The Midland page 3

This is the top floor, the attic so to speak; below is another floor of the same extent, carrying another busy series of rails, and casks in thousands, casks upon casks in such numbers as can be seen nowhere else at one view, it being one immense warehouse used as the store for the Burton beer trade. This was the ruling element in the design, for the 720 supports had to be 29 ft. 4 in. apart, that being the distance found to allow of the largest number of barrels being placed between them; and, as the superstructure had to be built to suit the supports, the unit of the whole fabric was really a barrel of beer. Below this floor is the City branch of the line curving from east to west, and running under the canal before it can rise into Camden Town; and in addition to this diagonal tunnel there is a spare tunnel under the front of the hotel in readiness for an increase in the metropolitan traffic, while at a still lower depth below the three levels of rails runs the River Fleet, carefully imprisoned in a sewer on its way to enter the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge.

The hotel is the result of an open competition in which the prize was won by Sir Gilbert Scott. It is his only hotel, and he is said to have taken part in the competition solely because he found himself detained in London during a holiday season with nothing to do. It is a masterpiece; and he is said to have regarded it as the fullest realisation of his own special treatment of Gothic for modern purposes. That the station roof is pointed at the crown is a coincidence; that was Barlow's idea, not Scott's, and Barlow adopted it because of its advantages in resisting the lateral pressure of the wind, just as he lessened the radius of curvature at the haunches to give greater headroom near the walls.

St. Pancras was opened on the 1st of October 1868, Somers Town Goods Station near by having begun business a few months before. Since then The Midland has got to Whitecross Street, and the goods traffic has been extended all over the docks district from Mint Street to Tilbury, and all round the south of London to Hither Green, where the sorting sidings are mainly used for the express fruit trains which distribute the Kentish produce from Leicester northwards to Scotland. And the passenger trains go farther, for there is one corridor express through from the north to Folkestone, Dover, and Deal.

In 1869 The Midland obtained through communication with Wales as far as Brecon over the Hereford, Hay & Brecon. In 1876 the Swansea Vale was purchased, and to it The Midland runs over the Neath & Brecon. In 1879 the Severn Bridge was opened, giving access to the old Lydney & Lydbrook, which became the Severn & Wye. Over this bridge The Midland had running powers, and a line was made to it from Berkeley Junction to Sharpness, the line from Berkeley to Lydbrook being now in the joint ownership of The Midland and the Great Western.

The great engineering feature of The Midland is the extension from Settle to Carlisle opened in 1876, by which it obtained its through road to Scotland. Seventy-two miles long, with not a patch of ground throughout its length level enough to build a house on, it has viaducts 100 ft. high, cuttings 100 ft. deep, tunnels for over a mile through every sort of rock, and embankments where the tipping went on for twelve months without advancing a yard. Amid snow over 7 ft. thick, at one place imprisoning the engineer and his men for three weeks; rain over 90 in. a year, reducing the working days to two or three a week; and wind so strong that the bricklayers could not work on the scaffolds; the making went on for seven years, until it was completed as one of the best lines of railway in the world.

In one place it runs through boulder clay hard enough on fine days to require blasting, on wet days a mass of glue with boulders in it of all sizes and hardnesses, that when unexpectedly picked on gave the men such a jar in their arms that many threw down their tools and refused to work any more. At Blea Moor, where the line is 1151 ft. above sea-level, two thousand men v/ere engaged for over four years on embankment, tunnel, and viaduct. The tunnel, through the grit, limestone, and shale of the flank of Whernside, was made by working from both ends and from seven intermediate shafts, some of them 500 ft. or more deep, the rock hard enough to stand blasting but not stable enough to be left without a lining; and the dynamite and gun-cotton had all to be carted from Carlisle or Newcastle at a cost of £200 a ton.

