RAIL JOY RIDES

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 December 1936, Page 12

RAIL JOY RIDES

100 YEARS AGO. LONDON, October 27. Brass bands playing popular tunes to the arrival and departure of every train at London Bridge station, while fashionable parties assembled to take joy-rides to Deptford—that was the daily scene when London’s first railway, the London and Greenwich, was opened in 1836. This is one of the many details of the early railways contained in the first official history of the southern Railway, now published by the company. For several years old, files and documents have been searched and a mass of information and forgotten incident has been compiled in a 700-page volume by Mr. C. F. Dendy Marshall, a railway authority. The Southern is descended not only from the first London railway, but also from the first public railway in the world. This was the Surrey Iron Rail-1 way, opened in 1803, the wagons being hauled by horses or donkeys. The novelty of rail travel attracted thousands of passengers in the early days, and when the London and Greenwich line opened it became a craze in fashionable society to give “railway parties,” the climax being a joy-ride.’

TRAFALGAR HERO’S FEAR. It is recorded that when Lady Hardy made up a party for a trial trip. Sir Thomas Hardy, the Trafalgar hero, refused to go, declaring that it was a needless risk to run. There was a good deal of anxiety expressed at the time as to the safety of railways. When one of the London and Greenwich carriages ran off the line, but without causing injury, a director diplomatically congratulated the shareholders on the derailment, “as it showed how safe accidents were.” The London and Croydon Railway, in an endeavour to attract passengers, advertised that "parties using the railway will be permitted to angle in the adjacent canal, which abounds in fish.” A rather surprising aspect of the early railways revealed in the book is the relatively high speed at which the express trains were run. As early as 1851, for instance, a train was i mining from London to Brighton in an hour and a quarter, while in 1843 an atmospheric train’’ was running a speed of 57 miles an hour. Atmospheric trains were hauled by a piston in a tube between the rails the air in the tube being sucked out at one end by stationary engines, the suction pulling the piston forwards. A railway on this principle ran for a time to Croydon. An interesting piece of more recent of th7’« in iew of the present p oli cy ° P ,e Southern, is the first electrification. In 1909 electric trains were < running between Victoria and London Bridge, and there was much talk of electric trains to Brighton, to do the journey in 50 minutes. But for the war, it is probable that Brighton electrification would have come about years ago. Incidentally in 1903 a steam tiain went to Brighton in 48 minutes at an average of 60 m.p.h., touching a speed of 90 m.p.h. toucning a A real battle between the forces of :: °. u “ nd south ’'i ™ the Brighton company is described Both companies were trying to get ?n h° r T U o into Portsm °uth, and in 1858 the L.S.W.R. attempted to run B«h rain ’ occupied navvies, to estabna£v a , p ’’ ec< : dent - The Brighton comun th J ? rD,ng . ° f the intention, -took ed one of a ju, ? ction and chainto blocktte “ay. 6 " 8 "' 68 “ ‘ he rails The result was a skirmish between of the two companies, the L.S.W.R. men being forced to retreat.