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CHAP. XVII.]

RIVAL COACH COMPANIES.

203

though they were no other than old stage coach bodies, which were purchased by the company, each mounted upon an underframe with flange wheels, and let out to the coaching companies, who horsed and managed them under an arrangement as to tolls, in like manner as the " Experiment" had been worked. Now began the distinction of inside and outside passengers, equivalent to first and second class, paying different fares. The competition with each other upon the railway, and with the ordinary stage coaches upon the road, soon brought up the speed, which was increased to ten miles an hour-the mail coach rate of travelling in those days, and considered very fast. The coaches filled almost daily. "In fact," says a writer of the time, "the passengers do not seem to be at all particular, for, in cases of urgency, they are seen crowding the coach on the top, sides, or any part where they can get a footing; and they are frequently so numerous, that when they descend from the coach and begin to separate, it looks like the dismissal of a small congregation!"

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Mr. Clephan, a native of the district, thus piquantly describes some of the more prominent features of the competition. between the rival coach companies: "There were two separate coach companies in Stockton; and amusing collisions sometimes occurred between the drivers who found on the rail a novel element for contention. Coaches cannot pass each other on the rail as on the road; and at the more westward publichouse in Stockton (the Bay Horse, kept by Joe Buckton), the coach was always on the line betimes, reducing its eastward rival to the necessity of waiting patiently (or impatiently) in the rear. Difficulties, too, occurred along the road. The line was single, with four sidings in the mile, and when two coaches met, or two trains, or coach and train, the question arose which of the drivers must go back? This

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be a sort of understanding that light waggons should give way to loaded; and as to trains and coaches, that the passengers should have preference over coals; while coaches, when they met must quarrel it out. At length, midway between sidings, a post was erected; and a rule was laid down that he who had passed the pillar must go on, and the coming man' go back. At the Goose Pool and Early Nook, it was common for these coaches to stop; and there, as Jonathan would say, passengers and coachmen liquored.' One coach, introduced by an innkeeper, was a compound of two mourningcoaches, an approximation to the real railway coach, which still adheres, with multiplying exceptions, to the stage coach type. One Dixon, who drove the Experiment' between Darlington and Shildon, is the inventor of carriage-lighting on the rail. On a dark winter night, having compassion on his passengers, he would buy a penny candle, and place it, lighted, amongst them, on the table of the Experiment '— the first railway coach (which, by the way, ended its days at Shildon, as a railway cabin), being also the first coach on the rail (first, second, and third-class jammed all into one) that indulged its customers with light in darkness."

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The traffic of all sorts increased so steadily and so rapidly that the Directors of the company shortly found it necessary to take into their own hands the entire working,-of minerals, merchandise, and passengers. It had been provided by the first Stockton and Darlington Act that the line should be free to all parties who chose to use it at certain prescribed rates, and that any person might put horses and waggons on the railway, and carry for himself. But this arrangement led to increasing confusion and difficulty, and could not continue in the face of a large and rapidly increasing traffic. The goods trains got so long, that the carriers found it necessary to call in the aid of the locomotive engine to help them on their way. Then mixed trains began to be seen,

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CHAP. XVII.

[.]

HAULAGE BY HORSES.

205

of passengers and merchandise, -the final result being the assumption of the entire charge of the traffic by the railway company. In course of time new passenger carriages were specially built for the better accommodation of the public, until at length regular passenger trains were run, drawn by the locomotive engine,—though this was not until after the Liverpool and Manchester Company had established passenger trains as a distinct branch of their traffic.

