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going a series of consultations upon many bills after the rising of the committees the exhausted engineers would seek to stimulate nature by a late, perhaps a heavy, dinner. What chance had any ordinary constitution of surviving such an ordeal? The consequence was, that stomach, brain, and liver were alike irretrievably injured; and hence the men who bore the heat and brunt of those struggles-Stephenson, Brunel, Locke, and Errington-have already all died, comparatively young men.

In mentioning the name of Brunel, we are reminded of him as the principal rival and competitor of Robert Stephenson. Both were the sons of distinguished men, and both inherited the fame and followed in the footsteps of their fathers. The Stephensons were inventive, practical, and sagacious; the Brunels ingenious, imaginative, and daring. The former were as thoroughly English in their characteristics as the latter perhaps were as thoroughly French. The fathers and the sons were alike successful in their works, though not in the same degree. Measured by practical and profitable results, the Stephensons were unquestionably the safer men to follow.

Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel were destined often to come into collision in the course of their professional life. Their respective railway districts "marched" with each other, and it became their business to invade or defend those districts, according as the policy of their respective boards might direct. The gauge fixed by Mr. Brunel for the Great Western Railway, so entirely different from that adopted by the Stephensons on the Northern and Midland lines,' was

The original width of the coal tramroads in the North virtually determined the British gauge.

It was

the width of the ordinary road-track, -not fixed after any scientific theory, but adopted simply because its use had

already been established. George Stephenson introduced it without alteration on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; and the lines subsequently formed in the same district were laid down of the same width. Mr. Ste

398

THE RAILWAY GAUGES.

CHAP. XVIII.

from the first a great cause of contention. But Mr. Brunel had always an aversion to follow any man's lead; and that another engineer had fixed the gauge of a railway, or built a bridge, or designed an engine, in one way, was of itself often a sufficient reason with him for adopting an altogether different course. Robert Stephenson, on his part, though less bold, was more practical, preferring to follow the old routes, and to tread in the safe steps of his father.

Mr. Brunel, however, determined that the Great Western should be a giant's road, and that travelling should be conducted upon it at double speed. His ambition was to make the best road that imagination could devise; whereas the main object of the Stephensons, both father and son, was to make a road that would pay. Although, tried by the Stephenson test, Brunel's magnificent road was a failure so far as the shareholders in the Great Western Company were concerned, the stimulus which his ambitious designs gave to mechanical invention at the time proved a general good. The narrow-gauge engineers exerted themselves to quicken

phenson from the first anticipated the
general extension of railways through-
out England; and one of the ideas
with which he started was, the essen-
tial importance of preserving such
a uniformity as would admit of per-
fect communication between them.
When consulted about the gauge of
the Canterbury and Whitstable, and
Leicester and Swannington Railways,
he said, "Make them of the same
width: though they may be a long
way apart now, depend upon it they
will be joined together some day."
All the railways, therefore, laid down
by himself and his assistants in the
neighbourhood of Manchester, extend-
ing from thence to London on the
south, and to Leeds on the east, were
constructed on the Liverpool and
Manchester, or narrow gauge.
sides the Great Western Railway,
where the gauge adopted was seven
feet, the only other line on which a

Be

broader gauge than four feet eight and a-half inches was adopted was the Eastern Counties, where it was five feet, Mr. Braithwaite, the engineer, being of opinion that an increase of three and a-half inches in the width of his line would give him better space for the machinery of the locomotive. But when the northern and eastern extension of the same line was formed, which was to work into the narrow-gauge system of the Midland Railway, Mr. Robert Stephenson, its new engineer, strongly recommended the directors of the Eastern Counties line to alter their gauge accordingly, for the purpose of securing uniformity; and they adopted his recommendation. Mr. Braithwaite himself afterwards justified the wisdom of this step, and stated that he considered the narrow gauge "infinitely superior to any other," more especially for passenger traffic.

their locomotives to the utmost; they were improved and re-improved; their machinery was simplified and perfected; outside cylinders gave place to inside; the steadier and more rapid and effective action of the engine was secured; and in a few years the highest speed on the narrow-gauge lines went up from thirty to about fifty miles an hour. For this rapidity of progress we are in no small degree indebted to the stimulus imparted to the narrow-gauge engineers by Mr. Brunel, And it is well for a country that it should possess men such as he, ready to dare the untried, and to venture boldly into new paths. Individuals may suffer from the cost of the experiments, but the nation, which is an aggregate of individuals, gains, and so does the world at large.