From Blea Moor the line rises generally to the summit level at Ais Gill, 1167 ft., passing over Fell End Gill, 100 ft. below, by the Dent Head viaduct, and then on through Black Moss tunnel and three other tunnels and forty-seven cuttings, and over four other viaducts, one of which is 145 ft. high, sixty-eight road bridges and a hundred culverts. Down from Ais Gill the road is quite as varied, and near Dry Beck it is taken over an embankment containing 400,000 cubic yards. "As two and a half or three such yards of stuff," says F. S. Williams, whose description of the line all should read, "would quite fill a tip wagon, it is plain that at least 133,000 separate journeys had to be taken, and 133,000 such loads had to be filled and emptied, before even this one work could be completed."

At the curve of the Eden just before High Stand Gill a landslip took place, and five acres of ground began to move; the space between the line and the river blew up, unable to resist the pressure of the embankment, and slid down towards the water. It had been known at the outset that this spot would be troublesome, and it had been said that no railway could be carried here. But Crossley took the line across the slope, and, though the incline of the bank was 200 ft. from top to bottom, and the bank slipped and carried with it trees forty or fifty years old for a distance of 150 ft., driving the river sideways actually into the next parish, the difficulty was overcome. Such is the road over mountain and moorland by which The Midland goes through to the north.

There is no better permanent way than The Midland, and none better kept. The sleepers are rectangular, 9 ft. long, 10 in. wide, 5 in. thick, and laid 2.78 ft. apart from centre to centre, reduced to 2.17 ft. where there is a joint between; the 45-ft. bullhead rails weigh 100 lb. per yard and the chairs weigh 55 lb. each. In 1875 the Settle & Carlisle was laid with rails weighing 83 lb. to the yard and rolled in 24-ft. lengths; but what was good enough then is of no use now, when trains are twice as long and thrice as heavy.

The Midland is fortunate in its scenery. On the Settle & Carlisle the natural features are on a large scale, and the views, when not in the tunnels and cuttings, are singularly grand and wild. On the North British continuation to Edinburgh, the so-called Waverley route, the landscape becomes more comprehensible and its charms are great; but there is no more picturesque road than that through Derbyshire, where the details of the landscape are just of the right size to be appreciated by the railway traveller.

It was for this line to Liverpool that Pullman cars were introduced into this country, the curve at Marple being specially built to suit them. The cars arrived in pieces and were put together at Derby. On St. Patrick's Day 1874 they were used for the first time as a special train for the officials of the line from Derby to St. Pancras, and with two three-minute stops the distance was run in two hours and a half, a speed of 75 miles an hour, The Midland trial speed, being at times attained. On the 1st of June the train of five cars began regular running between St. Pancras and Bradford; and on the 1st of April 1875, the Marple curve being ready, they were put on the Liverpool road, and a midnight sleeping-car was run from London to Liverpool in addition.

That, however, was not the first sleeping-carriage used on our home railways, for on the 1st of October 1873 the North Western began running on the West Coast route to Glasgow a sleeping-carriage that was 33 feet long. At first it ran on alternate days in the Limited Mail, but other similar sleepers were built and began running daily in each direction on the 1st of February 1874, more than a year before the Pullmans. These Pullman cars had a most important influence on our rolling stock. At first they were said to be dangerous, but it was soon found that the safest carriage in the train was that behind the Pullman, then that it was no safer than the Pullman itself, and then the smoothness of the running led to the introduction of the present style of long carriages with the four-wheeled bogies.

The first Pullmans had the buffet or travelling bar; and all the breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, and suppers now served on railway journeys can be traced back to the luncheon served on the Pullman train at the trial trip in 1874 by Spiers & Pond, who came from Melbourne to vastly improve our railway refreshment arrangements, and, beginning with the Metropolitan, had then extended to the Chatham & Dover and Great Eastern, and many of The Midland Stations.

