The London, Brighton, & South Coast page 3

Having adopted electricity for signalling, the Brighton proceeded to introduce electrical working for its trains, and began the electrification of the South London. This meant the special equipment within the station of five platform lines and two through roads; and the installation all the nine miles to London Bridge of the overhead system on a new sort of support, an undertaking of some difficulty owing to the low bridges and the curved tunnels at Denmark Hill, and the nature of the embankments, some of which had to have piles driven in to give a firm foundation.

The conductor, a heavy, grooved, solid half-inch wire, is, unlike most we know of, supported at every few feet by dropper wires hung from two-stranded steel cables hanging from large porcelain insulators through a double insulation tested to ten times the working pressure; and it is divided into sections at each station, so that any section can be isolated when required. The current collector bow is not of the fishing-rod type but a collapsible framework, the result of much endeavour to find something that would work satisfactorily at high speeds within a vertical range of 7 ft., the height of the conductor varying between 14 and 21, the latter at the terminal stations where the men have to work on the roof of the train.

The current comes to Queen's Road Station from the London Electric Supply at Deptford, and is certainly treated with respect, for never before were such precautions taken to switch it off at any accidental attempt to get near it. Even in the coaches the secret cupboard is only accessible to the railwaymen when all high-tension connections are earthed, for the door cannot be opened until all is safe within. This is the smartest of the electric lines, but then the Brighton can be very smart if it likes; and not only do the long 60-ft. coaches look well in the new colours of the company - popularly known as chocolate and cream - but they are well arranged and easily entered.

How smart the Brighton can be is shown by that excellent train the Southern Belle, designed complete to be "the most luxurious train in the world." Here are seven cars, built by the Pullman company, each car 63 ft. 10 in. in length, that is to say it is a train 500 ft. long with the engine, and it is seated to hold 219 people. It is heated with hot water, and installed with electric bells, electric light, and electric ventilation; and its interior decoration is as good as money can make it. You can take your choice of the Grosvenor car with its quiet Adams treatment of mahogany and satinwood, and its green morocco chairs and settees; or of the Cleopatra - in the Pergolesi manner - with its satinwood and sycamore, greenwood and tulipwood and box, and its profusely decorated panels, pilasters, and friezes, and take your ease in its velvet chairs, in soft blue touched with gold, that harmonise so well with the deep rose carpet; or of the Bessborough with its striped mahogany and satinwood and kingwood trellis, and try its drab cloth upholstery; or of the Princess Helen with its plum-pudding mahogany framed in purple king-wood, and its comfortable chairs in green and drab striped moquette; or of the Belgravia - Pergolesi again - with its pear and holly inlays, and its blue velvet sofas and seats; or of the Albert or Verona - Renaissance these - with the cabinet work in wainscot oak and holly, and the upholstery in coffee colour. And when you are tired of the view through the windows, that come down nearly to the floor, you can look at yourself in the mirrors which some people seem to delight in. It is a handsome train, well worth the twelve shillings, that is less than threehalfpence a mile, for the double ride in it, and it travels well, giving a really comfortable run of the fifty miles within the hour, which is not so bad considering that the end of its journey is its first stop out of London and it cannot let itself go until it passes Purley; but it will move faster when the time comes.

The same can be said of the 8.45 out of Brighton, which is not so richly decorated but just as good for the average man; and it is a noteworthy train, for it was the first on which breakfast was served, the car on the down journey being used for afternoon tea; and that is going back some years, the Brighton having begun to run Pullman cars in 1879. This 8.45 train weighs 336f tons, made up as follows: first-class brake 25½ tons, first-class coach 27 tons, first-class coach 28½ tons, three Pullmans 28 tons each - 84 tons - first-class coach 27 tons, first-class saloon 26¼ tons, first-class saloon brake 26½ tons, first-class brake 25 tons, Pullman car 40 tons, first-class coach 27 tons. Add to this 12¼ tons as the estimated weight of the passengers, and we have 349 tons. There is an object in giving these particulars, for the train is now frequently worked by one of Mr. Marsh's wonderful tank engines, which run their 200 miles on 3½ tons of coal.

