Quickly she returned to Shepherd’s Bush, viâ the Bank and the Twopenny Tube, in the latter finding a totally different class of people from those she had travelled with in the morning, and plenty of room for everybody. She went back home the next day, sacrificing her seat for the Coronation procession; and she registered a vow that if ever she came to London again she would study closely the route for any proposed expedition as carefully as if she were on an “unaccompanied” Continental tour.

She kept her vow; and, I believe, eventually, her “bump of locality” became considerably developed.

The moral of this practically true sketch is, that in view of the complicated system of metropolitan Tubes and Undergrounds, no one without an experienced escort, unless endowed with a talent for locality, can hope to get about London without trouble and difficulty. In fact, a Metropolitan Bradshaw, or Metropolitan Guide to Underground London is urgently needed.

CHAPTER IX

LONDON’S TANGLED TUBES

As with the tramways, the routes of nearly all these lines appear to have been adopted happy-go-luckily. “Here are Highgate, Walthamstow, Beckenham, Kew, Hendon,” say the promoters; “what we have to do is to make a railway from these suburbs, and, somehow or other, get as near the metropolitan centres as possible, and dump down our passengers. The problem of intercommunication is not our business. We leave that to others.” So the lines of the various companies meander away, often by the most indirect routes, and finally arrive more or less near their objective destinations, Charing Cross, or the Bank of England.

If Napoleon the Great with prophetic glance could have foreseen London linked to distant villages in every direction, these hamlets growing into towns, and as population increased, being irresistibly drawn into Greater London’s maelstrom of brick and mortar, even he would have been appalled by the problem of how to give ready means of access from one part to the other. Anticipating railways and electric tubes, he would probably, with the marvellous fertility of resource that distinguished him, have formulated a plan whereby a given circular space in the metropolis would be divided into sections, a mile square, with a station in the centre and at each corner, so that all within that area would have access to a railway, at no point more than half a mile distant, the tube railways below the surface, and others above, converging at a great central depôt. On reaching the limit of the circle, the lines (that would necessarily cross under and over one another) would, by means of loops, return and keep up a continued circulation of traffic from rim to rim of the circle, which, as the city grew bigger and bigger, could be enlarged, and the lines extended, the process continuing ad infinitum.

This, of course, would have been an impossibility; the characteristic British love of half measures and of temporising being opposed to any really comprehensive and imperial scheme, and local jealousy would not have tolerated the necessarily masterful, though wise, domination of a One Man Power in carrying out the plan.

Therefore the great railways and the suburban railways were allowed to do pretty much as they liked, as seen in the entire absence of system in approaching London, and in dealing with its vast traffic.

To meet the difficulty a central station has often been mooted, and much good would ensue therefrom if it accommodated all the lines. Recently, in connection with the Great Western Railway, the idea has been revived, and the site of Christ’s Hospital suggested. In fact, it is an open secret that overture upon overture has been made on the subject, but the enormous price demanded by the old school authorities has always been the bugbear.

The feasibility of an Inner Circle Tube, however, linking together all the lines, with ramifications to serve the suburbs, worked jointly under a pooling arrangement by the various companies, has commended itself to certain experts.

It is true that four of the great trunk lines are already connected by subways with the Inner Circle Railway—the Great Eastern at Liverpool Street; the Great Western at Praed Street; the London, Brighton, and South Coast at Victoria; and the South Eastern and Chatham at Cannon Street, Blackfriars, and Victoria. The Brighton Company has already a subway connection between London Bridge and the City and South London Tube Station there, and the Mansion House subway will by-and-by be similarly connected with the City and South London Bank Station.

Also there are the purely suburban lines to be considered, such as the South London Railway, worked by the Brighton Company; the Metropolitan Extension, a part of the Chatham Company’s local system; the West London Railway, which gives a north-to-south connection at Chelsea for several companies; the Hammersmith and City Railway; the Hampstead Junction Railway (from Willesden to Tottenham); and the local services of the London and North Western; the Great Northern Railway (already committed to a tube); and the Midland Railway, which, with the Great Northern, has access to the south of London, viâ Ludgate Hill.

