Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/25

 the steam engines of the 1830 period. The old open-topped carriages gave passengers the mixed blessings of scenery and breeze and smuts from the engine. They afforded opportunity for sportsmen ta shoot at rooks and other birds on their rail journeys, until their practice became dangerous to others, and it had to be forbidden. Many of the wayside stations consisted of a single hut, which served duty as stationmaster's office, weighing machine room, passengers' waiting room, and licensed house, the stationmaster having the further duty of innkeeper.

The goods guards of those carly days had no vans or waggons, but rode in an exalted position on top at the rear, after the pattern of the guard or conductor of the stage coach they were rapidly superseding. To stop the train they ran along the top to apply the brake with a sort of forked stick, known as a "sprigger." On the narrow little footplates of the engines the levers were always in motion, causing many drivers to receive smart raps and bruises. The cab, as we know it to-day, was in 1830 only a strip of standing room flanked by a short sailing.

Wooden ways, with wood or cast iron rails on wood sleepers, had been instituted as early as 1630 to facilitate horse transit upon constantly used tracks, and in 1767 the Colebrookedale Ironworks cast iron plate rails. In 1789 William Jessop, of Loughborough, introduced flanged wheels, but the nineteenth century had run more than twenty years of its course before men thought of using the power of steam to expedite transport. When Geo. Stephenson asserted that he could run passenger coaches at twelve to fifteen miles an hour he was regarded with suspicion as an optimist, but now "on fire horses and wind horses we career," as Carlyle said, at anything up to eighty miles an hour.

Steam power was realised as much as 2,000 years ago, for Hero of Alexandria, about 200 B.C., wrote a book on the expansive force of steam, in which he described the cylinder, piston, slide-valve, and common clack-valve. The first attempts to harness steam and to make it do the behest of men was about 250 years ago, for stationary engines. It was not, however, until the year 1803 that