It was one of the characteristics of Brunel to believe in the success of the schemes for which he was professionally engaged as engineer; and he proved this by investing his savings largely in the Great Western Railway, in the South Devon atmospheric line, and in the Great Eastern steamship, with what results are well known. Robert Stephenson, on the contrary, with characteristic caution, towards the latter years of his life, avoided holding unguaranteed railway shares; and though he might execute magnificent structures, such as the Victoria Bridge across the St. Lawrence, he was careful not to embark any portion of his own fortune in the ordinary capital of these concerns. In 1845, he shrewdly foresaw the inevitable crash that was about to follow the mania of that year; and while shares were still at a premium he took the opportunity of selling out all that he had. He urged his father to do the same. thing, but George's reply was characteristic. "No," said he; "I took my shares for an investment, and not to speculate with, and I am not going to sell them now because folks have gone mad about railways." The consequence was, that he continued to hold the 60,0007.

400

EAST COAST ROUTE TO SCOTLAND,

CHAP. XVIII.

which he had invested in the shares of various railways until his death, when they were at once sold out by his son, though at a great depreciation on their original cost.

One of the hardest battles fought between the Stephensons and Brunel was for the railway between Newcastle and Berwick, forming part of the great East Coast route to Scotland. As early as 1836, George Stephenson had surveyed two lines to connect Edinburgh with Newcastle one by Berwick and Dunbar along the coast, and the other, more inland, by Carter Fell, up the vale of the Gala, to the northern capital. Two years later, he made a further examination of the intervening country, and again reported more decidedly than before in favour of the coast line. The inland route, however, was not without its advocates: Stephenson's old friend, Nicholas Wood, heading the opposition to his proposed Coast railway. But both projects lay dormant for several years longer, until the completion of the Midland and other main lines as far north as Newcastle had the effect of again reviving the subject of the extension of the route as far as Edinburgh.

On the 18th of June, 1844, the Newcastle and Darlington line-an important link of the great main highway to the north-was completed and publicly opened, thus connecting the Thames and the Tyne by a continuous line of railway. On that day Mr. Stephenson and a distinguished party of railway men travelled by express train from London to Newcastle in about nine hours. It was a great event, and was worthily celebrated. The population of Newcastle held holiday; and a banquet given in the Assembly Rooms the same evening assumed the form of an ovation to Mr. Stephenson and his son. Thirty years before, in the capacity of a workman, he had been labouring at the construction of his first locomotive in the immediate neighbourhood. By slow and laborious steps he had worked his way on, dragging the locomotive into notice, and raising himself in public

estimation; and at length he had victoriously established the railway system, and went back amongst his townsmen to receive their greeting.

After the opening of this railway, the project of the East Coast line from Newcastle to Berwick was revived; and George Stephenson, who had already identified himself with the question, and was intimately acquainted with every foot of the ground, was again called upon to assist the promoters with his judgment and experience. He again recommended as strongly as before the line he had previously surveyed; and on its being adopted by the local committee, the necessary steps were taken to have the scheme brought before Parliament in the ensuing session. The East Coast line was not, however, to be allowed to pass without a fight. On the contrary, it had to encounter as stout an opposition as Stephenson had ever experienced.

We have already stated that about this time the plan of substituting atmospheric pressure for locomotive steam-power in the working of railways, had become very popular. Many eminent engineers avowedly supported atmospheric in preference to locomotive lines; and there was a strong party in Parliament, headed by the Prime Minister, who were much disposed in their favour. Mr. Brunel warmly espoused the atmospheric principle, and his persuasive manner, as well as his admitted scientific ability, unquestionably exercised considerable influence in determining the views of many leading members of both Houses on the subject. Amongst others, Lord Howick, one of the members for Northumberland, adopted the new principle, and, possessing great local influence, he succeeded in forming a powerful confederacy of the landed gentry in favour of Brunel's atmospheric railway through that county.

George Stephenson could not brook the idea of seeing the locomotive, for which he had fought so many stout battles, pushed to one side, and that in the very county

VOL. III.

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