and the North London to the Victoria Terminus, and also to enable them if necessary to run to Waterloo, London Bridge, and the City. Some of my readers may have noticed a rusty weed-grown line of railway, running under the high road near Hammersmith Turnpike. This neglected railroad, officially designated the West London, has been generally known as "Punch's Railway," from certain strictures of that gentleman upon the comical nature of its proceedings. It starts from no place in particular, and can hardly be said to have had any definite destination. It had no traffic, except an occasional coal truck, which contributed its quota to the Kensington smoke—so that, on the whole, nobody could comprehend why such a line ever was made, and of what use it was when made. Now, however, a brighter future is before it. It is to be widened and produced at both ends, till there seems every probability that "Punch's Railway" will stretch into a respectable line, with even a dividend. The West London, with a branch to South Kensington ending at a point close to the International Exhibition of 1862, will serve Kensington, West Brompton, Walham, Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush, while it will also perform the highly important duty of connecting the railways on the north of the Thames with the railways and terminal points on the south. No time has been lost in the works, and, half a mile above Battersea Bridge, a colossal scaffold reaches across the river, representing the chrysalis from which will start the future railway bridge. The embankments through Battersea are well advanced, and the country adjoining has had to contribute some feet of its surface to the operation.
The contest of 1860, and a sharp one too, was for possession of the southern suburbs—the Chatham and Dover Company being victorious. Their Act empowers them to construct lines from their railway at Beckenham, through Sydenham, Dulwich, and Camberwell, to Farringdon Street for a City terminus, and to Victoria for the West-end. The City section will cross the Thames about fifty feet below Blackfriars Bridge, and it seems a pity that means cannot be devised for removing the obstructive old bridge altogether, and then combining facilities for rail and road in the same erection. Both portions of this line are proceeding vigorously;—on the south side, the way to the river has been cleared; on the north, the property is being purchased; while, in the more distant parts, heaps of clay, whole fields of bricks, and navvies out of number, attest the expedition with which the works are driven on.
In the present year the number of metropolitan railway bills before Parliament exceeded that of any former year. Those passed are the City addition to the Charing Cross line mentioned before—extensions of the Metropolitan, under-ground to Finsbury Circus, and ‘above ground from Paddington to Notting Hill and Hammersmith, whence it is not difficult to foresee that it will ultimately stretch to Richmond, and perhaps Hampton Court—and, lastly, a City branch of the North London from Kingsland. These are all mere developments of the system inaugurated in the several previous years.
I have now briefly shown the lines for the service of London, either made or making; and of the latter, all will be open for traffic in two years, and a very large proportion before the opening of the Great Exhibition next spring. That international enterprise, whatever its other results, will at least have the credit of benefiting the district in which it stands, by giving an immense impetus to railway works, and causing Kensington to be connected in a remarkably short time with the other London suburbs. With the Main Drainage works, in addition to the Railways, the whole town may be said to be in the hands of the navvies. From N.W. to S.E. they swarm, and even the Eastern Central district itself is not free from them. Meantime, the river, till recently bridged by a railway no nearer than Barnes, is about to have five iron spans thrown across its waters. There will then be trains constantly running to and fro, and by the side of each other, and under and over each other, from no less than twelve different London termini. Leaving to any reader who has mastered the Schleswig-Holstein question, squared the circle, or otherwise qualified himself for involved study, the endeavour to extract from "Bradshaw" of the period any information relative to London trains which could be made available to human understanding, I shall now endeavour to show how this network of lines will be utilized to supply the wants of the travelling public; and then I propose to point out in a few words where additions will still be necessary to complete a sufficient amount of inter-communication for the metropolis.
