With this comparatively light engine it is said that the forty miles between Baltimore and Washington were covered in thirty-seven and a half minutes. But it was claimed that with a more powerful locomotive the train could have been easily run at the rate of one mile in thirty-five seconds, or nearly two miles a minute. These speeds appear tremendous, but custom would soon reconcile us to them. Our forefathers thought fifteen miles an hour terrific; and one of the objections to Stephenson’s ideas was, that at such a speed, not to mention a twenty-or twenty-five-mile rate, no human being could draw breath. Since then we have quietly acquiesced in and equally welcomed a style of travelling varying from 35 to an average of 58 miles an hour, and even consider it no great feat to run a special viceregal train from Euston to Holyhead--263½ miles--in five hours without stopping, and are not astonished to read of last year’s record run of the mail express from Boulogne to Paris--168 miles--at an average speed of 68 miles an hour! Still, 120 miles every sixty minutes without stopping is a large order, and in practice would give some remarkable results. For instance, a resident at Putney could be whisked from the station nearest to him, and thence to a point adjoining his office--say in Seething Lane, some seven miles off--in less than five minutes. Brighton could be reached from town in twenty-five minutes; Dover, in forty; Edinburgh, in three hours twenty minutes. Inverness--663 miles away--could be arrived at from Euston in six hours twenty minutes, instead of the fifteen hours thirty-five minutes of the ordinary express; and Paris--allowing one hour thirty minutes for the Channel passage--in three hours forty-two minutes. THE MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL ELECTRIC EXPRESS RAILWAY Now, the contention of the advocates of the monorail principle is, that only by that system can very high speed be safely attained; and when one comes to closely examine the cars in which this hundred-and-ten-miles-per-hour travelling is achieved, confidence is at once inspired, because of their low centre of gravity and consequent unlikeliness of derailment.