My father notes in his diary, 3 May 1840--“Yesterday in London I could scarcely get credited when I said that twenty-four hours previously I was in Brussels. Having steam the whole way, it is a very quick journey.” He left Brussels by rail at 4.15, reached Ostend at 9.0, left by steamer at midnight, and at 1.0 next afternoon “made fast at Tower Stairs.” Crossing by Dover and Calais in 1843, he writes on 15 July--“Started at 4.0 by the new railway from London Bridge to Folkestone, arriving at the latter at ½ p. 8: coaches waiting to take on to Dover. They were more than an hour in loading and getting the passengers. Reached Dover at ½ p. 10.” Next morning, “the tide being low, the English mail steamer had left the harbour and was riding at anchor in the roadstead, waiting for the mail. I put out in a boat at 6, but it was more than ½ p. 7 before we started, the letter bags being only that instant sent on board. We arrived off Calais at ½ p. 10; but, the tide being low, the steamer anchored in the roads, and the passengers were landed in the boats which took the mail bags.” Returning on 13 October, he found the tide high but the sea rough, and the crossing took close upon four hours: then, coach to Folkestone, and on to London by the train. A friend writes to him from Exeter, 8 April 1844--“Our railway will be sufficiently complete for an engine to travel here tomorrow, and I suppose will be completed about the first week in May.” It was opened on 1 May, and another friend writes on 17 September--“From Bristol to Exeter we experienced the shaking of the carriages exceedingly, and were really obliged, as I have before said, to hold by the side of the carriage to endeavour to steady ourselves.” Yet this line was on the broad gauge, and that was much less jerky than the narrow. I remember people saying that they would never go up by the South Western, as the Great Western shook them less. My grandmother writes to my father, 13 September 1845--“When in Exeter four weeks since, I went to see the trains go off for London: the first time of my seeing anything of the kind.” My grandfather writes to him, 16 May 1852--“I hope we shall have a fine day, as your mother never was at Torquay, and I not for near thirty years.” He was sixty-three then, and she was seventy. Torquay is fifteen miles from here, and neither of them had ever lived more than thirty miles away.