sengers. There was also this essential difference between the old stage-coach and the new railway train, that, whereas the former was "full" with six inside and ten outside, the latter must be able to accommodate whatever number of passengers came to be carried. Hence heavier and more powerful engines, and larger and more substantial carriages, were from time to time added to the carrying stock of the railway.

The speed of the trains was also increased. The first locomotives used in hauling coal-trains ran at from four to six miles an hour. On the Stockton and Darlington line the speed was increased to about ten miles an hour; and on the Liverpool and Manchester line the first passenger-trains were run at the average speed of seventeen miles an hour, which at that time was considered very fast. But this was not enough. When the London and Birmingham line was opened, the mail-trains were run at twenty-three miles an hour; and gradually the speed went up, until now the fast trains are run at from fifty to sixty miles an hour-the pistons in the cylinders, at sixty miles, traveling at the inconceivable rapidity of 800 feet per minute!

To bear the load of heavy engines run at high speeds, a much stronger and heavier road was found necessary; and shortly after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line, it was entirely relaid with stronger materials. Now that express passenger-engines are from thirty to thirty-five tons each, the weight of the rails has been increased from 35 lbs. to 75 lbs. or 86 lbs. to the yard. Stone blocks have given place to wooden sleepers; rails with loose ends resting on the chairs, to rails with their ends firmly "fished" together; and in many places, where the traffic is unusually heavy, iron rails have been replaced by those of steel.

And now see the enormous magnitude to which railway passenger-traffic has grown. In the year 1866, 274,293,668 passengers were carried by day tickets in Great Britain alone. But this was not all; for in that year 110,227 periodical tickets were

issued by the different railways; and assuming half of them to be annual, one fourth half-yearly, and the remainder quarterly tickets, and that their holders made only five journeys each way weekly, this would give an additional number of 39,405,600 journeys, or a total of 313,699,268 passengers carried in Great Britain in one year.

It is difficult to grasp the idea of the enormous number of persons represented by these figures. The mind is merely bewildered by them, and can form no adequate notion of their magnitude. To reckon them singly would occupy twenty years, counting at the rate of one a second for twelve hours every day. Or take another illustration. Supposing every man, woman, and child in Great Britain to make ten journeys by rail yearly, the number would fall short of the passengers carried in 1866.

Mr. Porter, in his "Progress of the Nation," estimated that thirty millions of passengers, or about eighty-two thousand a day, traveled by coaches in Great Britain in 1834, an average distance of twelve miles each, at an average cost of 58. a passenger, or at the rate of 5d. a mile; whereas above 313 millions are now carried by railway an average distance of 8 miles each, at an average cost of 18. 14d. per passenger, or about three halfpence per mile, in considerably less than half the time.

But, besides the above number of passengers, one hundred and twenty-four million tons of minerals and merchandise were carried by railway in the United Kingdon in 1866, and fifteen millions of cattle, besides mails, parcels, and other traffic. The distance run by passenger and goods trains in the year was 142,807,853 miles, to accomplish which it is estimated that four miles of railway on an average must be covered by running trains during every second all the year round.

To perform this service, there were, in 1866, 8125 locomotives at work in the United Kingdom, consuming about three million tons of coal and coke, and flashing into the air every minute some thirty tons of water in the form of steam in a high state

of elasticity. There were also 19,228 passenger-carriages, 7276 vans and breaks attached to passenger-trains, and 242,947 trucks, wagons, and other vehicles appropriated to merchandise. Buckled together, buffer to buffer, the locomotives and tenders would extend for a length of about 54 miles, or more than the distance from London to Brighton; while the carrying vehicles, joined together, would form two trains occupying a double line of railway extending from London to beyond Inverness.

A notable feature in the growth of railway traffic of late years has been the increase in the number of third-class passengers, compared with first and second class. Sixteen years since, the third-class passengers constituted only about one third; ten years later they were about one half; whereas now they form nearly two thirds of the whole number carried. Thus George Stephenson's prediction "that the time would come when it would be cheaper for a working man to make a journey by railway than to walk on foot" is already realized.

