Page:Forth Bridge (1890).djvu/75

Rh J. T. Leather, the well-known hydraulic engineer. Here he had ample facilities for obtaining a thorough training in several branches of his calling, and in all cases his experience was gained in works of very considerable magnitude. Yorkshire enjoys the advantage of possessing a great number of diverse industries, and it was very early in the field as a manufacturing district. From its coal, iron, steel, and woollen trades, in addition to its farming and shipping pursuits, great wealth was rapidly accumulated after the close of the bad times following the Napoleonic wars. The entire world was then the customer of England, and the shrewd people of the Ridings managed to secure a large share of the trade. The county thus was able to find employment for many engineers, and among them Mr. Leather took a leading position. He executed many works for the supply of water, notably those of Sheffield. The Stockton and Darlington line was opened when Mr. Fowler was only eight years of age, and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway when he was but thirteen. He had not completed his pupilage before the rush, which eventuated in the railway mania, commenced.

When Mr. Fowler left Mr. Leather he went straight into the railway world, finding in the office of Mr. J. U. Rastrick a very wide field. He became his chief assistant in the preparation of the drawings and contracts for several railways; among these was the lino from London to Brighton. To this latter Mr. Fowler gave great attention, and there is scarcely a bridge or viaduct which was not personally worked out by him. After two years spent in London, he returned to Mr. Leather, and became responsible resident engineer of the Stockton and Hartlepool Railway. After it was completed he remained two years as engineer, general manager, and locomotive superintendent of that and the Clarence Railway. It is no wonder that these engineers of the old school can turn from one subject to another with so much versatility when we consider what an education they had. Instead of having professors to fill them with ready digested knowledge, like the young men of the present day, they were moved from one position of responsibility to another, and their intellects were hardened and invigorated by constant work. Every step they took was an experiment on a working scale, and every fact they learned was imprinted on their memories by the toil and trouble it had cost.

On the termination of this engagement, Mr. Fowler visited, at the invitation of Sir John Macneil, several railways in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, and gave evidence before Parliamentary committees regarding them. He commenced an independent career at the age of twenty-six, and as we have already seen, he started with a broad and solid foundation of experience, suitable for the towering reputation which was to be built upon it. Several important railways were then being promoted from Sheffield, such as the Sheffield and Lincolnshire, the Great Grimsby, the New Holland, the East Lincolnshire, and others, and of these Mr. Fowler became the chief engineer, conducting them through Parliament and carrying them out. It was in the year 1843 that this work was commenced, and before it was completed the railway mania attained its full proportions. The history of that movement has often been written; how fortunes were made and ruined in a day; how men lost their reason in a moment both from good and evil tidings, and how the capital subscribed during those years, often for the wildest undertakings, almost rivalled the days of the South Sea Bubble. We have no intention of redrawing the picture, but the following incident will show at what high pressure engineers were expected to work in those days. One night when Mr. Fowler was asleep in his father's house, a carriage and four drove up to the door, and the household was aroused by loud knocking. On descending Mr. Fowler found that a prominent promoter of railways had called with the purpose of inducing him to undertake the engineering of a new railway from Leeds to Glasgow, and that as an earnest he had brought an order for 20,000l, as a preliminary payment on account of the survey expenses. It then only wanted a very few weeks (quite inadequate for the purpose) before the day of depositing the plans. Mr. Fowler had the prudence to decline the offer, and the carriage of the disappointed promoter went thundering away, the occupant little dreaming how many years would elapse before his plan would be carried out.

It was only men of iron constitution that came unscathed through those times, and many an engineer who would have risen to eminence, had he been able to husband his strength, threw away his life in furthering the schemes of the promoters. When the autumn approached, and the fatal thirtieth of November hove in sight, surveys and drawings had to be made at the greatest possible speed. The hours of the night were annexed—sometimes all of them to supplement those of the day, while meals had to be taken when they could, or not at all. The deposit of the plans brought rest to the rank and file, but the chief responsible engineer had then to enter upon the still more trying work of preparing for, and attending, Parliamentary committees. Often he had to appear before three or more committees in one day, pitting his wits against those of half a dozen counsel backed by eminent opposing engineers. The engineer could not imitate the members of the bar and choose in what cases he would appear and which he would neglect, taking his fees for all. Indeed, it is said that Charles Austin, the leader of the bar in the committees of the House of Commons had once been engaged to appear before twenty-two committees in one day, and as it was impossible for him to attend to them all, he showed his impartiality by reading his newspaper and attending to none. The progress of committee work was watched with keenest interest by men who did not know an embankment from a cutting, but who took advantage of every turn of the fight to manipulate the share market. They listened to the evidence of the engineer and sold and bought accordingly. If he tripped in his advocacy of a measure, or was foiled in his attack on a hostile scheme, they hurried to anticipate the effect on the money market. Mr. Fowler once met an acquaintance rushing along the corridor of the House in the wildest excitement, and when he stopped him to learn the cause, the man exclaimed, "Don't detain me! Robert Stephenson has broken down in his attack, and I am off to buy a thousand Great Northerns." Everybody gambled in shares, and like all gamblers their choice was determined by the merest trifles. If a line were fortunate, promoters would endeavour to appropriate as much of its name as they could for other lines, in the hope that their particular venture would gain by the association. As an instance Mr. Fowler's Great Grimsby Railway was at a premium, and consequently the name of Great Grimsby waf brought in quite irrespective of geographical facts. This was done to such an extent that the then chairman of committee (Lord Devon) exclaimed "What ! Great Grimsby again! Go it, Great Grimsby!"

