Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/125

 GEORGE STEPHENSON 291 rectors and friends ; then 2 1 open cars or wagons fitted for excursionists ; lastly came 6 more cars loaded with coal making 38 cars in all ! Mr. Stephenson was proud to be on the locomotive and to run it himself. It seemed to spectators incredible that the locomotive could start such a load, but it did start it, and it drew it 8^ miles in 65 minutes, the speed at times reaching 12 miles per hour! More cars were added at Darlington, and then the train drew on to Stockton, all cars being crowded with passengers. The success was complete, and all doubts seemed to vanish. From that day the traffic over the road continued without interruption. To the surprise of all, the passenger business became a very important item, and better cars were quickly in demand. , The road is in use to-day, and I had the pleasure last year of riding over a part of it. Of course it now looks in all respects like a modern English road, but I was deeply moved by the thought that it was there that George Stephen- son built his first public railway and achieved his first public triumph. Stephenson was not unmindful of the importance of that step. He said, on that occasion, to some young men, " Now, lads, I will tell you that I think you will live to see the day (though I may not live so long), when railways will come to supersede almost all other methods of conveyance when mail coaches will go by railway. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a working-man to ride than to go on foot." He lived to see all that himself, and far more. It is difficult for us to appreciate the popular surprise and delight at that first railway excursion. We are so accustomed to splendid engines, luxurious cars, and high speed, that we think nothing of them ; but when all were new when coaches and carts on highways were the sole reliance for passengers and freight it was astonishing indeed to see a "travelling engine," in charge of two men, draw a train of forty cars and six hundred people ! Many men would have been satisfied with the result, but Stephenson was not. He said there was no limit to the speed but the strength of the machinery and the supply of steam. He saw there was no limit to the load but the strength and weight of the locomotive, and no limit to the weight but the strength of the rails and the character of the road-bed ; thus he early saw how progress was to be made. But Stephenson's greatest triumph was yet to come. The Darlington road was chiefly for coals, between small towns in a rough northern county. The vast majority of English people heard nothing, and knew nothing about it. Conse- quently when it was proposed to connect the great commercial city of Liverpool with the great manufacturing city of Manchester, forty miles away, by a railway, it was taken for granted that the cars were to be drawn by horses. Nevertheless a tram-road was opposed, first, by the Duke of Bridgewater, who had a canal be- tween the two cities ; and, secondly, by those who owned the coaches and the inns. Though proposed in 1821, the opposition was so great that it was laid over for several years. In 1824 a committee of interested parties went to Dar- lington and Killingworth to see Stephenson's road and locomotives. The Dar-