THE entrance to Euston
Station is of itself sufficiently imposing. It is a high portico of brown
stone, old and grim, in form a casual imitation, no doubt, of the front of the
temple of Nike Apteros, with a recollection of the Egyptians proclaimed at the
flanks. The frieze, where of old would prance an exuberant processional of
gods, is, in this case, bare of decoration, but upon the epistyle is written in
simple, stern letters the word, "EUSTON." The legend reared high by
the gloomy Pelagic columns stares down a wide avenue. In short, this entrance
to a railway station does not in any resemble the entrance to a railway
station. It is more the front of some venerable bank. But it has another
dignity, which is not born of form. To a great degree, it is to the English and
to those who are in England the gate to Scotland.
The little hansoms are
continually speeding through the gate, dashing between the legs of the solemn
temple; the four-wheelers, their tops crowded with luggage, roll in and out
constantly, and the footways beat under the trampling of the people. Of course,
there are the suburbs and a hundred towns along the line, and Liverpool, the
beginning of an important sea path to America, and the great manufacturing
cities of the North; but if one stands at this gate in August particularly, one
must note the number of men with gun-cases, the number of women who surely
[illustration omitted] have Tam-o'-Shanters and plaids concealed within their
luggage, ready for the moors. There is, during the latter part of that month, a
wholesale flight from London to Scotland which recalls the July throngs leaving
New York for the shore or the mountains.
The hansoms, after
passing through this impressive portal of the station, bowl smoothly across a
courtyard which is in the center of the terminal hotel, an institution dear to
most railways in Europe. The traveler lands amid a swarm of porters, and then
proceeds cheerfully to take the customary trouble for his luggage. America
provides a contrivance in a thousand situations where Europe provides a man or
perhaps a number of men, and the work of our brass check is here done by
porters, directed by the traveler himself. The men lack the memory of the
check; the check never forgets its identity. Moreover, the European railways
generously furnish the porters at the expense of the traveler. Nevertheless, if
these men have not the invincible business precision of the check, and if they
have to be tipped, it can be asserted for those who care that in Europe
one-half of the populace waits on the other half most diligently and well.
Against the masonry of
a platform, under the vaulted arch of the train-house, lay a long string of
coaches. They were painted white on the bulging part, which led half-way down
from the top, and the bodies were a deep bottle-green. There was a group of
porters placing luggage in the van, and a great many others were busy with the
affairs of passengers, tossing smaller bits of luggage into the racks over the
seats, and bustling here and there on short quests. The guard of the train, a
tall man who resembled one of the first Napoleon's veterans, was caring for the
distribution of passengers into the various bins. They were all third and
first-class.
The train was at this
time engineless, but presently a railway "flier," painted a glowing
vermilion, slid modestly down and took its place at the [illustration omitted]
head. The guard walked along the platform, and decisively closed each door. He
wore a dark blue uniform thoroughly decorated with silver braid in the guise of
leaves. The way of him gave to this business the importance of a ceremony.
Meanwhile the fireman had climbed down from the cab and raised his hand, ready
to transfer a signal to the driver, who stood looking at his watch. In the
interval there had something progressed in the large signal-box that stands
guard at Euston. This high house contains many levers, standing in thick,
shining ranks. It perfectly resembles an organ in some great church, if it were
not that these rows of numbered and indexed handles typify something more
acutely human than does a key-board. It requires four men to play this
organ-like thing, and the strains never cease. Night and day, day and night,
these four men are walking to and fro, from this lever to that lever, and under
their hands the great machine raises its endless hymn of a world at work, the
fall and rise of signals and the clicking swing of switches.
And so as the vermilion
engine stood waiting and looking from the shadow of the curve-roofed station, a
man in the signal-house had played the notes which informed the engine of its
freedom. The driver saw the fall of those proper semaphores which gave him
liberty to speak to his steel friend. A certain combination in the economy of
the London and Northwestern Railway, a combination which had spread from the
men who sweep out the carriages through innumerable minds to the general
manager himself, had resulted in the law that the vermilion engine, with its
long string of white and bottle-green coaches, was to start forthwith toward
Scotland.
