new railways were from time to time projected, until now four several companies have extensive termini in the place. With the Romans, Terminus was a god usually represented without arms and legs to show that he was immoveable; but the modern terminus, though fixed, stretches out its arms along railway lines to all parts of the empire. Of the gigantic magnitude of the station accommodation of Liverpool, some idea may be formed from the fact that the London and North-Western Company, the present proprietors of the original Liverpool and Manchester line, have more than twenty-one miles of station. sidings in the town; while the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company occupy not less than eighty-two acres of goods and passenger stations in six different places.

When the Liverpool and Manchester Bill was before Parliament, Mr. Adams, the counsel for the company, endeavoured to shew that the proposed new method of conveyance would be as speedy, as cheap, and as safe and certain as the other in all respects. This was, however, strongly disputed by the canal companies, who brought forward witnesses to prove that the proposed speed of eight or nine miles an hour was impracticable and impossible; that the railway trains could only be worked by horses, and would be beaten by the canal boats; and-to use the words of Mr. Harrison, one of the counsel for the oppositionthat any gale of wind which would affect the traffic on the Mersey would render it impossible to set off a locomotive engine, either by poking of the fire or keeping up the pressure of the steam till the boiler was ready to burst.' It is not necessary to point out how completely these prophecies of failure have been falsified; and how greatly the performances of railways have exceeded even the most sanguine anticipations of their promoters.

It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance, that notwithstanding Liverpool is now served by three systems of railway north of the Mersey and one on the south, each carrying an immense amount of merchandise, the water carriers between Liverpool and Manchester are as fully employed as before the railways were made, and the proprietors of the Bridgewater Canal receive even a larger income from their property than they did before the first Railway Act received the sanction of Parliament. Not only are the water carriers employing more vessels, but those vessels are so constructed as to carry double the weight they did in 1826; while the railway companies, notwithstanding their large station accommodation and means of transit, have fully as much traffic as they can conveniently accommodate. Indeed Liverpool, growing by what it feeds on, is already calling out for U 2

even

even larger station accommodation and better means of transit for its merchandise; and Mr. Clarke, Chairman of the Railway Committee of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, appeared before the Railway Commissioners in 1865, just as the Liverpool merchants appeared before the Committee on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill in 1825, to prefer precisely the same complaint: that the existing means of conveyance were inadequate for the proper accommodation of the traffic of Liverpool.

'Is it not the fact,' asked Mr. Horsfall, M.P., 'that the traffic to and from Liverpool has become so enormous as to be in excess of the accommodation provided by the whole of the railway companies?' To which Mr. Clarke replied, 'It is so, and especially at times when there is a large import of grain coincident with a large import of cotton. Whenever we have large importations of food into Liverpool, and large importations of cotton, the amount of traffic passing from Liverpool into the interior is so great that the railway companies find the utmost possible difficulty, with their present means of conveyance, in conveying it, and the consequence is that it imposes on the traders in Liverpool very considerable loss and inconvenience.'

Considerable reductions in the rate of carriage followed the opening of the railway between Liverpool and Manchester. The year after the opening of the line, the reduction in the carriage of cotton alone was equal to 20,0007.; the saving to some single firms being over 500l. a year. But this advantage was small compared with the certainty and celerity with which the transit of the merchandise was conducted. Before the railway era, the usual rate of carriage by waggon was thirteenpence per ton per mile for goods of all kinds; but bale goods, on a long journey and with a full load, were contracted for at a lower rate. Thus the usual price charged for bale goods between Manchester and London was about 51. a ton; but they were long in transit, and very liable to suffer damage. Now, the same articles are carried by rail at from 30s. to 40s. a ton, and with such certainty and despatch that the goods are frequently ordered from Manchester by telegraph on the evening of one day and delivered at the warehouse of the London merchant on the following morning.

A few years since, the French Government appointed a commission, presided over by M. Michel Chevalier, for the purpose of inquiring into the subject of railway working, and reporting as to the practice which prevailed in England and other countries compared with that of France. In the report presented by the Commissioners they entered at great detail into the working of

foreign

foreign lines, more particularly as regarded the transit of merchandise; and they particularly contrasted the speed of English goods trains with that of the French-of which the speed of a convalescent tortoise would in some cases seem to be about the standard. The instances of delay in the transit of goods in France, cited by the Commissioners, are almost incredible. Thus, it takes four days to transport goods by railway from Paris to Rheims (the head-quarters of the champagne-trade), a distance of 107 miles, or rather more time than used to be occupied by the old road carriers. In contrast to this and similar examples of slowness, they cited the despatch with which the merchandise traffic is conducted between Manchester or Liverpool and London,-only about twelve hours elapsing between the delivery of the goods to the railway company at the one end and their delivery to the consignee at the other, instead of seven days as would be the case in France. In like manner they cited the time occupied in the transit of goods from Aberdeen to London as forty hours, instead of forty-five days as in France; Edinburgh to London, thirty hours instead of nine days; Bristol to London, fourteen hours instead of six days; and so on. Auguste Chevalier described 'the loss of time in France to be enormous,' especially as regarded the petite vitesse service; and he urged the Government to take the matter in hand and compel the railway companies to use greater despatch in the conduct of their traffic.

