THOSE EARLY TRAINS

Hawera Star, Volume L, 29 November 1930, Page 9

THOSE EARLY TRAINS

1 Vf© one knew who mla-dta the first railway, said .Sir Edwin Stockton, the well-known, .businessman, in a recent .speech. The very first, the Middle- | ton Colliery Wagon Way, authorised l in 1758, and* the .CaTd'om Low Railway, made in 1772., were merely colliery and quarry tramways, running on balks of timber, says the ‘ ‘Manchester 'Guardian.” In considering the history off rail ways three things- alwaysr occurred to him. The first Was that until t'he opening of the Liverpool and •Manchesi ter Railway the rate of human travel- | ling had remained the same as it. was in the days when the Assyrian .came down like a wolf on the fold, and Jehu, -the son of ’Niinshi, drove furiously. The second 1 point was that the. early railway pioneers were dealing with an entirely novel invention, and had to fin'd everything out for themselves. There were, no railway text-books in their days, and on the whole he was inclined to think that state of affairs had 1 its advantages. After the a'ctual construction and opening of the railway one of the first t ilings they had to devise was' a system of signalling, and many ingenious and unbelievable 'suggestions were put forward. 'One expert said the only safe method was for a. guard to be seated at the end of each train and to fire a gun at every mile to warn any following train. Another was quite sure that if passenger trains ran by day and goods trains by night, no collision could take place. 'Some bad men in those days used to pilfer oranges and oysters from the trains in the tunnel and steal the company’s candles. He did not knew what the: directors did about the oranges and oysters, but they had the company 's candles coloured, so that if i they were stolen they could be recog- ] nised.

They Stopped at Every “Pub”

The third! point was not that there was opposition to railways when they were proposedI—there, 1 —there, was always opposition to progress—hut that the 1 historians had tol'd us ®o much about the opposition and so little about the things we should! like to know. He had made a special study of the history of the. Liverpool and! Manchester Railway, and! ho did! not think the opposition was any greater than that put lip many years later against the Manchester Ship Canal, which, like the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, had forged not only a. link but a. bond between Liverpool and Manchester. The railway and the .Ship -Canal were complementary one to another, and it was to the interest of both and tho public that they should bo so. If this truth had been, generally realised a. hundred years ago, as it was realised by the directors off the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, a vast amount of monev would have' been saved.

They all knew what an Eloelos cake was, but ho wondered' hoW many had heard! of Mrs Birch, of Bedes. Mrs Birch wrote to the dirdetors Of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and asked per'mission to sell her famous 'Eecles cakes to tho .passengers' when, the trains stopped at. the station. Permission was refused, because it- was felt they dared not allow Mrs Birch to sell heir cakes' and not give permission to all others who might ask for a similar privilege. The directors, had already had some difficulty through the engine-drivers stopping the trains at public-houses en route and thus' causing delay, if nothing else. The directors had also prohibited the payment of wages at- public-houses, a practice in the bad old dlays that was not confined to raihvavs.