Presently the fireman,
standing with his face toward the rear, let fall his hand. "All
right," he said. The driver turned a wheel, and as the fireman slipped
back, the train moved along the platform at the pace of a mouse. To those in
the tranquil carriages this starting was probably as easy as the sliding of
one's hand over a greased surface, but in the engine there was more to it. The
monster roared suddenly and loudly, and sprang forward impetuously. A
wrong-headed or maddened draft-horse will plunge in its collar sometimes when
going up a hill. But this load of burdened carriages followed imperturbably at
the gait of turtles. They were not to be stirred from their way of dignified
exit by the impatient engine. The crowd of porters and transient people stood
respectful. They looked with the indefinite wonder of the railway-station
sight-seer upon the faces at the windows of the passing coaches. This train was
off for Scotland. It had started from the home of one accent to the home of
another accent. It was going from manner to manner, from habit to habit, and in
the minds of these London spectators there surely floated dim images of the
traditional kilts, the burring speech, the grouse, the canniness, the oat-meal,
all the elements of a romantic Scotland.
The train swung
impressively around the signal-house, and headed up a brick-walled cut. In
starting this heavy string of coaches, the engine breathed explosively. It
gasped, and heaved, and bellowed; once, for a moment, the wheels spun on the
rails, and a convulsive tremor shook the great steel frame.
The train itself,
however, moved through this deep cut in the body of London with coolness and
precision, and the employees of the railway, knowing the train's mission, tacitly
presented arms at its passing. To the travelers in the carriages, the suburbs
of London must have been one long monotony of carefully made walls of stone or
brick. But after the hill was climbed, the train fled through pictures of red
habitations of men on a green earth.
But the noise in the
cab did not greatly change its measure. Even though the speed was now high, the
tremendous thumping to be heard in the cab was as alive with strained effort
and as slow in beat as the breathing of a half-drowned man. At the side of the
track, for instance, the sound doubtless would strike the ear in the familiar
succession of incredibly rapid puffs; but in the cab itself, this land-racer
breathes very like its friend, the marine engine. Everybody who has spent time
on shipboard has forever in his head a reminiscence of the steady and
methodical pounding of the engines, and perhaps it is curious that this
relative, which can whirl over the land at such a pace, breathes in the
leisurely tones that a man heeds when he lies awake at night in his berth.
There had been no fog
in London, but here on the edge of the city a heavy wind was blowing, and the
driver leaned aside and yelled that it was a very bad day for traveling on an
engine. The engine-cabs of England, as of all Europe, are seldom made for the
comfort of the men. One finds very often this apparent disregard for the man
who does the work--this indifference to the man who occupies a position which
for the exercise of temperance, of courage, of honesty, has no equal at the
altitude of prime ministers. The American engineer is the gilded occupant of a
salon in comparison with his brother in Europe. The man who was guiding this
five-hundred-ton bolt, aimed by the officials of the railway at Scotland, could
not have been as comfortable as a shrill gibbering boatman of the Orient. The
narrow and bare bench at his side of the cab was not directly intended for his
use, because it was so low that he would be prevented by it from looking out of
the ship's port-hole which served him as a window. The fireman, on his side,
had other difficulties. His legs would have had to straggle over some pipes at
the only spot where there was a prospect, and the builders had also
strategically placed a large steel bolt. Of course it is plain that the
companies consistently believe that the men will do their work better if they
are kept standing. The roof of the cab was not altogether a roof. It was merely
a projection of two feet of metal from the bulkhead which formed the front of
the cab. There were practically no sides to it, and the large cinders from the
soft coal whirled around in sheets. From time to time the driver took a
handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his blinking eyes.
London was now well to
the rear. The vermilion engine had been for some time flying like the wind.
This train averages, between London and Carlisle, forty-nine and nine-tenth
miles an hour. It is a distance of 299 miles. There is one stop. It occurs at
Crewe, and endures five minutes. In consequence, the block-signals flashed by
seemingly at the end of the moment in which they were sighted.
