The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson: Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway LocomotiveSmiles, Samuel
History
The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson: Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway Locomotive
The speculation answered so well that several private coaching
companies were shortly after got up by innkeepers at Darlington and
Stockton for the purpose of running other coaches upon the railroad,
and an active competition for passenger-traffic sprang up. The
"Experiment," being found too heavy for one horse to draw, besides
being found an uncomfortable machine, was banished to the coal
district. Its place was then supplied by other and better vehicles,
though they were no other than old stage-coach bodies purchased by the
company, each mounted on an under-frame with flange wheels. These were
let on hire to the coaching companies, who horsed and managed them
under an arrangement as to tolls, in like manner as the "Experiment"
had been worked. Now began the distinction of inside and outside
passengers, equivalent to first and second class, paying different
fares. The competition with each other upon the railway, and with the
ordinary stage-coaches upon the road, soon brought up the speed, which
was increased to ten miles an hour--the mail-coach rate of traveling in
those days, and considered very fast.
Mr. Clephan, a native of the district, has communicated to the author
the following account of the competition between the rival coach
companies:
"There were two separate coach companies in Stockton, and amusing
collisions sometimes occurred between the drivers, who found on
the rail a novel element for contention. Coaches can not pass each
other on the rail as on the road, and, as the line was single, with
four sidings in the mile, when two coaches met, or two trains, or
coach and train, the question arose which of the drivers must go
back. This was not always settled in silence. As to trains, it came
to be a sort of understanding that empty should give way to loaded
wagons; and as to trains and coaches, that passengers should have
preference over coals; while coaches, when they met, must quarrel
it out. At length, midway between sidings, a post was erected, and
the rule was laid down that he who had passed the pillar must go
on, and the 'coming man' go back. At the Goose Pool and Early Nook
it was common for the coaches to stop, and there, as Jonathan would
say, passengers and coachmen 'liquored.' One coach, introduced
by an innkeeper, was a compound of two mourning-coaches--an
approximation to the real railway-coach, which still adheres,
with multiplying exceptions, to the stage-coach type. One Dixon,
who drove the 'Experiment' between Darlington and Shildon, is
the inventor of carriage-lighting on the rail. On a dark winter
night, having compassion on his passengers, he would buy a penny
candle, and place it lighted among them on the table of the
'Experiment'--the first railway-coach (which, by the way, ended its
days at Shildon as a railway cabin), being also the first coach on
the rail (first, second, and third class jammed all into one) that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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