The Midland page 2

It thus became the largest railway and had the longest line, 65 miles of it on stone blocks, 115 miles on cross sleepers, and a mile and a half on bridge rails. Great was the saving in administration. The three works, for instance, side by side at Derby, were merged into one, and in charge was placed the locomotive superintendent of the Birming­ham & Derby, Matthew Kirtley, then aged thirty-one, who had begun railway life when a boy of sixteen as a fireman on the Warrington & Newton. He it was who drove the first engine of the London & Birmingham to London. When he took over the united works he had 95 engines, all 4-wheelers. He at once introduced 6-wheelers, and in 1851 he built his first engine at Derby; it was No. 158. When third class by all trains was introduced in April 1872 it doubled the length and weight of trains; this was foreseen, and on the day of the change he had 68 new engines ready, specially and successfully designed for the work. He died in 1873, and was succeeded by Samuel Waite Johnson, who held office for over thirty years. In 1844 the combined works covered 8| acres; they now, including the carriage works, occupy 206, and employ 14,000 men.

So soon as The Midland Counties Company lost its identity in The Midland, Jessop and Oakes reappeared, on the scene with their Erewash Valley project. This time they had nothing to feel aggrieved at, for Hudson, seeing that by joining up Clay Cross with Pye Bridge he could obtain a short route to Rugby, took over the scheme for a guaranteed dividend of 6 per cent, on the proposed capital, and the line was opened in 1847.

The Leicester & Swannington, which had been the origin of the group of railways, was now taken over. It had been going along quietly and prosperously, but company promoters would not leave it alone, and the offers to purchase it as a branch or continuation of some opposition line to The Midland were becoming so frequent that to stop any chance of competition it was purchased on friendly terms in August 1845. For one thing it is noteworthy. One of its engines, the Samson, ran over a cart loaded with butter and eggs that had got on to the line at a level crossing. To avoid troubles of this sort, the manager, Ashlin Bagster, afterwards the first manager of the London & Birmingham, suggested to George Stephenson that perhaps a whistle could be fitted to the engines that steam could blow. "A very good thought," said Stephenson. And the first "steam trumpet" was made by a Leicester musical instrument maker and fitted to the Samson, with such success that all the other engines had one, and every company in time adopted the idea. As soon as the line came into the possession of The Midland it was taken in hand, joined up with the main line, and extended to Burton-on-Trent.

In 1846, to stop a projected railway to Burton-on-Trent from Atherstone by way of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, The Midland bought up the old Ashby Canal and its tramways. Part of these it used, but one part, the Ticknall branch, it was content to leave, and it is still left with its toll-house and weighing-machine by the side of the canal.

Hudson soon went ahead and extended The Midland from Nottingham to Lincoln, an easy matter, and from Syston to Peterborough, a by no means easy matter, owing mainly to Lord Harborough defending Stapleford Park against the surveyors as if it were an entrenched camp held in the interest of the Oakham Canal, in which he was a shareholder. The next step was the purchase of the Sheffield & Rotherham, opened in 1838, a line worth remembrance as being the first to abolish second class, "the company finding the carriages unnecessary," and getting along very well with their coach-like firsts, which were painted yellow, and their thirds, mere trucks with deal forms to sit upon, which were painted green.

The Birmingham & Gloucester Act was passed in 1836. It was an inevitable line. Brunei had surveyed for it too much to the east, and thus left out the towns on the way; Moorsom surveyed for it too much to the west, and left them out on the other side; and as the towns would produce no shareholders unless they were pleased, Moorsom had to modify his route until it proved acceptable. The plan had one advantage - it evoked little opposition, and the Act was obtained at the first application. At one end was the Birmingham Station of the London & Birmingham; at the other was the Gloucester & Cheltenham tram-line, thirty years old, which had first been worked by horses and was then being worked by steam-engines built by Tregellas Price of Neath - a little railway all by itself that those in the north knew nothing of.