But the matter now engaging public attention is not Subways, but Tubes—how to disentangle the different schemes, and evolve order out of chaos.

The Tubes open for traffic are the Waterloo and City Railway; the City and South London Railway; Clapham Common to the “Angel,” Islington; and the Central London from the Bank to Shepherd’s Bush. While those in progress more or less advanced, are the Great Northern and City Railway; the Brompton and Piccadilly Circus Railway; the Bank to Finsbury Park; the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway; Paddington to Waterloo, and thence viâ St. George’s Circus, Southwark, to the Elephant and Castle.

All last session members of the House of Commons were, so to speak, overwhelmed with Tubes.

But the Select Committees fared worse, the task before them being even more arduous. There were promoters who sought for powers to construct Tubes to cross and recross proposed and existing lines, and even to bore parallel with others, while some wanted to create isolated and disconnected sections, leading apparently nowhere. Petitions and protests against the various schemes poured in from innumerable sources; from every quarter petitions in favour were also laid down at their feet. Truly, the members of the Committees found that of making many Tubes (as of books) there was no end, and that much railway promoting was a weariness of the flesh.

Long and loud waged the conflict of the various aspirants to bore through the foundations of London. The smaller promoters’ attention finally became fixed upon the financial and legislative duel of two magnates, each representing a similar and important scheme for joining together the existing unlinked metropolitan tube lines.

It was as if through some narrow gorge leading to desirable pasturage, the smaller denizens of wood and forest tumultuously endeavoured to force a passage, and falling out by the way, their strife was suddenly arrested to watch the single combat of two rival antlered monarchs of the glen, who fought to the death to obtain the sole right of way.

Out of the Parliamentary hurly-burly emerged triumphant the well-known Yerkes group with its comprehensive scheme (the first in the list given below) the only very important one sanctioned.

Thus closed the session of 1902, and in the Railway Committee Rooms, for a time at least, the

The following Tube Railways were authorised:—Brompton and Piccadilly Circus Railway (Acts 1897, 1899, 1902), that of 1902 authorising inter alia its amalgamation with the Great Northern and Strand. The Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway to be continued to Edgware by a previously authorised line (Acts 1893 to 1900 and 1902). The City and Brixton Railway, to cross the Thames independently of the City and South London Tube, and to have stations at St. George’s Circus, Southwark, and at Kennington Oval (Act 1897), with a new City station communicating with the South London Railway (electric). The Great Northern and City Railway, Finsbury Park to the Bank. The Metropolitan District Railway (Act 1897), a Deep-level Electric to work with the Brompton and Piccadilly Tube. The North West London Railway (Act 1899) from the Marble Arch to Cricklewood.

THE ROYAL COMMISSION

For some time past it had been made clear that no Select Committee of the Houses of Parliament, however efficient, could be expected to cope with the problem of metropolitan combined tubes, tramways and vehicular street traffic; and in view of the probability of other Tube Bills being promoted during the session of 1903, it was strongly urged upon the Government to consent to a Royal Commission on the matter.

So, before the meeting of this year’s Parliament, a Royal Commission was appointed with a most comprehensive programme of arduous work.

