The railway trains of ninety years ago, wonderful as they were considered then, were very different from those of to-day, for there were no comfortable carriages with windows and cushioned seats, and the passengers had to travel in open wagons. There were no waiting rooms or platforms either, and the speed was very moderate, fifteen to twenty miles an hour being thought marvellous and even dangerous. This is what a writer says in the year 1837: "The length of the Liverpool railway is thirty-one miles, and the fact that passengers are regularly conveyed that distance by locomotive engines in one and a half to two hours produced an extraordinary sensation." [Illustration: EARLY ENGINE.] As the years went on, railways and the trains which ran on them improved very quickly and stage coaches became hopelessly old-fashioned, but for some time a railway journey was something of an adventure and many strange plans were made in order to prevent accidents. One of the most eccentric of these ideas was that the last carriage or van on a train should have a roof sloping backwards towards the ground and fitted with railway lines, so that if the train to which it was attached were overtaken by another, there would be no collision, for the second engine would run up the sloping roof and travel along on the top of the slower train. [Illustration: WHITE SUDAN TRAIN.] Nowadays, railway travelling has become much safer and also more luxurious, and our trains, with their sleeping berths and restaurant cars, would have been considered marvels by the early passengers who crowded contentedly into the jolting open trucks of 1839. One of the most interesting of modern trains is to be seen on the Sudan line. It is painted white for the sake of coolness and has wooden venetian blinds instead of windows. [Illustration: MOUNTAIN RAILWAY.] At first it was considered impossible for railways to be constructed except on level ground, but difficulties were gradually overcome and for many years there have been trains running up the Rigi and other mountains. Now a line has been made to the summit of the Jung Frau, which is over thirteen thousand feet high, and by it tourists can be taken far into the region of perpetual snow. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a new power began to be used, and we hear of locomotives driven not by steam but by electricity. Now, although steam has not been ousted from the field, there are many electric trains, and in almost every city of Europe electric trams run through the streets and often far out into the country beyond. Another invention of the nineteenth century which made, as time went on, a new means of travel, was the bicycle, but although the first of these machines appeared more than a hundred years ago, they were very strange-looking contrivances indeed, and were considered ridiculous and useless. [Illustration: HIGH BICYCLE.]