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/81



N the good year 1835, when railways were beginning to boom, medical men declared that "Travelling in cars drawn by a locomotive ought to be forbidden in the interests of the public health. The rapid movement cannot fail to produce amongst passengers a mental affection known as . A single glance at the locomotive rapidly passing is sufficient to cause the same cerebral derangement. Consequently, it is absolutely necessary to build fences ten feet high on each side of the railway!"

A nice state of affairs that would have caused. Fancy a driver travelling every day with high wooden fences on each side, fancy the amount of good timber needed to block the open view, fancy the agony of travelling by train, and then fancy the great silliness of doctors talking like that. By the year 1880 all the nation must have got over its delirium furlosum, but similar objection, equally stupid, was being taken to the organisation of men. Things are very different now to what they used to be, and as a striking illustration of the change let me quote the very meek and humble memorial presented late in 1879 by the men of the G.W.R. to the directors thereof, about the harsh circular I have previously referred to. Here is the document:—