At the end of 1874 The Midland had four classes running, the Pullmans, for which extra fares were paid, and the ordinary firsts, seconds, and thirds, but on the 1st of January 1875 the company withdrew the second class amid many prophecies of early bankruptcy. Later on in the year, amid another outburst of alarm from the competing companies, who talked of its being "a pampering of the working classes" and "a blow struck at second class throughout the kingdom," The Midland had the temerity to announce that for the future all its third-class carriages would have cushioned seats. This was a great reform, the third class of those days being in many instances not much better than packing cases. All its second-class carriages became thirds, and an immense number of old thirds were broken up. Never before or since was there such a scrapping of obsolete rolling stock; and if some of our other companies, notably in the south, were to follow that heroic example to-day, it would be all the better for them, particularly on suburban lines where they are complaining of the competition of the trams.

Anyhow, let it be remembered that it is to The Midland the public owe third class by all trains and the disappearance of the cushionless thirds on the north-going lines. It was the pioneer of fast and cheap travelling, and if, as Mr. Ac worth said some twenty years ago, "Sir James Allport, in urging his proposals upon The Midland Board, mistook the interest of his shareholders'' - which he did not - "there can be no denying that upon the population of the country at large he conferred a boon that entitles him to rank with Rowland Hill as a benefactor of his species."

Allport was the greatest Midland manager. He was The Midland personified, the Bismarck of railway policy, the Nunquam Dormio of the line. Born at Birmingham in 1811, he became in 1839 chief clerk of the Birmingham & Derby, of which he soon became manager, signalising his term of office by being one of the first to propose the Railway Clearing House system, and taking a conspicuous part in the first battle of railway rates. When the amalgamation took place that formed The Midland, Allport was one of those for whom no place was found, and Hudson immediately snapped him up and made him manager of the Newcastle & Darlington, which under him extended into the York, Newcastle & Berwick, for which Robert Stephen-son built the High-Level Bridge over the Tyne and the Border Bridge over the Tweed.

In 1850 he became General Manager of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire, and in October 1853 he was placed in office on The Midland in a similar capacity. After four years he retired to manage Palmer's shipbuilding works at Jarrow. Within six months, however, he was made a Midland director; and in 1857, being obviously the only man for the post, he returned to the general managership, which he held for twenty years until he became a director again. During that score of years The Midland was in the forefront of railway progress. Backed up from 1873 to 1879 by one of the best of chairmen, Mr. E. S. Ellis, whom he succeeded on the Board, he made The Midland great by showing what a great railway could do.

He took the line from London to Carlisle, and he also took it to the Channel. In 1874 the Evercreech route was opened from Bath, whence, by the Somerset & Dorset, which it owns jointly with the London & South Western, The Midland reaches Poole and Bournemouth. In 1879, by a joint line with the North Eastern to Knottingley, it began to run its trains into York; and in 1893 it became owners with the Great Northern of the Eastern & Midlands, making it The Midland & Great Northern Joint, and so reached the North Sea from Cromer down to Lowestoft. Next year it opened the Dore & Chinley branch, giving shorter communication between Sheffield and Manchester, a line of twenty miles of which more than a quarter is through tunnels, on it being Totley, between the valleys of the Sheaf and the Derwent, the longest of our land tunnels, its length being 6230 yards, that is over three miles and a half, only 1446 yards shorter than the Severn, which is our longest river tunnel.

Even in these days of tube railways the question of the length of our tunnels frequently arises, and it may as well be dealt with here. There are two more which are over three miles long, these being Standedge on the North Western, a triple tunnel measuring 3 miles 62 yards, and Woodhead on the Great Central, a double tunnel measuring 3 miles 27 yards. There are five whose length is over two miles - Chipping Sodbury, on the Great Western, which is 2 miles 913 yards; Disley, near New Mills on The Midland, which is 2 miles 346 yards; Bramhope, between Leeds and Harrogate on the North Eastern, which is 2 miles 225 yards; Festiniog, on the North Western, which is 2 miles 206 yards; and Cowburn, on the Dore & Chinley branch of The Midland, which is 2 miles 182 yards. There are more than thirty others over a mile in length, and these are much too numerous to mention.