Part of the heavy cost of the earlier railways was no doubt due to the apprehension of engineers on the subject of gradients. And in the then state of our knowledge as regards the powers of the locomotive, this is not to be wondered at. Our first constructed lines had most favourable gradients. The rise from Camden Town to Tring, 1 in 200, or 26 feet in the mile for 31 miles, was considered by the late Mr. Robert Stephenson as the maximum gradient that ought to be ventured upon. Joseph Locke, more daring and venturous, and perhaps more prescient, ventured upon 1 in 100, or 52 feet in the mile for 10 miles; this is on what is known as the Whitmore incline, between Stafford and Crewe. Bucke, the engineer of the line from Crewe to Manchester, originally known as the Manchester and Birmingham, which obtained its act of incorporation in the same year as the Grand Junction, although it was five years later in its opening, determined upon a course the opposite of that which Locke had taken. Bucke therefore made his thirty-one miles nearly level, and no doubt (if we except the exceptional Great Western) there is not a line in England that comprises works better laid out as regards gradient, or more solidly finished than those we are now referring to. There is a capital run of railway between York and Darlington, forty-four miles, almost level, and nearly straight. It was on this line that, just twenty years ago, most of the experiments and trials were made, instituted to vindicate the narrow gauge as the best for carrying on the traffic of the country. These trials formed one of the many phases of the great battle of the gauges, fought so vigorously by its champions on each side; yet, in the short space of the fifth of a century, how many of these then active and doughty men have passed away from us for ever. By degrees, as the railway system progressed, we made less flat gradients, and we made larger and more powerful locomotives. The result from the action of these two elements has been, that in present times we have got here and there to gradients of 1 in 45, 112 feet in the mile, more than four times as steep as Stephenson’s incline between Tring and Camden. It was on the 6th of October, 1829, that George Stephenson’s engine, “Rocket,” was first tried on a short length of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in the presence of thousands, poured in from the adjacent country. Since then the weight of the engine has risen tenfold, from six tons to sixty; its speed not quite three-fold, from twenty miles an hour to something under sixty. Additional weight has been essentially used for overcoming stiff gradients. The stiffest, as has just been said, 1 in 45, with a moderate load; a Titanic locomotive, unfettered with any weights behind her, can go up 1 in 25, or 211 feet in the mile; no steeper.[2]