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 soon as an up luggage-train arrives at Camden Station, its loaded
waggons of merchandise, which are placed under the care of the
Goods-department Superintendent as soon as they arrive, are, under
his directions, drawn by horses along a variety of branch-rails to
a certain point, where they are left by the superintendent in the
open air, from which moment Messrs. Pickford and Messrs. Chaplin and
Horne--to whom the different waggons are respectively addressed, and
between whom a wholesome competition exists, highly advantageous to
the public--are held responsible by the Company for fire or accident
of any sort; in short, for their safe delivery. The waggons thus
deposited by the superintendent, solely under the canopy of heaven,
are instantly approached by drivers and horses belonging to the two
competing agents, who with great cleverness, by repeatedly twisting
them on turn-tables, and then by drawing them along an apparent
labyrinth of rails, conduct each species of goods to its own store,
where, by experienced porters, it is immediately unloaded and
despatched by spring waggons to its destination.
As regards the down-trade, the business transacted in this
department, although apparently complicated, is very admirably
arranged. The spring waggons and carts of the Company’s agents, like
bees in search of honey, with extraordinary intelligence migrate
in all directions to the various localities of the metropolis in
search, piecemeal, of that enormous traffic, large and small, which
by every diurnal pulsation of the heart of London is projected
into our manufacturing districts, which in return send back to
the metropolis very nearly the same amount. Every waggon-load of
merchandise thus obtained, as well as every boat-load of goods (for
the Company have also at Camden Station a branch water-communication
leading into the Regent’s Canal), is either carted at once to the
particular storehouse to which it belongs, to be thence reloaded into
railway vans, or it is brought to “_The General Receiving Shed_”
either of Messrs. Pickford, or of Messrs. Chaplin and Horne; and to
prevent mistakes, all invoice-forms and truck-labels for the former
firm are printed in black, those for the latter in red. In these
enormous receptacles goods “_coming in_” are arranged on one side,
those “_going out_” on the other. In Messrs. Pickford’s receiving
shed, which is 300 feet in length by 217 in breadth, there are in
operation, for the purpose of rapidly loading and unloading goods--
24 steam-cranes,
21 wooden cranes,
1 steam-doller or lift,
1 travelling-crane on the roof,
1 steam-capstan for hauling trucks along rails to the various
loading bays.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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