Three of Stephenson's locomotives were from the first regularly employed to work the coal trains; and their proved efficiency for this purpose led to the gradual increase of the locomotive power. The speed of the engines-slow though it was in those days-was regarded as something marvellous; and a race actually came off between No. 1 engine, the "Active," and one of the stage coaches travelling from Darlington to Stockton by the ordinary road; and it was regarded as a great triumph of mechanical skill that the locomotive reached Stockton first, beating the stage coach by about a hundred yards!*

For some years, however, the principal haulage of the line was performed by horses. The inclination of the gradients being towards the sea, this was perhaps the cheapest mode of traction, so long as the traffic was not very large. The horse drew the train along the level road until, on reaching a descending gradient, down which the train ran by its own weight, the horse was unharnessed, and, when loose, he wheeled round to the other end of the waggons, to which a "dandy-cart" was attached, its bottom being only a few

The same engine continued in good working order in the year 1846, when it headed the railway procession on the opening of the Middlesborough and Redcar Railway, travelling at the rate of about fourteen miles an hour. This engine, the first that travelled upon the first public railway, has quite recently been placed upon a pedestal in front of the railway station at

inches from the rail. Bringing his step into unison with the speed of the train, the horse leapt nimbly into his place in this waggon, which was usually fitted with a well-filled hay-rack. Mr. Clephan relates the story of a sagacious grey horse, which was fertile in expedients when emergencies arose: "On one occasion, perceiving that a train, which had run amain, must rush into his dandy-cart, he took a leap for life over the side, and escaped. In a similar peril, a leap over the side being impracticable, he sprung on to the coal waggon in front, and stood like an equestrian statue on a pedestal. But the time came, at last, when there was no escape; and the poor old grey was destroyed."

The details of the working were gradually perfected by experience, the projectors of the line being at first scarcely conscious of the importance and significance of the work which they had taken in hand, and little thinking that they were laying the foundation of a system which was yet to revolutionise the internal communications of the world, and confer the greatest blessings on mankind. It is important to note that the commercial results of the enterprise were considered satisfactory from the opening of the railway. Besides conferring a great public benefit upon the inhabitants of the district, and throwing open entirely new markets for the almost boundless stores of coal found in the Bishop Auckland district, the profits derived from the traffic created by the railway, enabled increasing dividends. to be paid to those who had risked their capital in the undertaking, and thus held forth an encouragement to the projectors of railways generally, which was not without an important effect in stimulating the projection of similar enterprises in other districts.*

*From the minute books of the Stockton and Darlington Company, it appears that a dividend of 2 per cent. was paid to the shareholders for the first nine months after the line was opened, during which period the traffic

CHAP. XVII.]

TOWN OF MIDDLESBOROUGH.

207

Before leaving the subject of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, we cannot avoid alluding to one of its most remarkable and direct results-the creation of the town of Middlesborough-on-Tees. When the railway was opened in 1825, the site of this future metropolis of Cleveland was occupied by one solitary farm-house and its outbuildings. All round was pasture land or mud banks; scarcely another house was within sight. But when the coal export trade, fostered by the halfpenny maximum rate imposed by the legislature, seemed likely to attain a gigantic growth, and it was found that the accommodation furnished at Stockton was insufficient, Mr. Edward Pease, joined by a few of his Quaker friends, bought about 500 or 600 acres of land, five miles lower down the river-the site of the modern Middlesborough - for the purpose of there forming a new seaport for the shipment of coals brought to the Tees by the railway. The line was accordingly shortly extended thither; docks were excavated;

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arrangements must necessarily have been in a very incomplete state. Company had all their experience to gather, having none to fall back upon. Everything was to organise from the very beginning. Under these circumstances, it was matter of congratulation to the proprietors that any profit should have been made during those first nine months. But in the next year ending June, 1827, a dividend of 5 per cent. was paid; and the same rate was maintained until 1831, when it was increased to 6 per cent., and in 1832 to 8 per cent. It is matter of notoriety that 10 per cent. was afterwards paid during many years, which arose in some measure from the circumstance that the Company were enabled to borrow a large proportion of their capital at a low rate of interest, whilst the share capital, upon which dividend was paid, remained comparatively small. These arrangements, however, prove the shrewd business qualities of the men who originally conducted the undertaking. The results, as displayed in the annual dividends, must have been eminently encouraging to the astute commercial men of Liverpool and Manchester, who were then engaged in the prosecution of their railway. Indeed, the commercial success of the Stockton and Darlington Company may be justly characterised as the turning-point of the railway system. With that practical illustration daily in sight of the public, it was no longer possible for Parliament to have prevented

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