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 the fatigue of the journey. Saloon carriages are also available at all times for parties travelling by day trains, on payment of a certain minimum number of fares, and drawing-room carriages, luxuriously fitted up with couches, easy chairs, and tables, are run by the principal express trains between London and Liverpool, seats in which can be obtained on application in advance by telephone or otherwise, without any charge over and above the first class fare. The Company also provide saloon carriages specially fitted up for the accommodation of invalids and their attendants.

The London and North- Western Company have for many years built their own carriages at their Wolverton works, situated about midway between London and Birmingham. These works cover an area of about fifty acres, and are traversed by what was formerly the main line of the London and Birmingham Railway, but the line has since been deviated, and the old railway has been converted into sidings within the works. In the old days of the London and Birmingham Railway, Wolverton was a kind of "half-way house," and was fixed upon for that reason as the chief locomotive centre; but when the London and Birmingham became amalgamated with other undertakings, some of them reaching to the extreme North and West, and blossomed into the London and North- Western, it was found more convenient to remove the locomotive works to Crewe, and since 1877 the works at Wolverton have been devoted exclusively to the building and repair of carriages and other vehicles used in passenger trains, of parcel carts and vans, omnibuses, station furniture, office fittings, and many other requirements, both for trains and for stations. For all these various purposes,