The minute arrangements necessary for the transaction of all this important business at midnight, while the train is flying through the dark, it would be quite impossible to describe. The occupation is not only highly confidential, but it requires unceasing attention, exhausting to body and mind. Some time ago, while the three clerks, with their right elbows moving in all directions, were vigorously engaged in sorting their letters, and while the guard, with the light of his lamp shining on the gilt buttons and gold lace which emblazoned the pockets of his waistcoat, was busily sealing a letter-bag, a collision took place, which, besides killing four men, at the same moment chucked the sorting clerks from their pigeon-holes to the letter-bags in the guard’s compartment. In due time the chief clerk recovered from the shock; but what had happened--why he was lying on the letter-bags--why nobody was sorting--until he recovered from his stupor he could not imagine. CHAPTER XI. CREWE. We have now reached the most important station on the London and North-Western Railway; indeed the works here are on a scale which strikingly exemplifies the magnitude of the arrangements necessary for the maintenance of an arterial railway. The Company’s workshops at Crewe consist of a Locomotive and of a Coach department. In the manufactories of the former are constructed as well as repaired the whole of the engines and tenders required for the Northern Division, namely, from Birmingham to Liverpool; Rugby to Stafford; Crewe to Holyhead; Liverpool to Manchester; Liverpool, Manchester, and Warrington to Preston; Preston to Carlisle. The establishment also “works,” as it is termed, the Lancaster and Carlisle and Chester and Holyhead Lines. The total number of miles is at present 360, but the distance of course increases with the completion of every new branch line. In this division there are 220 engines and tenders (each averaging in value nearly 2000_l._), of which at least 100 are at work every day. Besides repairing all these, the establishment has turned out a new engine and tender on every Monday morning since the 1st of January, 1848. The number of workmen employed in the above department is 1600, their wages averaging 3800_l._ a fortnight. The accounts of these expenses, as also a book of “casualties,” in which every accident to, as well as every delay of, a train is reported, are examined once a fortnight by a special committee of directors. Without attempting to detail the various establishments, we will briefly describe a few of their most interesting features.