Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/152

 the guards, and that all the carriages have names, "The Traveller," "The Times," etc., like their predecessors, the stage coaches, which they have but recently superseded. Finally, a party of travellers are seen riding in their own family carriage, mounted upon a low truck without removing the wheels, and only dispensing with the horses. Modern advertisements of the running of excursion trains upon railways, frequently to this day announce the fares as "First class—Covered carriages"—and it is well understood that the term "Covered carriages," thus employed, is synonymous with "third class"; but not every one is aware that this expression is really a lingering survival of the period when railway companies, in announcing an excursion, held out the inducement of what was then the unwonted luxury of covered vehicles for the lower classes of passengers.

A striking contrast to the primitive conveyances of fifty years ago is the passenger carriage shown by Plate XXV., which is a specimen of the latest development of the art of carriage-building in these modern times. Forty-two feet in length, with- accommodation for three classes of passengers, and a compartment for their luggage, provided with a lavatory for the first-class passengers, mounted upon the easiest of springs, well lighted by gas, and warmed during the winter, adorned with ornamental woods and the handsomest upholsterer's work, and replete with every convenience and comfort throughout, it embodies in fact in a high degree, the latest development of modern civilization as exemplified in railway travelling.

The London and North-Western Company possesses a stock of upwards of 4,500 passenger carriages, of which nearly 300 are forty-two feet in length, and the