HORSE VERSUS STEAM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20378, 5 October 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

HORSE VERSUS STEAM.

TOLL FROM INVENTION.

1829 CHELTENHAM SERVICE

It was a hundred years ago that Gurney drove his steam carriage down to Bath and started a series of demonstrations that led to the recognition of road travel by steam carriages as perfectly safe and less damaging to the roads than horse traffic. It may seem puzzling that it has taken 100 years for motor-coaches to attain the place they now hold as a means of travel, for as long as a century ago there was a regular, cheap and safe motor-coach service in action. For four months in 1829 Gurnev's steam carriage ran between Gloucester and Cheltenham,, in England, doing four trips a day, covering the nine miles in 55 minutes, and charging half the rates of the horse coaches. But this new form of travel, although admitted by eminent, authorities as highly desirable and satisfactory, was soon crippled by new Toll Bills, designed to extract as much as possiblo from the new invention. Anything from £2 to £3 8s was imposed at, toll gates, where stago coaches paid a few shillings. Gurney appealed to Parliament, and just when ho had succeeded in getting a grant made, tho country was caught in tho grip of the railway mania, and nothing else was thought of. Thus the great fight between mechanically-propelled transport on road and rail was- delayed until the present time. Tho extent of present-day motor-coach and motor-bus traffic there may be judged from the fact that a monthly voluruo of time tables containing 895 pages-is now issued.