General satisfaction seems to have been expressed with the composition of the Commission. No better chairman could have been found than Sir David M. Barbour, whose acquaintance with official inquiries is probably greater than that of anyone else in Great Britain, he having been associated with several Royal Commissions. Special knowledge bearing on the peculiar problems to be solved, characterises most of the members. Sir John Wolfe Barry is perhaps the best-known consulting railway engineer in the country, having acted in this capacity to many of the leading railway companies, and, in 1901, having taken part in the inquiry respecting vibration on tube railways. Sir George Trout Bartley has represented North Islington in the House of Commons for nearly eighteen years, and from lifelong residence in London has a wide knowledge of its needs. Earl Cawdor has been Chairman of the Great Western Railway for the last eight years. Viscount Cobham has been a Railway Commissioner since 1891, and prior to that, was temporarily Deputy-Chairman of the Great Western Railway. Sir Joseph Dimsdale, being a banker, has had wide experience as a financier. Ex-Lord Mayor, and City Chamberlain, he represents in the House of Commons the City of London, which is vitally concerned in the question of efficient transit. Mr. G. S. Gibb, the General Manager of the North Eastern Railway for the past twelve years, is a railway expert of great experience. As Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade, Sir Francis J. S. Hopwood has a specially trained mind, and an intimate acquaintance with railway matters, having been formerly Secretary of the Railway Department. Mr. C. S. Murdoch, C.B., has been for many years in the Government service, and has acted, since 1896, as Assistant Under-Secretary of the Home Department. Sir John P. Dickson-Poynder is a member for the Chippenham Division of Wiltshire, and represents St. George’s, Hanover Square, at the County Council. Sir Robert T. Reid, K.C., member for Dumfries since 1886, was Attorney-General in the last Liberal Government, and may be regarded as the official representative of the Opposition on the Commission. Lord Ribblesdale, a member of the London County Council, was Chairman of the Joint Committee of the Lords and Commons on Tube Railways in 1901.

Soon after the appointment of the Commission it was suggested that the labour would be considerably lightened if the subject of pedestrian and vehicular traffic included in their programme were eliminated or, at any rate, indefinitely postponed, and attention concentrated upon Tubes and Railways, making—as they have the power to do—an interim report; and thus avert disastrous delay in the realisation of the Tube Schemes before the Parliament of 1903.

Early in the session a somewhat significant announcement was made in the House of Commons, in reference to these schemes; only two of which were very important, viz., the Central London’s proposal to complete the circle; and the North-East London Railway scheme, which (if passed) will embrace twenty-two miles—nine being in tubes—tapping the traffic between the City and Leyton and Walthamstow, whose combined population is over two hundred thousand people.

The following is the statement made on the 2nd of March by Mr. Jeffreys, as Deputy-Chairman of Committees, who said he had had the advantage of a conference with the Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords and the President of the Board of Trade, and they had come to the conclusion that certain of the bills connected with London traffic ought to be postponed until the result of the Commission dealing with this matter had been reported. The deep-level railways which they thought ought to await the completion of this inquiry were the Central London Railway; Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton (New Lines and Extensions) Bill; North-West London (Marble Arch to Victoria) Railway Bill; Clapham Junction to Marble Arch Railway (Nos. 1 and 2) Bill; Metropolitan District Railway Works Bill. There were certain other Bills which they thought might go to Committees, viz.: Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway Bill; Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Railway (Various Powers) Bill; Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Transfer Bill; and the City and North-East Suburban Electric Railway Bill.

There were, besides, certain other railway measures which were doubtful, and these, they thought, ought to be held over until the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords, the President of the Board of Trade, and himself had considered them. These Bills were the City and South London Railway (Angel and Islington) Bill, and the Metropolitan District Railway (Various Powers Bill).

But the Royal Commission is, after all, only a temporary expedient; and the question remains, as to what shall be the Governing Power of London’s railway traffic; for it must be taken for granted that both the City Corporation and the London County Council frankly admit that the underground locomotion of the metropolis has become so complicated that the general supervision of some great public department is necessary. Is it to be the London County Council, the Board of Trade, some new body resembling the Light Railways Commission, or a joint committee of members of both Houses of Parliament, appointed each session, to consider all questions affecting locomotion in or near London?

Here we are reminded that the London County Council has been considering whether or not to apply for parliamentary powers to take over the burden of linking together the various districts of London by a series of tubes. A colossal undertaking, involving, it is said, a capital of fifty millions!

Whether it be advisable for the Council, in addition to its other heavy responsibilities, to extend its municipal trading on so vast a scale, is doubtful; for it has the ratepayers to consider.

If it be the fact that mercantile enterprise cannot grapple with the task, then there would be good and sufficient reason for the Council or the Government to attempt it. But private capital is generally obtainable for a really promising scheme.

Besides, such gigantic undertakings obviously require men of good business capacity and considerable railway experience to devote their time exclusively to the work. One would think that county councillors (as such), efficient as they may be, have already as much work as they can readily get through, from one week’s end to another.

