Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extending over More Than Fifty Years
History
Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extending over More Than Fifty Years
Railroads
In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for June, 1830, it is stated:—“There are at
present exhibiting in Edinburgh three large models, accompanied with
drawings of railways and their carriages, invented by Mr. Dick, who has a
patent. These railways are of a different nature from those hitherto in
use, inasmuch as they are not laid along the surface of the ground, but
elevated to such a height as, when necessary, to pass over the tops of
houses and trees. The principal supports are of stone, and, being placed
at considerable distances, have cast-iron pillars between them. The
carriages are to be dragged along with a velocity hitherto unparalleled,
by means of a rope drawn by a steam engine or other prime mover, a series
being placed at intervals along the railway. From the construction of
the railway and carriages the friction is very small.”
EVIDENCE OF A GENERAL SALESMAN.
The advantages London derives from railways, in regard to its supply of
good meat, may be gathered from the evidence given by Mr. George Rowley
in 1834, on behalf of the Great Western Railway Company.
“You have been a general salesman of live and dead stock of all
descriptions in Newgate Market 32 years?”—“Yes.”
“What is about the annual amount of your sales?”—“I turn over £300,000 in
a year.”
“Would a railway that facilitated the communication between London and
Bristol be an advantage to your business?”—“I think it would be a special
advantage to London altogether.”
“In what way?”—“The facility of having goods brought in reference to live
stock is very important; I have been in the habit of paying Mr. Bowman,
of Bristol, £1,000 a-week for many weeks; that has been for sending live
hogs to me to be sold, to be slaughtered in London; and I have, out of
that £1,000 a-week as many as 40 or 50 pigs die on the road, and they
have sold for little or nothing. The exertion of the pigs kills them.”
“The means of conveying pigs on a railway would be a great
advantage?”—“Yes, as far as having the pigs come good to market, without
being subject to a distemper that creates fever, and they die as red as
that bag before you, and when they are killed in good health they die a
natural colour.”
“Then do I understand you that those who are fortunate enough to survive
the journey are the worse for it?”—“Yes, in weight.”
“And in quality?”—“Yes! All meat killed in the country, and delivered in
the London market dead, in a good state, will make from 6d. to 8d. a
stone more than what is slaughtered in London.”
THE ANXIOUS HAIR-DRESSER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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