Those who have travelled over many remarkable railway systems in various parts of the world where striking evidences of the engineer’s skill are apparent upon a liberal scale, have pointed to the absence of any such evidences of activity in these islands--“The Home of the Railway.” But this to a certain degree is inevitable. The engineer was not faced with such physical conditions when he essayed to gridiron this country as confronted him in the Americas or Asia. There are no towering ranges of eternally snow-wreathed mountains to overcome, no wildly boiling wide rivers to span, no yawning canyons to thread or stretches of sterile desert to traverse. Yet when Stephenson and his contemporaries sought to achieve the railway conquest of Great Britain they encountered many obstacles which to them, with their crude appliances, were every whit as stupendous as those which rear up before the engineer to-day, although he is equipped with an extensive assortment of heavy artillery to assist him in his contest against the forces of Nature. Moreover, some of the expedients which Stephenson evolved to overcome a difficult situation are practised to-day merely because the intervening eighty years have not provided any better solution of a problem of a similar character. [Illustration: THE HUGE STEAM SHOVEL WHICH TAKES SOME 3 TONS OF SPOIL WITH EVERY BITE] [Illustration: THE DRAG-LINE SHOVEL WHICH SCOOPS UP THE EARTH IN THE CUTTING AS IT IS PULLED ALONG THE RAILWAY BUILDERS’ HEAVY ARTILLERY] Every one has read how Stephenson was for a time nonplussed by the treacherous bog Chat Moss, across which now speed the expresses of the London & North-Western railway. It is the largest stretch of swamp in the country, and many wiseacres prophesied that there Stephenson would meet his Waterloo when he essayed to carry the Manchester & Liverpool railway over its unstable surface. Yet Stephenson plodded along unconcerned and achieved success in a novel manner. He laid branches of trees and hedge cuttings upon the surface of the bog, and upon the softest patches pressed hurdles intertwined with heather into service. Upon this network he laid a layer of rock and gravel, which caused the foundation to sink somewhat into the morass. This formed the permanent way, and its peculiar character provoked more than one scornful criticism. But its stability confounded the critics.