Let us take No. 21. It weighs 73 tons. Thus the 8.45 with engine complete weighs 422 tons. These tanks are the heaviest engines on the line; the Atlantics that usually work the Southern Belle weigh 67 tons, that is 96½ tons with the 29½-ton tender. The boiler is 10 ft. 9 7/8 in. long and 4 ft. 10 in. in external diameter; the cylinders are placed at an inclination of 1 in 9½ and are 19 in. in diameter and have a 26-in. stroke; the firebox is 7 ft. 7 in. externally and 3 ft. 4 11/16 in. wide; the heating surface is larger than in any other tank engines, the tubes giving 1499 and the firebox 126, making up 1625 sq. ft.; the grate area is 24 sq. ft.; there are 315 tubes of If in. in diameter and 11 ft. 2 15/16 in. in length; the bogie wheels measure 3 ft. 6 in., the trailing wheels 4 ft., and the coupled driving wheels 6 ft. 9 in. The trailing end is carried on a 2-wheel truck; the frames are 37 ft. 5½ in. long, and are spaced at 4 ft. 8½ in. until within 6 ft. 6 in. of the hinder end, when they close in to 3 ft. 3½ in. so as to allow for the clearance of the trailing wheels on curves, and in front they are cut away from the bogie wheels. Pearson's Bristol & Exeter tanks would have made a very poor show alongside these 73 tonners that occasionally take the 11 o'clock (314¾ tons) down to Brighton in fifty-five minutes.

The first two engines used by the Brighton company were the Merstham and Coulsdon, and they weighed when empty 12½ tons. Of them and their successors the story is told in detail in that excellent work The Locomotives of The London, Brighton, & South Coast Railway, in which there seems to be a record of every one from the beginning to 1893, not at all an easy task considering the bewildering way in which names and numbers were shifted about. The London & Croydon list, which was soon cut short by the amalgamation, went back to 1838 with the Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, all, however, of 12½ tons. Up to 1849 the Brighton engines were lagged with polished mahogany and bound with brass, or the lagging was plain wood painted red and green in alternate stripes; up to 1870 those that were not polished were painted Brunswick green banded with black and thinly lined with white, the frames being crimson; then they were painted gamboge, and now they are umber brown.

Of some of the old engines there are interesting stories. No. 82, for instance, on the 6th of June 1851 was running down the incline between Falmer and Lewes when it ran off the line at the Newmarket Arch, and, dragging two carriages with it, fell into the bridle-road below, killing three of the passengers and the fireman on the spot. The reason was that a shepherd boy had placed a sleeper across the north rail. The boy was tried and the jury found him not guilty. Twelve months afterwards, on the same day of the same month, at the same spot where that sleeper was put, the same boy was killed by a stroke of lightning.

No. 79, one of the same class, had a curious adventure in October 1859. At five o'clock in the dark morning she was in the shed at Petworth, when, the fire having been put in two hours before, she had 15 lb. of steam. The cleaner wanted to move the engine to clean certain parts he could not get at in the position she was placed, and he went out to ask the fireman, who was resting in a hut close by, to do this. As he came back he heard the beat of an engine, and, thinking another one was coming, ran back to the fireman to tell him he need not mind, as the newcomer could do what was wanted. The fireman, however, was just starting, and the two returned to the shed to find that the engine had disappeared! Looking along the line they caught sight of the steam; and they ran off in chase. The engine was moving so slowly that they nearly caught her, the cleaner getting his hand on the buffer when he fell from exhaustion. The fireman collapsed when close behind; and No. 79 went on her way, gaining speed as she went for 17½ miles, crashing through three sets of gates at level crossings and carrying off pieces of them on the buffer beam. Fortunately a cleaner from Horsham who was walking down the line saw the engine approaching, and thinking from the wreckage on the buffers that something was wrong, watched to see who was on the footplate. Finding nobody, he jumped onto her as she passed and shut off the steam just in time to prevent any further damage being done.

These engines belonged to a class of twelve supplied by Sharp, Roberts & Co. in 1847 and 1848, the company building none of its own until 1852. The older ones were most miscellaneous. Four were built by the Kennies; seven were built by Bury; three came from the Fairbairns; one, from J. G. Bodmer, had two pistons to each cylinder which worked simultaneously in opposite directions; four came from the Hawthorns; four long boilers came from Jones & Potts; thirty from Sharp; a dozen from Hack worth, which had inside boxes for the driving wheels and outside boxes for the leaders and trailers, being the predecessors of the Jenny Linds; and nine came from E. B. Wilson.