M.

Doubtless the principal cause of the greater speed of railway service in England is to be found in the competition, sometimes very severe, by which the English companies have been stimulated. There is scarcely a town of any importance in England which is not now served by more railways than one. Thus Liverpool, as we have seen, is served by four systems of railway communicating with London; Manchester is in like manner served by four companies; Leeds, Birmingham, Peterborough, and Reading, by three; while most of our other large towns have at least two alternative lines of communication with the metropolis.

The railway traffic of London, as might naturally be expected, is one of immense magnitude, arising from the circumstance that London is not only the great distributive centre of the traffic of England, and, it might be said, of the European world, but that it contains an aggregate of nearly four millions of people who are in a great measure dependent upon railways for their daily trade as well as their daily food. Goods from Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, and the other manufacturing towns, are poured into London, and from thence distributed not only to Europe, India, China, and America, but to the various

towns

towns of Great Britain themselves. The surplus corn and produce of the world find their way first to the London markets, through which they filter out to the various markets at home, or are floated away to foreign ports. Raw materials from all countries-tea and silk from China and Japan, rice and indigo from India, sugar from the West Indies and the Brazils, wines from France, Portugal, and Spain, tobacco from Virginia and Cuba-are landed in London in vast quantities, and pass through our docks and warehouses, from which they are distributed by railway all over the country, passing through innumerable outlets until they reach in detail the great body of consumers. London, too, has become the great central market for the precious metals of the world, and gold and silver are as regular articles of import and export as butter or cheese.

The railway merchandise traffic of London is one of its most recent and most gigantic growths. Only thirty years have elapsed since the London and Birmingham line was opened, and now eighty thousand tons of goods per month pass through ⚫ its London stations (now those of the London and North-Western Company), besides coal. Of the 32,439,891 tons of merchandise carried by railway in England in 1866, that company's lines carried 4,693,832 tons-or more than the whole tonnage of Scotland, and nearly three times that of all Ireland. Of this immense traffic, about one-fourth passes through the London goods stations of the Company, inwards and outwards.

The working of a London railway station is one of the busiest night sights of London; for all the outwards merchandise traffic is loaded and despatched to the country at night, and nearly all the inwards traffic arrives from the country in the early morning for delivery to the consignees before the usual hours of business begin. Fancy fifteen hundred men nightly occupied in loading and unloading goods in the goods sheds of a single company; vans arriving from all parts of the metropolis, beginning at 6:30 p.m. and ending at 9:30; a little army of men struggling with the bulky packages which they deposit on their respective platforms, from whence they are loaded into the railway waggons placed alongside, and despatched at once train by train to the remotest parts of the kingdom. The scene appears at first one of inextricable confusion-men battling with bales, barrels, crates, and hampers, amidst the noise of voices and clangour of machinery; yet the whole is proceeding with regularity and despatch, and in the course of a few hours the last train outwards has left and the station is wrapped in quiet until the time of the early morning arrivals.

The Camden station occupies about fourteen acres, and is provided

provided with nearly twenty miles of sidings, mostly converging on the great Shed, itself as large as a West-end square, being 400 feet long by 250 broad. This shed is fitted up throughout with stages and platforms, between which the waggons are ranged into which the goods are loaded; and every contrivance is adopted which mechanical skill can suggest for facilitating the despatch of business. As the vans come in the packages are hoisted out of them by hydraulic cranes, and wheeled direct to their respective stages-the names of the places of destination, 'Liverpool,' 'Glasgow,' 'Manchester,' &c., being conspicuously indicated alongside the waggons about to be loaded with the goods for those places, where they are. 'trucked' at once, and packed, corded, and tarpaulined. The waggons, when complete, are then cleverly drawn out of the platform sidings by ropes worked round hydraulic capstans, when they are marshalled' on their respective sidings and despatched train by train almost with the regularity of clock-work. The number of waggons loaded and despatched from the Camden station nightly is about 670 in 27 trains, averaging about 25 waggons per train. Although there are about 10,000 packages despatched nightly, averaging from 90 to 100 lbs. per package, the quickness with which the work is got through is such that scarcely two hours elapse between the arrival of the goods in the station and their departure by railway to their respective destinations.

After midnight the goods trains begin to come in from the country. Now the bustle is in unloading and despatching by van to the London customers the articles which have come to hand. The same number of trains, carrying about an equal number of packages, have now to be disposed of. After 3 A.M. the station is again in full work, and the press of vans and carts is as great as on the previous evening, until about 6 A.M., when the business of the night is nearly got through, and the station again reposes in comparative quiet. Among the night arrivals we find the trains are of an altogether different character from those despatched outwards. The principal are those which bring food of various kinds for the London consumption. The most important are the two express meat trains from Scotland-trains which may be said to have revolutionised the cattle-trade of the Highlands. The first arrival is the daily meat express from Inverness, Aberdeen, and all Scotland north of the Tay, consisting of about forty-four waggons filled entirely with fresh beef and mutton. It performs the journey in about thirty hours, and arrives punctually at Camden at 11.5 P.M. The second Scotch meat express consists of fifty-five waggons, usually drawn by two powerful engines as far south as Rugby:

it