There can be no
question of the statement that the road-beds of English railways are at present
immeasurably superior to the American road-beds. Of course there is a clear
reason. It is known to every traveler that peoples of the Continent of Europe
have no right at all to own railways. Those lines of travel are too childish
and trivial for expression. A correct fate would deprive the Continent of its
railways, and give them to somebody who knew about them. The continental idea
of a railway is to surround a mass of machinery with forty rings of
ultra-military [illustration omitted] law, and then they believe they have one
complete. The Americans and the English are the railway peoples. That our
road-beds are poorer than the English road-beds is because of the fact that we
were suddenly obliged to build thousands upon thousands of miles of railway,
and the English were obliged to slowly build tens upon tens of miles. A road-bed
from New York to San Francisco, with stations, bridges, and crossings of the
kind that the London and Northwestern owns from London to Glasgow, would cost a
sum large enough to support the German army for a term of years. The whole way
is constructed with the care that inspired the creators of some of our now
obsolete forts along the Atlantic coast. An American engineer, with his
knowledge of the difficulties he had to encounter--the wide rivers with
variable banks, the mountain chains, perhaps the long spaces of absolute
desert; in fact, all the perplexities of a vast and somewhat new country--would
not dare spent a respectable portion of his allowance on seventy feet of
granite wall over a gully, when he knew he could make an embankment with little
cost by heaving up the dirt and stones from here and there. But the English
road is all made in the pattern by which the Romans built their highways. After
England is dead, savants will find narrow streaks of masonry leading from ruin
to ruin. Of course this does not always seem convincingly admirable. It
sometimes resembles energy poured into a rat-hole. There is a vale between
expediency and the convenience of posterity, a mid-ground which enables men to
surely benefit the hereafter people by valiantly advancing the present; and the
point is that, if some laborers live in unhealthy tenements in Cornwall, one is
likely to view with incomplete satisfaction the record of long and patient
labor and thought displayed by an eight-foot drain for a non-existent, impossible
rivulet in the North. This sentence does not sound strictly fair, but the
meaning one wishes to convey is that, if an English company spies in its dream
the ghost of an ancient valley that later becomes a hill, it would construct
for it a magnificent steel trestle, and consider that a duty had been performed
in proper accordance with the company's conscience. But after all is said of
it, the accidents and the miles of railway operated in England is not in
proportion to the accidents and the miles of railway operated in the United
States. The reason can be divided into three parts--older conditions, superior
caution, and road-bed. And of these, the greatest is older conditions.
In this flight toward
Scotland one seldom encountered a grade crossing. In nine cases out of ten
there was either a bridge or a tunnel. The platforms of even the remote country
stations were all of ponderous masonry in contrast to our constructions of
planking. There was always to be seen, as we thundered toward a station of this
kind, a number of porters in uniform, who requested the retreat of any one who
had not the wit to give us plenty of room. And then, as the shrill warning of
the whistle pierced even the uproar that was about us, came the wild joy of the
rush past a station. It was something in the nature of a triumphal procession
conducted at thrilling speed. Perhaps there was a curve of infinite grace, a
sudden hollow explosive effect made by the passing of a signal-box that was
close to the track, and then the deadly lunge to shave the edge of a long
platform. There were always a number of people standing afar, with their eyes
riveted upon this projectile, and to be on the engine was to feel their
interest and admiration in the terror and grandeur of this sweep. A boy allowed
to ride with the driver of the band-wagon as a circus parade winds through one
of our village streets could not exceed for egotism the temper of a new man in
the cab of a train like this one. This valkyrie journey on the back of the
vermilion engine, with the shouting of the wind, the deep, mighty panting of
the steed, the gray blur at the track-side, the flowing quicksilver ribbon of
the other rails, the sudden clash as a switch intersects, all the din and fury
of this ride, was of a splendor that caused one to look abroad at the quiet,
green landscape and believe that it was of a phlegm quite beyond patience. It
should have been dark, rain-shot, and windy; thunder should have rolled across
its sky.
It seemed, somehow,
that if the driver should for a moment take his hands from his engine, it might
swerve from the track as a horse from the road. Once, indeed, as he stood
wiping his fingers on a bit of waste, there must have been something ludicrous
in the way the solitary passenger regarded him. Without those finely firm hands
on the bridle, the engine might rear and bolt for the pleasant farms lying in
the sunshine at either side.
This driver was worth
contemplation. He was simply a quiet, middle-aged man, bearded, and with the
little wrinkles of habitual geniality and kindliness spreading from the eyes
toward the temple, who stood at his post always gazing out, through his round
window, while, from time to time, his hands went from here to there over his
levers. He seldom changed either attitude or expression. There surely is no
engine- driver who does not feel the beauty of the business, but the emotion
lies deep, and mainly inarticulate, as it does in the mind of a man who has
experienced a good and beautiful wife for many years. This driver's face
displayed nothing but the cool sanity of a man whose thought was buried
intelligently in his business. If there was any fierce drama in it, there was
no sign upon him. He was so lost in dreams of speed and signals and steam, that
one speculated if the wonder of his tempestuous charge and its career over
England touched him, this impassive rider of a fiery thing.
It should be a
well-known fact that, all over the world, the engine-driver is the finest type
of man that is grown. He is the pick of the earth. He is altogether more worthy
than the soldier, and better than the men who move on the sea in ships. He is
not paid too much; nor do his glories weight his brow; but for outright
performance, carried on constantly, coolly, and without elation, by a temperate,
honest, clear minded man, he is the further point. And so the lone human at his
station in a cab, guarding money, lives, and the honor of the road, is a
beautiful sight. The whole thing is aesthetic. The fireman presents the same
charm, but in [illustration omitted] a less degree, in that he is bound to
appear as an apprentice to the finished manhood of the driver. In his eyes,
turned always in question and confidence toward his superior, one finds this
quality; but his aspirations are so direct that one sees the same type in
evolution.