The degree of safety with which this great traffic has been conducted is not the least remarkable of its features. Of course, so long as railways are worked by men, they will be liable to the imperfections belonging to all things human. Though their machinery may be perfect, and their organization as complete as skill and forethought can make it, workmen will at times be forgetful and listless, and a moment's carelessness may lead to the most disastrous results. Yet, taking all circumstances into account, the wonder is that traveling by railway at high speeds should have been rendered comparatively so safe.

To be struck by lightning is one of the rarest of all causes of death, yet more persons were killed by lightning in Great Britain, in 1866, than were killed on railways from causes beyond their own control; the number in the former case having been nineteen, and in the latter fifteen, or one in every twenty millions of passengers carried. Most persons would consider the probability of their dying by hanging to be extremely remote; yet, accord

ing to the Registrar General's returns for 1867, it is thirty times greater than that of being killed by railway accident. Taking the number of persons who traveled in Great Britain in 1866 at 313,699,268, of whom fifteen were accidentally killed, it would appear that, even supposing a person to have a permanent existence, and to make a journey by railway daily, the probability of » his being killed in an accident would occur on an average once in above 50,000 years.

The remarkable safety with which railway traffic is on the whole conducted, is due to constant watchfulness and highly-applied skill. The men who work the railways are for the most part the picked men of the country, and every railway station may be regarded as a practical school of industry, attention, and punctuality. Where railways fail in these respects, it will usually be found that it is because the men are personally defective, or because better men are not to be had. It must also be added that the onerous and responsible duties which railway workmen are called upon to perform require a degree of consideration on the part of the public which is not very often extended to them.

Few are aware of the complicated means and agencies that are in constant operation on railways day and night to insure the safety of the passengers to their journeys' end. The road is under a system of continuous inspection, under gangs of menabout twelve to every five miles, under a foreman or "ganger"whose duty it is to see that the rails and chairs are sound, all their fastenings complete, and the line clear of obstructions.

Then, at all the junctions, sidings, and crossings, pointsmen are stationed, with definite instructions as to the duties to be performed by them. At these places signals are provided, worked from the station platforms, or from special signal-boxes, for the purpose of protecting the stopping or passing trains. When the first railways were opened the signals were of a very simple kind. The station-men gave them with their arms stretched out in different positions; then flags of different colors were used; next

fixed signals, with arms or discs, or of rectangular or triangular shape. These were followed by a complete system of semaphore signals, near and distant, protecting all junctions, sidings, and crossings.

When government inspectors were first appointed by the Board of Trade to examine and report upon the working of railways, they were alarmed by the number of trains following each other at some stations in what then seemed to be a very rapid succession. A passage from a Report written in 1840 by Sir Frederick Smith, as to the traffic at "Taylor's Junction," on the York and North Midland Railway, contrasts curiously with the railway life and activity of the present day: "Here," wrote the alarmed inspector, "the "the passenger trains from York, as well as Leeds and Selby, meet four times a day. No less than 23 passenger-trains stop at or pass this station in the 24 hours-an amount of traffic requiring not only the most perfect arrangements on the part ⚫ of the management, but the utmost vigilance and energy in the servants of the Company employed at this place." Contrast this with the state of things now. On the Metropolitan Line, 667 trains pass a given point in one direction or the other during the eighteen hours of the working day, or an average of 36 trains an hour. At the Cannon-street Station of the Southeastern Railway, 527 trains pass in and out daily, many of them crossing each others' tracks under the protection of the station signals. Forty-five trains run in and out between 9 and 10 A.M., and an equal number between 4 and 5 P.M. Again, at the Clapham Junction, near London, about 700 trains pass or stop daily; and though to the casual observer the succession of trains coming and going, running and stopping, coupling and shunting, appears a scene of inextricable confusion and danger, the whole is clearly intelligible to the signal-men in their boxes, who work the trains in and out with extraordinary precision and regularity.

The inside of a signal-box reminds one of a piano-forte on a large scale, the lever-handles corresponding with the keys of the