CHAPTER X

LONDON’S LATEST AND LONGEST TUBE

From a traveller’s point of view, the effect of this new railway will be far-reaching. Dwellers near District Railway termini, such as Wimbledon, New Cross, Bow Road, South Harrow, Hounslow Barracks, Richmond, and intermediate stations, will have, by means of exchange—at Earl’s Court Station with the Metropolitan District Railway; at Gloucester Road and South Kensington Station with the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railway; at Piccadilly Circus Station with the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway; at Cranbourn Street Station with the Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway; and at King’s Cross and Finsbury Park Stations with the Great Northern Railway—ready access to practically all centres and quarters of our big city; its own immediate objective from Earl’s Court being Finsbury Park, a distance of 7½ miles. It is similar in construction to the Central. The cars, built at Loughborough, will resemble those of the new Inner Circle, and the driving force will come from the Power House at Chelsea.

Truly, under pleasant scenes will the new Tube be carried—as fashionable, romantic, and historical a route as any in London. Here is Earl’s Court, where, in the midst of market gardens far away from town, once stood John Hunter’s house, where the great anatomist kept a menagerie of wild beasts to experiment upon, and in the dead of night boiled down the body of O’Brien, the Irish giant, to obtain the skeleton, which now adorns the museum of the College of Surgeons. The well-known Edmund Tattersall lived close by for many years at Coleherne Court, on the site of one of either Fairfax’s or Lord Essex’s redoubts (they appear to have had a good many), thrown up after the battle of Brentford, when the victorious Royalists were expected to cross the river (which they never did) and besiege London.

Gloucester Road, the next station, recalls the fact that when the District Railway came there, it was still a mere lane with hawthorn hedges, a blacksmith’s forge somewhere near, while pleasant paths right and left led to orchards, in the midst of which was St. Jude’s Church, so famous later on for its fashionable congregation and its eloquent preacher, the Rev. Dr. Forrest, now Dean of Worcester.

From Gloucester Road the Tube runs under pleasant Stanhope Gardens and part of Harrington Road with its fine mansions, to South Kensington. The ground about the Hoop and Toy Tavern close by was, so tradition says, designated in the draft Parliamentary Bill for the Great Western Railway terminus. At that time the site was sufficiently countrified to satisfy those who would banish railway stations to Jericho or to the uttermost verge of London, and remained so for a long time; and I have been told by an old Bromptonian that he has seen a covey of partridges put up where the Natural History Museum now stands.

At this point the new Tube—leaving its course parallel with, but at a far deeper level than, the District Railway—proceeds unaccompanied to Piccadilly, and, so to say, enters the Brompton Road at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, formerly a very plain brick edifice erected by the Oratorian Fathers, who had begun their good work on a humble scale in King William Street, Charing Cross, in a building subsequently occupied by Woodin, the ventriloquist, and later on by Toole, as his own peculiar theatre.

The present conspicuous basilica is at last completed, all but the towers. Adjoining it, down an avenue of trees, recalling the approach to Shakespeare’s last resting-place, is Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, reminiscent of Dr. Irons, its vicar, who ultimately became Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, beneath which is the City station of the City and South London Electric Railway.

Brompton Square is close by, associated by many of us with a once popular song, “Ada with the golden hair,” composed and sung by G. W. Moore, of the Christy Minstrels. In this Square have dwelt many actors and actresses: Wigan, Buckstone, Robert Keeley, etc.; and also Shirley Brooks. At one corner used to be a house standing a little back from the road, occupied by an eccentric individual whose craze was to have several clocks in every room, and the task of keeping them in order encouraged a watch-and-clock-maker to settle down in a small shop next door. Another feature of his craze was to present a watch of some kind to every lady he knew; so that his neighbour must have done a fair business. A bank now occupies this site, and the author recollects watching the strong-room being built deep down in the gravelly soil peculiar to South Kensington. Next door will be located the unpretentious Brompton Station of the new railway. An official of the bank was heard to remark facetiously that he trusted the Tube would not bore into the strong-room aforesaid—a new possibility and grievance to be duly noted.

