Some of those older engines could run bravely. Mr. Acworth reports that “a Bristol and Exeter tank-engine with 9 feet driving wheels, a long extinct species,” pelted down a steep incline at the speed of 80 miles an hour, many years since, and it has never been surpassed. The fastest speed during the Race to Edinburgh days seems to have been 76 miles, but perhaps the weight of the trains may have accounted for this. Mr. Acworth himself is believed to have accomplished the fastest bit of advertised journeying in the world. He went down on the “Dutchman,” and leaving Paddington at 11.46, he caught the return train at Swindon and was back at 2.45, having covered 154½ miles, with five minutes for refreshments, in 177 minutes. The line is easier on the up journey to London, and mile after mile sped by at a rate of over 60 miles an hour. From 56½ to 58 seconds was the chronograph’s record again and again, while on the down journey to Swindon he records a burst of 34½ miles in 34 minutes. The gradients of the railway form of course a most important factor in the question of speed. The Midland has one of the hardest roads in England for steep slopes, yet its magnificent engines bring its heavy trains from Leicester, 99¾ miles in 122 minutes. Considering the high levels the locomotives have to climb, only to sink again to low flats, as about the Ouse at Bedford, this performance is really as fine as some of the superb running of the Great Northern. The Southern lines out of London have no long distances to cover as the Northern, unless it may be the South-Western to Plymouth. The South-Western to Bournemouth and Exeter, and the mail trains on the South-Eastern, Chatham and Dover, and the Brighton trains can also show some excellent work as regards speed. The government of a large railway now has grown to something like the rule of a small state. Sir George Findlay, the general manager of the North-Western Company, in his evidence before the Labour Commission in 1892, deposed that the capital raised for British railways amounted to the vast sum of 897 millions of pounds; that the receipts were 80 millions yearly, that much more than half of this immense amount, namely 43 millions, yearly was paid in wages, and that half-a-million of men directly or indirectly were given employment. To such enormous dimensions has the railway developed. And the locomotive engine is the centre and soul of it all. Stephenson got it, so to speak, on its right lines of working, and it has run along them ever since, until in its great capacity for speed, its power for drawing heavy loads, and its strength and beauty of construction it may fairly be called one of the wonders of the world. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE STORY OF THE STEAMSHIP. CHAPTER I. THE “COMET” APPEARS. “If only people could reach the place easier, I could do more business.”