Mr. Fowler had now attained a position which necessitated his permanent residence in the metropolis, and work of all kinds flowed in to him. It is quite beyond the limits of our space to notice, much less to describe, one-half of the matters about which he was consulted or the works he carried out. Amongst them we may mention the following : The Oxford, Worcester, and the Wolverhampton Railways ; the Severn Valley Railway; the London, Tilbury, and Southend Railway (in conjunction with Mr. Bidder); the Liverpool Central Station, the Northern and Western Railway of Ireland, the railways of New South Wales and India, the Sheffield and Glasgow Water Works, the Metropolitan Inner Circle Railway, the St. John's Wood Railway, the Hammersmith Railway, the Highgate and Midland Railway, the Victoria Bridge and Pimlico Railway, the Glasgow Union and City Railway, and St. Enoch's Station, the Millwall Docks, the Channel Ferry, and many others.

Mr. Fowler's reputation with the general public of this generation rests to a great degree on his construction of the Metropolitan Railways. These were so far out of the common that every Londoner, and a great many people out of London, took the greatest interest in them. The most extravagant anticipations were indulged in as to the relief they would afford to the streets if they were ever completed. But the difficulties were so enormous that many, if not most, people imagined that they could not be overcome. The directors were constantly being told that they had embarked their own money and that of the shareholders in an impossible enterprise. Engineers of eminence assured them that they could never make the railway, that if they made it they could not work it, and if they worked it nobody would travel by it. Such a catalogue of impossibilities was enough to appal any man, and often faith in the enterprise fell to a low ebb. At such times they would say to Mr. Fowler, "We depend upon you, and as long as you tell us you have confidence we shall go on." It was an awful load to put on the shoulders of a man who had already sufficient to attend to in combating the physical difficulties of the affair. The troubles with vestries and their engineers and officials, with owners of property and their agents, were for many years during the construction of the first section of the Metropolitan Railway tedious and wearying to the last degree. All these were finally overcome, and the line was opened. So far from there being a difficulty in inducing people to travel by it, the traffic astonished the most experienced railway experts. The general public did not take the view laughingly expressed by Lord Palmerston when asked by Mr. Fowler to perform the opening ceremony, "I intend to keep above ground as long as I can." Of course they grumbled at the ventilation, or rather the want of it, and reproached the engineers for not improving it. Originally, when a junction with other railways was not intended, a special hot-water engine without a live fire, and therefore not passing the products of combustion into the air of the tunnel, was proposed. Experiments were made with an engine so constructed, but before it was perfected it was decided to make a junction with the Great Western Railway, and, therefore, locomotives of ordinary construction had to be admitted on the system.

It was in 1853 that the first Act was obtained for a line 2$1/4$ miles in length from Edgware-road to Battle Bridge, King's Cross. Plans for extensions westward to Paddington, and eastward to the City, were at once prepared, and the financial support of the Great Western Railway was secured. After a severe fight, the Act for the extended railway was obtained, the plans providing for tunnels and stations large enough to accommodate the broad gauge Great Western trains, as well as the narrow gauge local trains which it was designed to run. There was, however, a difficulty in raising the capital, and it was not till the spring of 1860 that the contract was made, and the works commenced. In 1861 powers were obtained for extending the Metropolitan Railway to Moorgate-street; and in 1864, for constructing the eastern and western extensions to Tower Hill and Brompton respectively. In 1863 a Lords' Committee decided that it would be desirable to complete an inner circuit of railway that should abut upon, if it did not actually join, nearly all the principal termini in the metropolis, commencing with the extension in an easterly and southerly direction of the Metropolitan Railway, from Finsbury Circus at the one end, and in a westerly and southerly direction from Paddington at the other, and connecting the extremities of those lines by a line on the north side of the Thames. The inner circle was the direct outcome of this recommendation.

The construction of the so-called Underground Railway was the means of solving a great many problems which at the time presented much difficulty. Questions which are now fully understood, and which would be undertaken by contractors as a mere matter of course, then were of very grave importance, and had not only to be exhaustively discussed, but to be attacked with the greatest caution. It was not then known what precautions were necessary to insure [sic] the safety of valuable buildings near to the excavations; how to timber cuttings securely and keep them clear of water without drawing the sand from under the foundations of adjoining houses; how to undermine walls, and, if necessary, to carry the railway under houses and within a few inches of the kitchen floors without pulling anything down; how to drive tunnels; to divert sewers over and under the railway, to keep up the numerous gas and water mains, and to maintain the road traffic when the railway was being carried on underneath; and finally, how to construct the covered way so that buildings of any height and weight might be erected over the railway without risk of subsequent injury from settlement or vibration. All these points Mr. Benjamin Baker declared, in a paper read some five years ago before the Institution of Civil Engineers, received much anxious discussion and criticism before they were decided upon. Such questions as the admissible stresses on brick arches loaded on one haunch only, the extent to which expansion and contraction of iron girders would affect buildings carried by them, the ability of made ground to resist the lateral thrust of arches, and a multitude of similar problems, had to be dealt with tentatively at first, ind with increased boldness as experience was gained. As an instance of the confidence which experience gives we may cite the following: doubts E