Directly underneath Brompton Road goes London’s latest Tube, passing “Harrod’s,” the most palatial General Store in the metropolis, if not in the world. It originated some years ago in a narrow little shop, where good tea, excellent butter, and, rumour says, jam made by Mr. Harrod’s mother, were the chief articles sold to the customers, the bulk of whom were of the working-class.

Now Knightsbridge is reached, in olden times called Kingsbridge, when it was represented by a bridge only (on the site of the modern Albert Gate), built by Edward the Confessor over a brook, or bourn, rising, like the Tybourn and the Oldbourn, in the Hampstead Hills, and flowing thence to the Thames.

No part of London has so completely changed in appearance as this; lofty modern buildings having taken the place of small old-fashioned houses. These improvements culminate at Sloane Street, where anyone approaching town by way of Kensington, meets the first of the numerous metropolitan “rond-points,” surrounded by mansions and shops so tall as to put into the shade the French Embassy and the houses at Albert Gate, which for many years were considered the highest in town. At the equestrian statue of Field-Marshal Lord Strathnairn, four thoroughfares converge—Kensington Road, Brompton Road, Sloane Street, and St. George’s Place—pouring around it a continual stream of traffic day and night. Three of these thoroughfares are perfect paradises to ladies who delight in such alluring shops as Harrod’s, Harvey Nichols and Co., and Woolland Brothers, whose prolonged and magnificent frontages are unequalled in Modern Babylon.

A few doors from the “rond-point” in Brompton Road is a Tube station; and the workmen, as they bore close to the triangular grass-covered enclosure in front of Tattersall’s, are probably unaware that a comparatively slight deviation would take them through a pit beneath the enclosure, which, tradition avers, was used, during the Great Plague of London, for the dead. It is likely enough; for centuries ago there existed, a little to the east of Albert Gate, a hospital belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, which in 1665 was given up for the use of infected patients; and as this little piece of ground has never been disturbed, it probably was originally the burying-place attached to the hospital, and was converted into a plague-pit.

A house close to Hyde Park Court was once occupied by Charles Reade, the novelist. At a house close by (long since pulled down), Horace Smith, joint-author of Rejected Addresses, lived from 1810 to 1818, and drove himself daily to and from the City—he was then a stockbroker—in a vehicle called a “whisky.” A little farther on, where the London and County Bank is dwarfed by the late Sir Herbert Naylor Leyland’s great mansion, used to stand the “Fox and Bull,” a quaint old tavern dating back to Queen Elizabeth’s time, and a favourite resort of Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Morland, and other painters. Holy Trinity Chapel, St. George’s Place, no longer wedged in between two public-houses, replaces an old church where the celebrated Prime Minister—then plain Robert Walpole—was married in 1700 to a Lord Mayor’s daughter, who became the mother of Sir Horace Walpole. In St. George’s Place, where it faces the Park—surely one of the most desirable of situations, the first intimation that we are approaching “Green pastures and Piccadilly”—is the Hyde Park Corner Station of the new railway, next door to No. 8, conspicuous as the residence of the Baden-Powell family, on the site of which house, in an old-fashioned tenement, lived for many years John Liston, the comedian identified with the character of “Paul Pry.” Being freehold—a unique feature in the neighbourhood—this small plot of ground has cost the Company dear. It had to pay £30,750 for its acquisition.

It is hard to believe that at this point London once terminated, Lanesborough House, where St. George’s Hospital stands, being described in Pennant’s days as a “country mansion,” and thus it remained until little more than a century ago. While in the time of Charles the Second, near Hamilton Place was an inn, bearing the sign of the “Hercules Pillars,” signifying that, like the “First and Last House” at Land’s End, no habitation existed beyond it.

