Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/76

48 has the rest. In a few years more the great tunnel of the Alps will be completed, and that will bring about another change.

The Fell railway, which has been open about eighteen months, is a line that well deserves attention. Thirty-eight years ago Mr. Charles Vignolles, the eminent engineer, and Mr. Ericsson, patented the idea which is now an accomplished fact on the Mont Cenis. Nothing was done with it until Mr. Fell, the projector of the railway which bears his name, took it up, and to him much credit is due for bringing an admirable principle into operation.

The Fell railway follows the great Cenis road very closely, and diverges from it either to avoid villages or houses, or, as at the summit of the pass on the Italian side, to ease the gradients. The line runs from St. Michel to Susa. The distance between those two places is, as the crow flies, almost exactly equivalent to the distance from London to Chatham; but by reason of the numerous curves and detours the length of the line is nearly brought up to the distance of London from Brighton. From St. Michel to the summit of the pass it rises 4460 feet, or 900 feet more than the highest point of Snowdon is above the level of the sea; and from the summit of the pass to Susa, a distance less than that from London to Kew, it descends no less than 5211 feet!

The railway itself is a marvel. For fifteen miles and three quarters it has steeper gradients than one in fifteen. In some places it is one in twelve and a half! An incline at this angle, starting from the base of the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, would reach the top of St. Paul's Cathedral if it were placed at Temple Bar! A straight piece of railway constructed on such a gradient seems to go up a steep hill. One in eighty, or even one in a hundred, produces a very sensible diminution in the pace of a light train drawn by an ordinary locomotive; how then is a train to be taken up an incline that is six times as steep? It is accomplished by means of a third rail placed midway between the two ordinary ones, and elevated above them. The engines are provided