And between them was Bromsgrove Lickey, where the gradient (1 in 37) is so steep that the trains have to go up the two miles with an engine at both ends. An inch in a yard does not seem much of a rise on a dining-table, and it is not quite so great, but it means in actual working, as at Bromsgrove, an extra cost of £5000 a year. As none of the existing English engines could work up such an incline, Moorsom imported eight engines from Philadelphia, which worked fairly well, and eight more were ordered, but in 1845 J. E. M'Connell, in the company's own works at Bromsgrove, built a 6-coupled tank-engine that far surpassed them, and the importations ceased. They were bogie engines, and it is sometimes claimed that by them was the bogie introduced into this country, but we had used the bogie long before; Puffing Billy had one, so had Wylam Dilly, so had the Earl of Airlie, and other engines on the Dundee & Newtyle built by Carmichael at Dundee in 1833 and 1834, though the bogies were trailing, while in the Norris engines they were leading. On the 17th of August the line was opened throughout from Curzon Street Station to Gloucester, and developments began. The London & Birmingham had given the company access to their station, or any future station they might have in Birmingham, because the battle of the gauges was in progress and the new line stopped the advance of the broad gauge up from Bristol in the west. Before its construction the only railway route from Bristol to the north was eastwards to the London suburbs by broad gauge and then to the London & Birmingham by a short run on the Bristol, Birmingham & Thames Junction, afterwards known as the West London. Here there was a break of gauge, with the usual troubles, but at Gloucester on the direct line the evils were more apparent; and the Gauge Commissioners went there in 1845 to see whether the confusion was as great as the evidence declared. They were convinced that it was even worse - and no wonder. Mr. J. D. Payne of the Gloucester goods department took care of that. Fearing lest the extent of transfer work might be too small to impress the Commissioners, he unloaded two trains that had already been dealt with as an addition to the usual work, and "when," says Mr. G. P. Neele, "the members came to the scene, they were appalled by the clamour arising from the well-arranged confusion of shouting out addresses of consignments, the chucking of packages across from truck to truck, the enquiries for missing articles, the loading, unloading, and reloading, which his clever device had brought into operation." It was magnificent, and it was war, and it impressed the Commissioners with the vast business carried on by the Birmingham & Gloucester, but it was not fair; and Mr. Payne departed to become General Manager of the South Stafford, when, in the following year, 1846, The Midland absorbed the line and secured the Bristol & Gloucester as already related. And with the Birmingham & Gloucester The Midland took over the privileges of sharing the Birmingham Station with the North Western, whence both companies use New Street at the present day.

The Bristol & Gloucester, owing to a contract, had to remain broad-gauge for some time, and the narrow metals did not get into Temple Meads Station until 1854. In preparation for that event Mr. Kirtley in 1848 designed four convertible engines which were really narrow-gauge on broad-gauge axles, and when the road was altered the axles were shortened to suit the width. This idea was adopted by the Great Western when they were preparing for the abandonment of the broad gauge.

Hudson's policy of expansion was persistently pursued, and in 1846, the great year of the railway mania, his activity was amazing. "Under Mr. Hudson's direction," we read, "the shareholders of The Midland Company gave their approval to twenty-six bills which were immediately introduced into Parliament. On Monday following, at ten o'clock, the York & North Midland sanctioned six bills, and affirmed various deeds and agreements affecting the Manchester & Leeds and Hull & Selby companies. Fifteen minutes later he induced the Newcastle & Darlington Company to approve of seven bills and accompanying agreements; and at half-past ten o'clock took his seat at the board of the Newcastle & Berwick. During these two days he obtained approval of forty bills, involving the expenditure of about ten millions."