There may be a popular
idea that the fireman's principal function is to hang his head out of the cab
and sight interesting objects in the landscape. As a matter of fact, he is
always at work. The dragon is insatiate. The fireman is continually swinging
open the furnace-door, whereat a red shine flows out upon the floor of the cab,
and shoveling in immense mouthfuls of coal to a fire that is almost diabolic in
its madness. The feeding, feeding, feeding goes on until it appears as if it is
the muscles of the fireman's arms that are speeding the long train. An engine
running over sixty-five miles an hour, with 500 tons to drag, has an appetite
in proportion to this task.
View of the
clear-shining English scenery is often interrupted between London and Crewe by
long and short tunnels. The first one was disconcerting. Suddenly one knew that
the train was shooting toward a black mouth in the hills. It swiftly yawned
wider, and then in a moment the engine dove into a place inhabited by every
demon of wind and noise. The speed had not been checked, and the uproar was so
great that in effect one was simply standing at the center of a vast,
black-walled sphere. The tubular construction which one's reason proclaimed had
no meaning at all. It was a black sphere, alive with shrieks. But then on the
surface of it there was to be seen a little needle-point of light, and this
widened to a detail of unreal landscape. It was the world; the train was going
to escape from this cauldron, this abyss of howling darkness. If a man looks
through the brilliant water of a tropical pool, he can sometimes see coloring
the marvels at the bottom the blue that was on the sky and the green that was
on the foliage of this detail. And the picture shimmered in the heat-rays of a
new and remarkable sun. It was when the train bolted out into the open air that
one knew that it was his own earth.
Once train met train in
a tunnel. Upon the painting in the perfectly circular frame formed by the mouth
there appeared a black square with sparks bursting from it. This square
expanded until it hid everything, and a moment later came the crash of the
passing. It was enough to make a man lose his sense of balance. It was a
momentary inferno when the fireman opened the furnace-door and was bathed in
blood-red light as he fed the fires.
The effect of a tunnel
varied when there was a curve in it. One was merely whirling then heels over
head, apparently, in the dark, echoing bowels of the earth. There was no
needle-point of light to which one's eyes clung as to a star.
From London to Crewe,
the stern arm of the semaphore never made the train pause even for an instant.
There was always a clear track. It was great to see, far in the distance, a
goods train whooping smokily for the north of England on one of the four
tracks. The overtaking of such a train was a thing of magnificent nothing for
the long-strided engine, and as the flying express passed its weaker brother,
one heard one or two feeble and immature puffs from the other engine, saw the
fireman wave his hand to his luckier fellow, saw a string of foolish, clanking
flat-cars, their freights covered with tarpaulins, and then the train was lost
to the rear.
The driver twisted his
wheel and worked some levers, and the rhythmical chunking of the engine
gradually ceased. Gliding at a speed that was still high, the train curved to
the left, and swung down a sharp incline, to move with an imperial dignity
through the railway yard at Rugby. There was a maze of switches, innumerable
engines noisily pushing cars here and there, crowds of workmen who turned to
look, a sinuous curve around the long train-shed, whose high wall resounded
with the rumble of the passing express; and then, almost immediately, it
seemed, came the open country again. Rugby had been a dream which one could
properly doubt.
At last the relaxed
engine, with the same majesty of ease, swung into the high-roofed station at
Crewe, and stopped on a platform lined with porters and citizens. There was
instant bustle, and in the interest of the moment no one seemed particularly to
notice the tired vermilion engine being led away.
There is a five-minute
stop at Crewe. A tandem of engines slid up, and buckled fast to the train for
the journey to Carlisle.
In the meantime, all
the regulation items of peace and comfort had happened on the train itself. The
dining-car was in the center of the train. It was divided into two parts, the
one being a dining-room for first-class passengers, and the other a dining-room
for the third-class passengers. They were separated by the kitchens and the
larder. The engine, with all its rioting and roaring, had dragged to Crewe a
car in which numbers of passengers were lunching in a tranquillity that was
almost domestic, on an average menu of a chop and potatoes, a salad, cheese,
and a bottle of beer. Betimes they watched through the windows the great
chimney-marked towns of northern England. They were waited upon by a young man
of London, who was supported by a lad who resembled an American bell-boy. The
rather elaborate menu and service of the Pullman dining-car is not known in
England or on the Continent. Warmed roast beef is the exact symbol of a
European dinner, when one is traveling on a railway.
