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 twilighthorizon made the warm glow from the fur-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.