The London, Brighton, & South Coast page 4

On Mr. Stroudley's death in December 1889 Mr. Billinton took his place, and soon began to design engines more suitable for the heavier traffic, all of them easily known, as, unlike the Stroudleys, they have no copper caps on their chimneys. In 1891 came the tanks with four wheels coupled and the trailing bogie, the heating surface being 1203, the weight 48 tons 9 cwt., and the pressure 160; then came the six wheels coupled, 0-6-2 radial tanks with 54-in. wheels, the trailers being 48 in.; sixteen of these were put to work, and then followed the somewhat similar class with 60-in. wheels. In June 1895 came the Charles C. Macrae, the first of a new class of 4-coupled expresses with a leading bogie. This was turning the Brighton type the other way round, and the wheels were in a different proportion, the bogies being 42 and the drivers and leaders 81. The boiler was 10 ft. 7¼ in. by 4 ft. 5 in. The Bessemer of 1898 was of this type, with a boiler of 4 ft. 8 in., and next year there appeared the Siemens, the first of a powerful class with 19 by 26 cylinders, 1635 heating surface, and a boiler of 4 ft. 10 in. diameter. There were twenty of these, including His Majesty, Emperor, Empress, and others well known to the passengers by the line. They weigh 49 tons, nearly four times what the first engines did, and have a heating surface more than three times as great. This was in 1902, and now with their successors, which are nameless - and a good thing too if their names were to be those of stations - we have reached 67 tons for tender engines and 73 for tanks; and the number of engines -is about 550, and that of the vehicles they draw is over 13,000.

That the Brighton engines are fitted with the Westing-house brake everybody knows by the pumping that goes on while they are at rest in a station. The donkey-pump by the side of the engine is pumping air into the main reservoir beneath the engine until it is at a pressure of from 75 to 80 lb. By means of the driver's brake-valve that air will be turned into the brake-pipe - the pipe that hangs in a loop between the buffers - extending from carriage to carriage all along the train. Communicating with this under each carriage is a small reservoir in which the compressed air is stored, and in communication with that is the brake-cylinder by its side containing a piston and rod by means of which the four blocks are applied to each wheel. What happens is, that so long as the pressure is uniform the brakes are off; but as soon as air escapes from the brake-pipe a triple valve under the carriage admits compressed air from the small reservoir to the cylinder, which brings the piston and rod into action. As soon as the brake-pipe is recharged with compressed air, the triple valve lifts and cuts off the reservoir from the cylinder, thus releasing the pressure from the back of the piston, which is brought home by a helical spring so as to release the blocks from the wheels.

The Westinghouse brake is used among others by the Caledonian, the Great Eastern, the Great North of Scotland, the London, Tilbury, & Southend, the North British, the North Eastern and the Chatham section of the South-Eastern & Chatham, but owing to the running of through carriages and trucks, etc., many of their engines, like some of those of the Brighton, are fitted with two brakes, the other of which is the Automatic Vacuum. This is the brake used on the Great Central, the Great Northern, the Great Western, the London & North Western, the London & South Western, the Midland, and indeed most of the other lines.

This works on the opposite principle, though it is not quite true that no pump is used, for a few of the companies work a pump off the cross-heads of the engine for maintaining the vacuum while running. Anyhow, under every carriage is a cylinder and reservoir and a train-pipe coupled up from carriage to carriage to the reservoir on the engine. At the bottom of the cylinder is a valve in which there is a small brass ball working horizontally, and therefore with practically no friction, which closes the entrance to the vacuum chamber but allows the outside air to enter beneath the piston. The air is not compressed, but exhausted by means of an injector on the engine, the working pressure of the vacuum thus caused being 20 in. below that of the atmosphere. So long as the vacuum is maintained the brakes are off; but as soon as air is admitted, intentionally or unintentionally, the vacuum in the top of the brake-cylinder is affected, the ball-valve acts, and the pressure of the outside air in the bottom of the cylinder forces up the piston which works the lever and pull-rods and brings the brake-blocks into action on the wheels. To release the brake, the driver works the injector until the vacuum in the pipe is equal to that in the reservoir and above the piston, when the valve between the reservoir and pipe opens of itself and piston and lever fall by their own weight, assisted by spiral springs. The piston has an area of 314 sq. in., which means that a 20-in. vacuum exerts a pressure of 10 lb. per square inch, or a pull of nearly a ton and a half on the brake-rods, when brought fully into action; but this can be adjusted to anything less at the will of the driver or guard, just as the Westinghouse can be manipulated. It all depends on the operator, and, as most of us are aware, the examples of "the brake and how to use it" vary considerably.

