Stokers and pokers : $b or, The London and North-Western Railway, the electric telegraph, and the railway clearing-house — John Shaqi
Stokers and pokers : $b or, The London and North-Western Railway, the electric telegraph, and the railway clearing-houseHead, Francis Bond, Sir
History
Stokers and pokers : $b or, The London and North-Western Railway, the electric telegraph, and the railway clearing-house
Head, Francis Bond, Sir
London and North-Western Railway; Railway Clearing House (London, England); Telegraph -- Great Britain
As fast as this chanting porter drawls out his facts the chief clerk
indelibly records them, convulsively snatching up at each change of
station the particular book of entry which belongs to it. Another
clerk at each exclamation hands over to a porter a bill for the cost
of conveyance, which he pastes to every parcel. For all articles
declared by the first porter to be “_light_,” by which he means that
they do not exceed twelve pounds weight--(by far the greater number
are of this description)--the charge on the paper to be affixed
is ready printed, which effectually prevents fraud; but where the
weight _exceeds_ twelve pounds, or where any sum has been paid out,
the charges are unavoidably inserted in ink. The velocity with which
all these little parcels are booked, weigh-billed, placed into
hand-trucks, wheeled off to their respective vans, packed, locked up,
and then despatched down the little branch-rail to the main line,
on which is the train ready to convey them, is very surprising.
While witnessing the operation, however, we could not help observing
that the Company’s porters took about as much notice of the words
“Keep this side uppermost,” “With care,” “Glass,” “To be kept
very dry,” &c., as the Admiralty would to an intimation from some
dowager-duchess that her nephew, who is about to join the Thunderer
as a midshipman, “has rather _a peculiar constitution_, and will
therefore require for some years _very particular_ CARE.”
During Christmas week the number of railway parcels that flow into
and ebb out of London is so enormous, that extra accommodation, as
well as preparations, are necessary for their reception and despatch;
and as we chanced to arrive from the country at Euston Station on
Saturday the 23rd of December last, we will endeavour briefly to
describe the scenes which for a very few minutes we stopped to
witness.
A considerable portion of the space usually allowed for the
disembarkation of the passengers arriving by the up-trains had
been cut off by a lofty partition, or, as it is now-a-days termed,
a barricade, behind which, instead of red republicans armed with
loaded muskets, we were exceedingly happy to find nothing but
phalanxes, solid squares, columns, and pyramids of small parcels, the
destinations of which in large letters were chalked on consecutive
compartments of the north wall of the Euston territory, as follows:--
“OVER THE WATER.” “FINSBURY.”
“STRAND.” “SQUARES.” “CLERKENWELL.”
“ISLINGTON.” “KINGSLAND.”
“CAMDEN TOWN.”
“CITY.” “WEST END.”
“WESTMINSTER.”
“PIMLICO.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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