In the first place, the Charing Cross Railway, from Hungerford station, will pour unceasing thousands into the City at Cannon Street, and will also run trains to London Bridge, and thence to all the suburban retreats, from Epsom and Croydon to Gravesend. Next, taking the Victoria Terminus as the centre of departure, we may watch off the following trains:—First, a train for South Kensington, which it will reach with loads from Battersea, Cremorne, and West Brompton. Then a broad-gauge train will start by the West London for Hammersmith and Paddington, viá Battersea and Kensington, and will extend its journey through the tunnel of the Metropolitan to Portland Place, King's Cross, and Farringdon Street. For the longest circuit, a train will make for Kingsland by the West London and North London, passing Walham, Finchley, Hampstead, and Islington: at Kingsland it will divide, shooting one portion straight into the City at Finsbury, the other reaching Fenchurch Street or Blackwall by way of Hackney, Bow, and Stepney. All these from Victoria have gone westward: of those wending east, one, on the Chatham and Dover, will collect its living freight at Clapham Rise, Camberwell, and the Borough, and will deposit the passengers at Farringdon Street, or carry them on to Paddington by the Metropolitan line; while the other, on the Brighton Railway, will take the Crystal Palace and New Cross, on its route to London Bridge. If to these trains from Victoria I add a broad-gauge one from Finsbury, through Farringdon Street, by the Metropolitan, to King's Cross and Paddington, and thence on to Notting Hill and Hammersmith, I shall have summed up the whole Railway transport for the use of London alone. As regards the short or season-ticket traffic, as well as the long routes to distant counties, the new arrangement of giving each railway a forked metropolitan termination, must, of course, vastly add to the convenience, and therefore to the number of passengers. The Great Northern and the Eastern Counties will be the only lines without easy communication with the West-end. On the other hand, the far greater diffusion of the goods-freight must afford much relief to the over-crowded streets, a considerable portion of their burdens travelling under instead of over them.
It only remains now to point out a few links in the iron chain which are still wanting, but which the enterprise of our engineers and the courage of our capitalists will doubtless soon supply. For central London, underground railways seem to be required from Farringdon Street along Oxford Street to Hyde Park Corner, and by Long Acre and Piccadilly to Knightsbridge, with a connecting line across the ends of these two last from Paddington to Victoria. A tunnel of three-quarters of a mile in completion of the circuit must also be made, to connect the Charing Cross Railway with Victoria. For the suburbs, the system may be described roughly as consisting of concentric ovals, with a centre at Temple Bar. To complete the figures, the Chatham and Dover should make a branch from their new line at Camberwell through New Cross to Greenwich; and the parsimonious South-Western must be forced, by public opinion, to run to Cannon Street for an Eastern terminus, and to Victoria or Hungerford for its West-end passengers.
The importance of placing all parts of the metropolis in rapid communication, and of enabling passengers or goods arriving by one railway, to be transferred without change of carriage to another, is too obvious to be insisted on, Such a result represents, to the labourer, saving of time in reaching his work, with an abode in fresh, suburban air; to the governing powers, it means facilities for summarily throwing police wherever danger from within may render them necessary, or for conveying troops from all points to the north or to the south, silently and quickly, when danger from without makes such a step expedient; while, to the general public, who shall say what a convenience it will be! In a money point of view, the question is not less important. The metropolitan railways alone, exclusive of the long lines which penetrate London, represent a capital of upwards of ten millions, more than one-fortieth part of all the capital of all the railways in the three kingdoms—and, moreover, a portion which has hitherto paid a better dividend than the average railway capital throughout the country. This dividend the completion of the London system may be expected to improve not less than it will benefit—by saving in time, expense, crowding, and fatigue—the population for whose use it is constructed.
But one thing more will be necessary. The public will see lines interwoven, as it were, and intersecting each other in all sorts of curves and junctions; and they must have some guarantee that due skill and care will be exercised in the working of so complex a system, or they will be little disposed to risk their lives where experience proves that there will be great danger.
More than five minutes cannot elapse without a train passing; and it will not be sufficient to leave every precaution dependent on some underpaid, overworked, signalman keeping his presence of mind under all circumstances. The lines must be managed on such a principle that collisions, at least, shall be impossible. That this freedom from danger is secured on the metropolitan lines no one will believe, till the negative system of signals is adopted throughout; a system under which the line is marked at every station as barred, until the advancing train puts the question, "Line free?" and permission to proceed is then accorded by the signalman. Under this mode of signalling, a collision can only take place through such utter carelessness, that a verdict of murder might justifiably be returned against any one causing it.
Among the travellers who now daily avail themselves of the railway, there are still many who recollect when Notting Hill, Lewisham, and Putney were country villages, reached by perhaps a few coaches during the day: there are some who have trembled as, behind four powerful greys, they traversed Hounslow's dreaded Heath. What a change has come! The coaches exist no longer, the police render every road unromantically safe, and, with the locomotive for a leader, there is no occupation left for the dashing highwayman, who, with the poetic fiction and villanous reality of his character, has passed from the land for ever. Steam has been a great reformer: far may its hot breath spread prosperity over the earth! Watt, Stephenson—George and Robert,—Brunel, Locke, great are your services to England! London, the centre of the land and of its railways, should surely grace your memory by colossal statues—works of art which, however beautiful, could add nothing to the lustre of your names, but which should mark for coming ages the gratitude of a nation to some among the greatest of its citizens!