The first superintendent to produce a home-made, Brighton engine was Mr. J. C. Craven. This was No. 14, a tank 2-2-2 with 13 in. cylinders and a 20-in. stroke, the length over all being 24 ft. 6 in., and the weight, with 625 gallons in the tank, 25 tons. Ten years afterwards, after a series of what were practically samples, came the introduction of the well-known Brighton type with the leading and driving wheels coupled. The first were Nos. 155 and 156, and they had 16 by 20 cylinders, and weighed 26 tons 14 cwt. Next year came the London and the Brighton with cylinders 17 by 22 and 84-in. driving wheels, the largest ever used on the line; their heating surface was 1238 and their weight 32 tons 11 cwt. These were followed by Nos. 172 and 173, the first of these being afterwards named Chichester, while the other became the first engine to be painted yellow. This Chichester was scrapped in 1886, the Chichester that followed in 1887 being one of twelve built by Robert Stephenson & Co. in 1864, among which were the Paris, the first engine named by Mr. Stroudley, and the Sussex, which after being rebuilt in 1871 was well known as the fastest on the line. As altered, she had 17-in. cylinders with a 23-in. stroke, a heating surface of 1288, and weighed 36 tons 6 cwt.

When Mr. Craven was succeeded by Mr. Stroudley in 1871, he is said to have left behind him no less than seventy-two classes of engines, and Mr. Stroudley increased them by his alterations and repairs until he found sufficient reasons for clearing most of them out. The first he built of his own design were two 6-coupled goods engines, Nos. 84 and 85. These had 17½ by 26 cylinders, a heating surface of 1414, and a weight of 38 tons 12 cwt. In October 1872 he put on the line the Wapping, the first of his famous fifty terriers, the last of which, Crowborough, appeared in September 1880. Originally these had 13-in. cylinders, but the last had them of 14 in., and many of the others had this size put in afterwards to the improvement of their appearance, for a 13-in. terrier had hot water in the tank which burnt the paint off, while in the 14-in. ones the whole of the exhaust went up the chimney, and the boiler was fed with cold water. These small 6-coupled tanks were much more powerful than might be supposed. One of them, the Brighton, gained a medal at the Paris Exhibition in 1878, and bore a notice to that effect painted on her tank for many years. While she was in France the Brighton representatives inquired if the Quest company, which then owned the route from Dieppe to Paris, would quicken up their service a little. "To what speed?" asked the Frenchmen. "Forty miles an hour at the least." "Impossible! No engine can do it on our road." "Yes, the Brighton will." The Frenchmen being incredulous, the little engine was put in steam and hitched on to the French train, and away she went from Paris to Dieppe with the directors on board at nearer fifty than forty. And the Quest woke up and has continued to go ahead although it now belongs to the State.

These terriers had 4-ft. wheels, the piston stroke was 20 in., their heating surface was 518, their length was half an inch over 26 ft., they carried 27 cubic ft. of coals and 500 gallons of water, and their weight in working order was 24 tons 7 cwt. They were the A class. The D class proved just as useful, and there were 125 of them, the first being the Sydenham in 1873. These 0-4-2's with 66-in. coupled wheels and 54-in. trailers weighed 38½ tons, and were 31 ft. 7½ in. long; and they were given 17 by 24 cylinders, a heating surface of 1043, and worked at a pressure of 150. About a year after their first appearance Mr. Stroudley built the Grosvenor, his first single express; those who would know all about that famous engine, inside and out, will find it in Locomotive, Engine Driving, by Michael Reynolds, a detailed study in which every part down to the minutest is shown with its working and inter-working. She is a 2-2-2 with 81-in. driving wheels, weighing 33 tons, and in her long life there seems to have been no work on the line she was not tried at and could not do.

Meanwhile he had started his 6-coupled goods tanks of the E class, of which there were 72. After these, in 1876, came the D 2's designed for the fast fruit traffic from Worthing, and the express goods from Newhaven, and found so useful that they were put on to excursions and general passenger work. Finding front-coupled engines in every way suited to his purposes, he introduced the D 3 class - Richmond, Devonshire, etc. - for his Brighton and London expresses. These were given 78 in. coupled wheels, cylinders 17½ by 26, a heating surface of 1182, and weighed 36 tons; the Gladstone, or B, class followed in 1882, with cylinders of 18¼ in. by 26 in. in one casting, a heating surface of 1485, and a weight of 38¾ tons. The Gladstone's cost £2550 each, and there are 36 of them.