Brakes have been many and strange. At one time the guard rode outside on an unprotected seat at the back of the carriage, and applied the brake by turning on a hand-screw; the dust, smoke, steam, and smother through which he went making his position anything but desirable. Then he was placed inside the carriage, and had a different sort of brake on almost every line. Then it began to be recognised that the brake should not be confined to one or two vans or carriages, but should be applied to all, in fact should be continuous; and in 1873 there was a series of trials of continuous brakes at Newark in which various systems were experimented with, some mechanical, some hydraulic, some pneumatic. The conditions, however, were so ill-provided for that the results were unconvincing, and each of the patentees went away from the refreshment tent at Rolleston Junction self-satisfied that his own system was the best. The Midland sent three trains, two with hydraulic brakes and one with the Westing-house, which they had brought over with the Pullman cars; and the Brighton train, was also fitted with the Westinghouse, which the company has retained ever since, although the Midland has abandoned it for the Automatic Vacuum. For years the North Western persisted with Clarke & Webb's, by which the momentum of the train was utilised as the power, but at length this was replaced by the Simple Vacuum and then by the Automatic Vacuum, with discouraging results, for soon after it was introduced a North Western train so fitted ran through Carlisle station into a Midland engine, the brake failing owing to an accumulation of ice in the droop of the brake-pipe!

The battle of the brakes was almost as strenuous as that of the gauges, but things have now settled down into quietude with the two we have described sharing the country between them. What the state of affairs used to be may be gathered from the fact that in 1884 the Royal train was fitted with three systems of brakes to ensure its safety on the different lines on which it ran to the north.

Besides the brake-pump at the side every Brighton engine has, in the cab, a speed indicator, the glass tube with the brass scale behind it that shows by the height of the water the rate the engine is running. And in the cab, and more noticeable, is the name of the driver painted up with a record of the number of miles run, some of the mileages looking rather astronomical in their amount. For here the good old custom still prevails of every driver having his own engine, as if it were his own horse, to look after, and be responsible for its fitness and appearance, the practice always having had the result of keeping the engines well up to the mark, and in as good, or better, trim than any, notwithstanding the hot-water tank business, for which allowances have to be made.

Under the carriages there is another kind of cylinder which must not be mistaken for that of the brake apparatus. This is the holder for the oil-gas by which the carriage is lighted. The gas is made from petroleum in a succession of retorts at high temperatures, and scrubbed and purified much as if made from coals. It is stored in reservoirs, which we see carried about on the line by the trainload, two on each truck; and it is pumped into a receiver, from which it is led in pipes to the standards from which, through flexible tubes, it is passed into the cylinders beneath the carriages at a much higher pressure than that of the compressed air in the brake cylinder, the pressure being reduced to lighting strength by the regulator in the burner. When the Board of Trade required carriages to be lighted as they passed through tunnels, the system first adopted was to stop the train at the nearest station to the tunnel and hang an oil-lamp on to the carriage door on the left, taking off the lamp at the station beyond the tunnel. Then the lamp came to be hung through a hole in the roof of the carriage, and taken in and out in a similar way, until it was found that the cost of the oil burnt was less than that of the labour, and the lamps were left in for longer distances. The smell of the old oil-lamp was not so pungent as that of oil-gas when it escapes while the cylinders are being filled, but it remained much longer with the traveller, and in many cases was more noticeable than the light. That it would be improved upon was inevitable, and there were many inventions, not only with a view to giving better illumination, but mainly to doing away with much handling of lamps.

