Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/275

 ii s. VH APRIL 5, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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EARLY RAILWAY TRAVELLING. (US. vii. 109, 193.)

MY own investigations lead me to believe that the practice of travelling by rail in a family carriage was abolished by the majority of lines about the year 1850. ' Rides upon Railways,' by Samuel Sidney, 1851, is almost wholly a description of the habits and cus- toms of the London and North - Western Railway of the day, and in referring to that practice the author seems to take it for granted that his readers Will be aware that it is no longer countenanced by that line. The discomforts attending such a mode of travelling were almost as bad as those suffered by third-class passengers in semi- open trucks, and there were the following dangers besides :

1. The family carriage working loose on the truck while the train was in motion, owing to inefficient fastening. (Sidney points out that the porters at roadside stations Were notoriously inexpert at this kind of work.)

The recently published ' Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer -Stanhope,' by Mrs. A. Stirling, contains an anecdote of the narrow escape of a family carriage party from being flung on to the line arising from this contingency. No date is given, but it is evident that the experience took place in the early forties. The carriage swung violently to and fro on the truck, and the occupants tried, vainly as they thought, to attract the attention of the engine-driver by sounding " the bell of communication." Just when it seemed certain that any moment might find the carriage hurled off the truck, the train came to a station and stopped.

" I heard your bell, and I knew your danger " said the engine driver, "but I could not act other than I did. The express was upon us, and I was racing it. It was your lives against the lives of every oody in the train."

The only improbability in this story is the " bell of communication," for this apparatus was not provided until the sixties. Previous to the introduction of the block-telegraph system, when the con- duct of the traffic was governed by time- intervals, it Was indubitably highly dan- gerous for trains to make emergency stops between stations. The necessity of estab- lishing some means of communication be- tween passengers and driver and guards

first became the subject of agitation after the murder of Mr. Briggs by Miiller. in a North London train in 1864, and the railway companies contrived to prevent its adoption for some years on the plea that the stopping of trains at unauthorized places Would expose them to the danger of being overtaken by another. Means of communication, in the case of all trains travelling for a greater distance than 20 miles without stopping, was rendered obligatory by the Regulation of Railways Act (1868), and most com- panies adopted the cord system, invented by Mr. Harrison of the North-Eastern Railway.

I am told that a Scotch lady, the Countess of Wemyss, suffered serious, if not fatal spinal injury from the swaying of her carriage, which had got loose from the bed of the truck.

2. The family carriage being set on fire by the fiery particles emitted from the funnel of the old coke-fired locomotives.

Apparently it was a shocking accident of this description which led to the North- Western Railway and many other lines refusing to accept passengers conveyed in private road carriage:.

On 8 Dec., 1847, as the " up " Leeds express was approaching Rugby (the North - Western was then the only route from London to the North, though the train was at this point on the Midland metals), it was seen that the " umbrella " of the Countess of Zetland's family barouche had been ignited by a spark from the engine. In the barouche were travelling the Countess and her maid. The flames quickly spread to the " imperial," and soon the whole vehicle was ablaze. The two Women Were forced to descend from the carriage, and clung to its wheels. A passenger in an adjacent carriage of the train saw their frightful predicament, and made frantic endeavours to attract the attention of the driver. Before he succeeded in getting the train stopped the maid loosed her hold, and, falling beneath the wheels of: the train, was cut to pieces. The Countess was found badly singed and insensible, and she lay for days at Rugby in a prostrate condition.

It is quite probable that the Great Western Railway was slower than others to abandon the practice, for it had the most aristo- cratic clientele of any line, and it Was the old-fashioned aristocrats who thought it beneath their dignity to travel in a public railway carriage. The G.W.R. (" Growing Worse Rapidly") of the sixties Was famous for its conservatism or stagnation.