This express is named,
both by the public and the company, the "Corridor Train," because a
coach with a corridor is an unusual thing in England, and so the title has a
distinctive meaning. Of course, in America, where there is no car which has not
what we call an aisle, it would define nothing. The corridors are all at one
side of the car. Doors open from thence to little compartments made to seat
four, or perhaps six, persons. The first-class carriages are very comfortable
indeed, being heavily upholstered in dark, hard-wearing stuffs, with a bulging
rest for the head. The third-class accommodations on this train are almost as
comfortable as the first-class, and attract a kind of people that are not
usually seen traveling third-class in Europe. Many people sacrifice their
habit, in the matter of this train, to the fine conditions of the lower fare.
One of the feats of the
train is an electric button in each compartment. Commonly an electric button is
placed high on the side of the carriage as an alarm signal, and it is unlawful
to push it unless one is in serious need of assistance from the guard. But
these bells also rang in the dining-car, and were supposed to open negotiations
for tea or whatever. A new function has been projected on an ancient custom. No
genius has yet appeared to separate these two meanings. Each bell rings an
alarm and a bid for tea or whatever. It is perfect in theory then that, if one
rings for tea, the guard comes to interrupt the murder, and that if one is
being murdered, the attendant appears with tea. At any rate, the guard was
forever being called from his reports and his comfortable seat in the forward
end of the luggage-van by thrilling alarms. He often prowled the length of the
train with hardihood and determination, merely to meet a request for a
sandwich.
The train entered
Carlisle at the beginning of twilight. This is the border town, and an engine
of the Caledonian Railway, manned by two men of broad speech, came to take the
place of the tandem. The engine of these men of the North was much smaller than
the others, but her cab was much larger, and would be a fair shelter on a
stormy night. They had also built seats with hooks by which they hang them to
the rail, and thus are still enabled to see through the round windows without
dislocating their necks. All the human parts of the cab were covered with
oilcloth. The wind that swirled from the dim twilight horizon made the warm
glow from the fur-[illustration omitted]nace to be a grateful thing.
As the train shot out
of Carlisle, a glance backward could learn of the faint yellow blocks of light
from the carriages marked on the dimmed ground. The signals were now lamps, and
shone palely against the sky. The express was entering night as if night were
Scotland.
There was a long toil
to the summit of the hills, and then began the booming ride down the slope.
There were many curves. Sometimes could be seen two or three signal lights at
one time, twisting off in some new direction. Minus the lights and some yards
of glistening rails, Scotland was only a blend of black and weird shapes.
Forests which one could hardly imagine as weltering in the dewy placidity of
evening sank to the rear as if the gods had bade them. The dark loom of a house
quickly dissolved before the eyes. A station with its lamps became a broad
yellow band that, to a deficient sense, was only a few yards in length. Below,
in a deep valley, a silver glare on the waters of a river made equal time with
the train. Signals appeared, grew, and vanished. In the wind and the mystery of
the night, it was like sailing in an enchanted gloom. The vague profiles of
hills ran like snakes across the somber sky. A strange shape boldly and
formidably confronted the train, and then melted to a long dash of track as
clean as sword-blades.
The vicinity of Glasgow
is unmistakable. The flames of pauseless industries are here and there marked
on the distance. Vast factories stand close to the track, and reaching chimneys
emit roseate flames. At last one may see upon a wall the strong reflection from
furnaces, and against it the impish and inky figures of workingmen. A long,
prison-like row of tenements, not at all resembling London, but in one way
resembling New York, appeared to the left, and then sank out of sight like a
phantom.
At last the driver
stopped the brave effort of his engine. The 100 miles were come to the edge.
The average speed of forty-nine and one-third miles each hour had been made,
and it remained only to glide with the hauteur of a great express through the
yard and into the station at Glasgow.
A wide and splendid
collection of signal-lamps flowed toward the engine. With delicacy and care the
train clanked over some switches, passed the signals, and then there shone a
great blaze of arc-lamps, defining the wide sweep of the station roof.
Smoothly, proudly, with all that vast dignity which had surrounded its exit
from London, the express moved along its platform. It was the entrance into a
gorgeous drawing-room of a man that was sure of everything.
The porters and the
people crowded forward. In their minds there may have floated dim images of the
traditional music-halls, the bobbies, the 'buses, the 'Arrys and 'Arriets, the
swells of London.