Among these was lighting by electricity, first adopted by the Brighton line. Its great advantage to the company is that it pays by not being used; that is to say it can be switched on or off as required, instead of being burnt all the time like oil or gas, though there is a new pressure system for gas by which the consumption can be reduced to that of only the pilot light if desired. In working the electric light a dynamo is run, not on the engine, as in America, but from the axle of the guard's van, and this charges an accumulator from which the current is supplied to the lamps, the control being in the hands of the guard; and the cables form another loop between the carriages. The drawback to any system of continuous lighting is the making up and breaking up of trains to suit the varying traffic, but this has been much reduced by the introduction of the system of set-trains, that is trains treated as units, being made up of a certain number of carriages that are never changed about. The brake arrangements had much to do with this, and the lighting arrangements have further encouraged it. Set-trains, however, are not always possible; as an instance take the Sunny South Special, that runs to and from Lancashire and Eastbourne with any number of through carriages for distribution on the road. The Brighton company were the first, or among the first, to run set-trains and to dispense with the buffers in pairs, their South London and other suburban trains being made up of carriages screwed together against a central block.

From the set-train to the motor-coach is an easy step, and many of the small shuttle trains on the short branches have been replaced by the more compact contrivance. The service between West Croydon and Banstead, for instance, is by motor-coach; so are the services between Brighton and Kemp Town, and to West Worthing and to the Dyke, so is that between Havant and Hayling Island; Southsea from Fratton is reached by steam-motor in conjunction with the South Western, and there is even a motor-coach between Chichester and Portsmouth.

The Brighton was the first railway company to run into Portsmouth, the old South Western way being to Gosport and across the harbour by ferry. In 1848 the South Western opened a new route by way of Fareham to Cosham and, coming round by the north, obtained access over the Brighton metals across Port Creek and through the rampart. All went well until the Portsmouth Direct project ended in a proposal to have another way in, which pleased nobody and really forced the South Western to take over the line, a proceeding which led to the battle of Havant and caused ill-feeling between the companies for some years. Peace came at last, and when, in 1857, the Brighton proposed to have a West End terminus in London, the South Western directors were so friendly that they endeavoured to bring about an arrangement that "would have tended to strengthen the bond of union between the two companies" by affording the Brighton accommodation at Waterloo! Fortunately for both companies the Brighton preferred to go to Pimlico, and the bond of union was afterwards found by extending the joint line from Havant Junction to Portsmouth Town on to Portsmouth Harbour. Having shared the line they shared the boats, and divided the Isle of Wight business between them, but this had happened before the opening of the harbour station, when the way to the island was from the town by tram to Southsea pier, with the luggage going astray on the way. Of the Brighton company's twenty terminal stations the next largest to Victoria is Brighton, where the locomotive and carriage works are, the wagon works being at Lancing. London Bridge covers eight acres, a quarter of an acre less, and is the headquarters of the line. It is an old station, or rather the representative of an old station, for it was the terminus of the London & Croydon, the shed which was the first terminus of the London & Greenwich, where the band played the passengers in during December 1838, having been on the Tooley Street side. Enlarged in 1850, and rebuilt fourteen years afterwards, it is conveniently arranged for those who know it, and will be more convenient still when the indicator arrives.

The business it does in the morning is enormous, and the busy time lasts longer than at most stations owing to the numbers of long-distance season ticket-holders for whom the company caters so liberally. When you can travel first class all over the Brighton system for £60 a year, it suits the man of means who is not wanted until eleven o'clock to live in the country.

The nearest important junction is Croydon, where the City and West End lines meet, and the North Western and Great Eastern and East London trains run in with the passengers for the Continent from the north of the Thames; but the largest is Lewes, where six lines meet and the route to Paris goes off to the coast.