No. I.] March, 1847. MONTHLY RAILWAY RECORD. EDITED BY Mr. JOHN ROBERTSON and Mr. J. W. BROOKE. "The Steam Engine and the Railway are not merely facilitating the transport of mer- RAILWAY RECORD OFFICE, 153, FLEET STREET. W. LAKE, Printer,] [170, Fleet Street. CONTENTS. The length of several of the articles in this number has compelled us to omit the Share List We had also prepared an article on Mr. Strutt's new Railway Bill; but as that measure is now likely to be modified, in several important points, we defer our comments for the Several Notices of New Publications are unavoidably postponed. We have to thank many friends for the interest they have been pleased to express for the MONTHLY RAILWAY RECORD. TO OUR READERS. In this formal self-introduction to our readers, we have very little to add to what has already been set forth in our preliminary advertisement : "This publication is intended to be supplementary to the (Weekly) RAILWAY RECORD, and will discuss the various points of railway policy and railway practice more fully than can conveniently be done in a Newspaper devoted principally to a record of the passing events of the day.” We make no special professions as to what we mean to do, or what we mean to avoid. Fortunately the Editors are not altogether unknown to the railway public, and may therefore, in some measure, appeal to past performances as a guarantee for future proceedings. To the general principles advocated and enforced in the publication to which this is avowedly supplemental, they will adhere; endeavouring to render the Monthly Railway Record as practically useful as possible, without unnecessarily dwelling upon the "quæstiones vexate," the contested portions of the "debateable land," which now occupy, and we fear will continue to occupy, perhaps in an inordinate degree, the attention of important sections of the railway community. To the care of the weekly journals, among which the parent of this production holds no mean place, these questions may, for the present, safely be commended, at least in their details. The general principles, so far as the public and the railway interests at large are concerned, the Editors of the Monthly Railway Record hold themselves ready to discuss. The very character of the work is such that we cannot hope to come up to the standard, which no doubt many persons have set up, of a railway publication in perfection. We do not assume to render this work a substitute for the established railway journals-it would be very great presumption if we did; we seek, in the words of our preliminary notice, to make it a companion to one of these journals in particular, but scarcely less so to that journal's contemporaries. To be useful to the influential body, whose interests they advocate and whose sentiments they reflect, the papers referred to must be of necessity newspapers; and a somewhat extended experience has satisfied us that to devote to current events the attention which they deserve, is quite as much as can be expected from, or as can be efficiently performed by, the Editors of weekly publications. Not seeking to disparage, in the slightest degree, the able efforts of some of these gentlemen, in defence of the common rights, or in the discussion of individual instances, our object is, and our aim shall be, to take up special points of policy and practice, and so to handle these as, we hope, to give the railway world some information of which they may not previously be possessed; at any rate to direct their inquiries and reflections into what we conceive to be the right channel, apart from the turbulence and turmoil of the day. There is much common ground on which Railway Boards, however much at variance among themselves in reference to special questions, or as to particular B |