The engine of the down trains from London, having rested at Stafford its appointed time, is again coaled and watered, and if she have brought the Scotch Mail, she takes her place at the head of the up-train, at 1·18 a.m., or an hour and twenty minutes after she had finished her downward journey. In precisely eight hours from the time she has left Euston she has completed her day’s work, and in doing so she has gone over 267 miles of ground, and has conveyed some 120 tons dead weight of matter, besides her own weight, at a running speed of nearly forty-five miles an hour. She will perform the same double journey on the morrow, and then she will rest for a “shed-day;” out again for duty on the following day. She will work that and the succeeding day, then a rest as before, then work again for two days, and so on, taking shed-days, and times required for slight repairs, and occasionally for heavy ones and renewals. An engine is considered to do good service that is actually running on 250 days in a year. Quite enough, when it is remembered that she consists of 5,416 pieces, which must be put together like watch-work. The watch, however, is not exposed to rough usage, fly-away speed, and exposure to weather the intensity of which may vary from 40 degrees below freezing point to 120 degrees of heat in the sun. We have seen the same engine at work in Canada at these identical temperatures within an interval of four months only. No wonder then that when her day’s work is done she requires repose, quite as much as it is necessary for the horse of every day life. Her joints have become relaxed with labour, her bolts have become loosened, her rubbing surfaces, notwithstanding the oil the engine driver poured upon them, have become heated and are often unequally expanded, strained, and twisted; her grate bars and fire-box have become choked with clinkers, and her tubes charged with coke. _Hey presto!_ the engine cleaners—the groom and hostlers of the iron horse—take her in hand, they clean out her fire-box, they scrape its grate bars; and, under the superintendence of superior workmen, they tighten all bolts and rivets, grease all moving parts, thoroughly cleanse her outside as well as in,—and the engine, thus washed, cooled down, refreshed, and purified, is, after an interval of five or six hours, again ready (if required) for whatever giant duty it maybe necessary to employ her upon. But, let it always be remembered and borne in mind, she must not be over worked; she is infinitely more delicate and sensitive in this respect than the horse is. [Illustration: MAP OF INDIA SHEWING THE LINES OF RAILWAY _IN THE YEAR 1867_.] CHAPTER IX. INDIAN RAILWAYS. England is naturally in advance of all other countries as regards railways in her possessions and colonies. There is not one of them in which the system has not made some advance, but in two of them it has become of magnificent proportions. First as regards India.