But he had too many opposing interests to look after, and when he took the chair at The Midland meeting to discuss the purchase of the Leeds & Bradford he was greeted with cries of "You are both buyer and seller!" from supporters of "the Liverpool party." The Bradford & Leeds was bought - it was necessary to buy it, but from that meeting his influence with The Midland shareholders began rapidly to diminish, and when in 1849 "the Liverpool party" obtained the appointment of a committee of investigation, he retired from the line. So far as The Midland was concerned he might as well have stayed, for the report of the investigating committee showed that everything was in order and straightforward; but it was not so elsewhere. He had done so many things on so many lines that could not be explained away, and he was swept out of railway life in a whirlwind of hatred and derision, to end his days on an annuity of £500 a year.

John Ellis, the deputy chairman, who had kept The Midland matters right all through, was his successor, and continued his policy with more discretion, though one of his proposals was of greater magnitude than any that had gone before. Seeing that in the near future the company, owing to the increase in its goods and mineral traffic, would have to get direct to London, he proposed in 1852 to amalgamate The Midland with the London & North Western. The scheme was favourably received, and the negotiations proceeded satisfactorily up to the question of terms, when they fell through owing to the North Western, thinking the bargain safe, insisting on deducting fifty shillings per share from the price Ellis had fixed as his minimum.

The same year as this failure of the endeavour with the London & North Western The Midland took over the original North Western, the Little North Western as it was called to distinguish it from the Birmingham line. This railway ran from Skipton on the Leeds & Bradford through Settle to Morecambe, with a branch at Clapham, that is the Clapham Junction of the north, to Ingleton. It should be noted that the first railway route to Scotland ran over The Midland metals from Rugby to Normanton, amalgamation was made. This time the advances came from the other side. Within two days The Midland had two proposals, one from the London & North Western, the other from the Great Northern; and the outcome of it all was the Bill introduced into Parliament in 1853 for the combination of the three companies into one. Never had there been such a chance of simplification and improvement in our railway system, but the House of Commons whence it went off to York and so on to Berwick; and this taking over of the Little North Western put The Midland once more again on the road to the border by way of Lancaster and Carlisle. Further, it gave them the road to the coast which now terminates at Heysham, and, later, by the line from Wennington to Carnforth, it led to the Furness railway which runs from there to Barrow. In August 1852 another attempt at a great rejected the Bill on what was called the national ground that it suited the country's welfare best to have as many railway companies as possible.

The expansion of The Midland continued, and the increase of the traffic to the south rendered necessary the line from Leicester to Hitchin by way of Bedford, the contractor for which was Thomas Brassey. At Hitchin this joined the Great Northern, by which the trains went to King's Cross, and on the 1st of February 1858, just before John Ellis retired, the first Midland train ran to London.

The next great advance was in February 1867, when, the line through Derbyshire having been extended from New Mills, there was opened the route to Manchester. The same year the Act was obtained by The Midland, the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire, and the Great Northern to jointly purchase several small railways and form the Cheshire Lines Committee, over whose route The Midland runs its trains into Liverpool.

Trouble, however, had begun with the Great Northern for the same reason as with the North Western. The Midland traffic became too great for the company to accommodate in addition to its own, and whenever there was a crowd in waiting the owners of the line very naturally gave their own trains precedence. Protests and disputes were unavoidable, and became so serious that on the 30th of June 1862, a year when 3400 Midland trains were delayed between Hitchin and London, the Great Northern resorted to the extreme measure of evicting The Midland from the sidings at King's Cross, and threw the whole traffic into confusion. This brought matters to a crisis, and The Midland replied by obtaining the Act next year which empowered them to continue their own line from Bedford to St. Pancras.

In making this four-track line the engineer, W. H. Barlow, had an ordinary task on a large scale, but designing the terminal station was a difficult problem. He had to cross the Regent's Canal about half a mile away; going under it meant a low-level station, going over it meant a high-level one. He went over it and built the strongest station in the world by putting his platforms in the roof! The ribs of that magnificent arch of 240 ft. span can be seen passing down below the floors; the brick walls are merely screens, the offices are in the parapet, and the building that carries the roof is down below. The ties of the roof are the joists of the floor, on which are the platforms and rails; and this floor of nearly four acres is of the same strength all over its area, so that at any time the rails and platforms can be rearranged at will.