Rides on Railways

Samuel Sidney

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Rides on Railways, by Samuel Sidney
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Rides on Railways, by Samuel Sidney
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Rides on Railways Author: Samuel Sidney Release Date: August 25, 2004 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) [eBook #13271]
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDES ON RAILWAYS***
This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
RIDES ON RAILWAYS by Samuel Sidney.
PREFACE.
The following pages are an attempt to supply something amusing, instructive, and suggestive to travellers who, not caring particularly where they go, or how long they stay at any particular place, may wish to know something of the towns and districts through which they pass, on their way to Wales, the Lakes of Cumberland, or the Highlands of Scotland; or to those who, having a brief vacation, may wish to employ it among pleasant rural scenes, and in investigating the manufactures, the mines, and other sources of the commerce and influence of this small island and great country.
In performing this task, I have relied partly on personal observation, partly on notes and the memory of former journeys; and where needful have used the historical information to be found in cyclopædias, and local guide-books. This ...

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• Publié par: unfey
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 25
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

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Rides on Railways, by Samuel Sidney
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Rides on Railways, by Samuel Sidney
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Rides on Railways
Author: Samuel Sidney
Release Date: August 25, 2004 [eBook #13271]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDES ON RAILWAYS***
This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
RIDES ON RAILWAYS
by Samuel Sidney.
PREFACE.
The following pages are an attempt to supply something amusing, instructive,
and suggestive to travellers who, not caring particularly where they go, or how
long they stay at any particular place, may wish to know something of the towns
and districts through which they pass, on their way to Wales, the Lakes of
Cumberland, or the Highlands of Scotland; or to those who, having a brief
vacation, may wish to employ it among pleasant rural scenes, and in
investigating the manufactures, the mines, and other sources of the commerce
and influence of this small island and great country.
In performing this task, I have relied partly on personal observation, partly on
notes and the memory of former journeys; and where needful have used the
historical information to be found in cyclopædias, and local guide-books.This must account for, if it does not excuse, the unequal space devoted to
districts with equal claims to attention. But it would take years, if not a lifetime,
to render the manuscript of so discursive a work complete and correct.
I feel that I have been guilty of many faults of commission and omission; but if
the friends of those localities to which I have not done justice will take the
trouble to forward to me any facts or figures of public general interest, they shall
be carefully embodied in any future edition, should the book, as I hope it will,
arrive at such an honour and profit.
S. S.
LONDON, AUGUST, 1851.
CONTENTS.
LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY
EUSTON STATION
THE MIXED TRAIN
CAMDEN STATION
AYLESBURY
WOBURN AND BEDFORD
THE BUCKS RAILWAY
BANBURY
OXFORD
WOLVERTON STATION
BLISWORTH, NORTHAMPTON
WEEDON
RUGBY AND ITS RAILWAYS
ARNOLD AND HIS SCHOOL
COVENTRY TO BIRMINGHAM
BIRMINGHAM
WARWICK, LEAMINGTON, KENILWORTH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON
SOHO
THE BLACK COUNTRY (WALSALL, DUDLEY, WEDNESBURY,
DARLASTON)
STAFFORD
LIVERPOOL
MANCHESTER
THE ROAD TO YORKSHIRE
YORKSHIRE
LEEDS
THROUGH LINCOLNSHIRE TO SHEFFIELD
SHEFFIELD
DERBYSHIRE
FROM CHESTER TO NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE
THE LAKES
HOME
LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.EUSTON SQUARE, LONDON
HARROW-ON-THE-HILL
VIADUCT OVER THE RIVER COLNE, NEAR WATFORD
LOOKING FROM THE HILL ABOVE BOXMOOR STATION TOWARDS
BERKHAMSTED
BERKHAMSTED STATION
LEIGHTON BUZZARD
DENBIGH HALL BRIDGE
THE WOLVERTON VIADUCT
BRIDGE IN THE BLISWORTH EMBANKMENT
VIEW FROM TOP OF KILSBY TUNNEL, LOOKING TOWARDS RUGBY
COVENTRY
THE SHERBORNE VIADUCT, NEAR COVENTRY
THE AVON VIADUCT
THE ASTON VIADUCT
ASTON HALL
NEWTON ROAD STATION, NEAR BIRMINGHAM
THE RAILWAY NEAR PENKRIDGE
STAFFORD
VIEW NEAR WHITMORE
VALE-ROYAL VIADUCT
EXCAVATION AT HARTFORD
VIADUCT OVER THE MERSEY AND MERSEY AND IRWELL CANAL,
KINGSTON
THE DUTTON VIADUCT
THE WARRINGTON VIADUCT
LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY.
According to Mr. Punch, one of the greatest authorities of the day on all such
subjects, the nearest way to Euston Station is to take a cab; but those who are
not in a hurry may take advantage of the omnibuses that start from Gracechurch
Street and Charing Cross, traversing the principal thoroughfares and calling at
the George and Blue Boar, Holborn, the Green Man and Still, Oxford Street,
