As the train flies through Leighton Station, the engineman’s watch tells that he has completed his forty miles in his appointed time, fifty-six minutes from that at which he left London. Well that he is quick of glance, for before the watch is replaced in its pocket, the engine and train enter in the Linsdale Tunnel. It is the worst on the line, for though short—only 284 yards in length—you are half-way through it before the first gleam of daylight is caught streaming in at its opposite entrance. “I have got the distant signal all right, Jack, put some coal on”—says the engineman to his fireman, and the furnace door has scarcely been opened for three shovels full, before the iron-clad is dashing through Bletchley Station—46½ miles from London,—twenty years ago, a small road-side station; now, a first-class and intricate junction, whence a branch juts off to the right to Bedford, and thence to Cambridge; another on the left to Oxford. It is thus that the two Universities are brought into railway connection, and the rival seats of learning and of boat racing are only three-and-a-half hours apart from each other. Might not Cam do well by an occasional training visit to the banks and stream of Isis? Bletchley is also intricate, because it is here that the third line of railway, ordered by the London and North-Western Company in 1858, commences, and is continued except through the Watford Tunnel (at either end of which it is very ingeniously connected with the original up-line of railway) on to Camden Station. This third line is solely for up goods, cattle, and mineral traffic, and the relative speed of such trains and those for passengers can be seen and appreciated, as the latter pass alongside the former for a minute or two, and then leave them behind at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour—twenty _versus_ forty-five.