and the Booking Offices in Regent Circus.
Euston, including its dependency, Camden Station, is the greatest railway port
in England, or indeed in the world. It is the principal gate through which flows
and reflows the traffic of a line which has cost more than twenty-two millions
sterling; which annually earns more than two millions and a-half for the
conveyance of passengers, and merchandise, and live stock; and which
directly employs more than ten thousand servants, beside the tens of
thousands to whom, in mills or mines, in ironworks, in steam-boats and
coasters, it gives indirect employment. What London is to the world, Euston is
to Great Britain: there is no part of the country to which railway communication
has extended, with the exception of the Dover and Southampton lines, which
may not be reached by railway conveyance from Euston station.
The Buckinghamshire lines from Bletchley open the way through Oxford to all
the Western counties, only interrupted by the break of gauge. The Northampton
and Peterborough, from Blisworth, proceeds to the Eastern coast of Norfolk and
Lincoln. At Rugby commences one of several roads to the North, either byLeicester, Nottingham, and Lincoln, or by Derby and Sheffield; and at Rugby,
too, we may either proceed to Stafford by the direct route of the Trent Valley, a
line which is rendered classical by the memory of Sir Robert Peel, who turned
its first sod with a silver spade and honoured its opening by a celebrated
speech; or we may select the old original line through Coventry, Birmingham,
and Wolverhampton, passing through a network of little railways leading to
Warwick and Leamington, the result of unprofitable competition. A continuation
of the Trent Valley line intersects the Pottery district, where the cheapest Delft
and the most exquisite specimens of China ware are produced with equal
success; and thus we reach Liverpool and Manchester by the straightest
possible line.
At Stafford we can turn off to Shrewsbury and Chester, or again following the
original route arrive at Crewe, the great workshop and railway town of the
London and North Western. Crewe affords an ample choice of routes—1st, to
Leeds by Stockport (with a branch to Macclesfield) and Huddersfield, or from
Leeds to York, or to Harrogate, and so on by the East Coast line through
Durham, Newcastle, and Berwick, to Edinburgh; 2dly, direct to Manchester;
3rdly, to Warrington, Newton, Wigan, and the North, through the salt mining
country; and, 4thly, to Chester. At Chester we may either push on to Ireland by
way of the Holyhead Railway, crossing the famous Britannia Tubular Bridge, or
to Birkenhead, the future rival of Liverpool.
At Liverpool steamers for America warranted to reach New York in ten days are
at our command; or, leaving commerce, cotton, and wool, we may ride through
Proud Preston and Lancaster to Kendal and Windermere and the Lake district;
or, pressing forward through “Merry Carlisle,” reach Gretna at a pace that defies
the competition of fathers and guardians, and enter Scotland on the direct road
to Glasgow, and, if necessary, ride on to Aberdeen and Perth.
A short line from Camden Station opens a communication with the East and
West India Docks and the coast of Essex, and another, three miles and a half in
length, from Willesden Station, will shortly form a connexion with the South
Western, and thereby with all the South and Western lines from Dover to
Southampton.
The railway system, of which the lines above enumerated form so large a part,
is barely twenty-five years old: in that space of time we have not only supplied
the home market but taught Europe and America to follow our example; even
Egypt and India will soon have their railways, and we now look with no more
surprise on the passage of a locomotive with a few hundred passengers or tons
of goods than on a wheelbarrow or Patent Hansom Cab. Grouse from
Aberdeen, fat cattle from Norfolk, piece goods from Manchester, hardwares
from Sheffield, race horses from Newmarket, coals from Leicestershire, and
schoolboys from Yorkshire, are despatched and received, for the distance of a
few hundred miles, with the most perfect regularity, as a matter of course. We
take a ticket to dine with a friend in Chester or Liverpool, or to meet the hounds
near Bletchley or Rugby, as calmly as we engage a cab to go a mile; we
consider twenty miles an hour disgustingly slow, and grumble awfully at a
delay of five minutes in a journey of a hundred miles. Millions have been spent
in order to save an hour and a half between London and Liverpool; yet there
are plenty of men not much past thirty who remember when all respectable
plain practical common sense men looked upon the project for a railway
between London and Birmingham as something very wild if not very wicked;
and who remember too, that in winter the journey from London to Liverpool
often occupied them twenty-two hours, costing £4 inside and £2 out, besides
having to walk up the steepest hills in Derbyshire,—the same journey which is
now completed in six hours at a cost of £2 5s., and in twelve hours for 16s. 9d.,by the Parliamentary train in an enclosed carriage.
It may be perhaps a useful wholesome lesson to those who are in the habit of
accepting as their just due—without thought, without thankfulness—