All sorts and conditions of people, mostly distinguished, live, and have lived, along this part of the route, which has its Tube stations at Down Street and Dover Street. There is Apsley House, and next to it Baron Rothschild’s mansion. At No. 1 Hamilton

Place lived the great Lord Chancellor Eldon. From 139, Piccadilly (Lord Glenesk’s) Lady Byron, after one of her quarrels with the poet, fled with her infant daughter. At Nos. 138 and 139, formerly one building, the Marquis of Queensbury (the notorious “Old Q.”) used, when an octogenarian, to sit at a certain window for hours, and ogle the passing fair sex. Gloucester House adjoining, is the residence of the Duke of Cambridge, occupied, when it was Elgin House, by the Earl of Elgin, who brought over to England the famous marbles that bear his name. Nearly opposite Down Street, on the park side of Piccadilly, stands a curious reminder that once upon a time, parcels and packages of all kinds had to be conveyed all over London, not by train or by Carter Paterson’s speedy vans, but on the shoulders of stalwart porters. It is a “bulk,” replacing an old timber one. A “bulk,” it may be explained, is a kind of shelf supported by two posts at a convenient height for the bearers of burdens to temporarily dispose of them and rest awhile. On the site of No. 106 (the St. James’s Club) was formerly the “Greyhound,” a very old inn, which, with the “White Horse” close by, and the “Half Moon,” a little further on, was a favourite pulling-up place for the numerous carriers, tranters, and market-gardeners who were incessantly coming from the country to town; for Piccadilly was one of London’s great highways westward. In a house (now a club) at the corner of White Horse Street, Sir Walter Scott sometimes stayed when in town. Cambridge House (the Naval and Military Club) recalls Lord Palmerston and the notable political receptions of his accomplished wife. At the corner of Clarges Street, where lived Edmund Kean and also Lady Hamilton, is the Turf Club, and at No. 84 the Imperial Service Club, the last of Piccadilly’s line of clubs that, commencing with The Bachelors’, at the corner of Hamilton Place, forms a kind of approach to the real club-land of St. James’s Street and Pall Mall. Bath House, at the corner of Bolton Street, was the residence of the late millionaire, Baron Hirsch. No. 80, Piccadilly, and No. 1, Stratton Street together form the town house of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and it was from No. 80 that her father, Sir Francis Burdett, M.P., was, in 1810, amidst serious rioting, taken to the Tower for having made use of bad language in the House of Commons. From the roof can be obtained a splendid view of the Westminster and Pimlico district, across the Park, rightly called “Green,” with its beautiful stretches of turf and graceful trees, and far away to the Surrey Hills and the Crystal Palace.

Devonshire House, seen through its fine old iron gates—brought here from Chiswick—is plain enough externally, but its saloons are very handsome, and here the lovely Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, reigned as Queen of Fashion long ago. Arlington Street reminds us of the Marquis of Salisbury, of Earl Nelson, who lodged here, and of Sir Horace Walpole and his father. In Albemarle Street, Percy Bysshe Shelley once had quarters at Cooke’s Hotel.

The Tube now carries its passengers ninety feet below the beautiful Piccadilly shops, past St. James’s Street and Bond Street, the Burlington Arcade and Burlington House, past the Egyptian Hall, past Fortnum and Mason’s—so universally associated with hampers, long-necked bottles, and race-meetings; past the Albany, where lived Byron, Lytton, and Lord Macaulay; past the Prince’s Restaurant, and its neighbour, St. James’s Church, where there are some splendid specimens of Grinling Gibbons’ wood-carving, and where, in 1762, occurred a singular thing. In some unexplained manner the vaults caught fire, and two hundred coffins with their inmates underwent an uncontemplated process of cremation; past St. James’s Hall opposite (eventually to be enlarged and converted to purposes other than harmony only). And now Piccadilly Circus, where six roads meet, and where, next to Spiers and Pond’s Restaurant, is the Piccadilly Circus Station of this, the longest Tube. Subways should certainly be arranged for access to this station, to avoid the very dangerous crossings from each of the six roads. Why does not the London County Council, emulating the City Fathers and their Mansion House subterranean passages, undertake this beneficent work in the West End?

We are now in the region of music-halls, theatres, cafés, dining-places, and Scott’s, the famous shell-fish shop.

“What is the origin of the name Piccadilly?” is a question asked again and again. It is difficult to decide. Was it from the ruffs called “peckadils” (from the Spanish pica), whose stiffened points were like diminutive spearheads, worn by the mashers or dudes of the early Carolean period, who gathered here at a gaming-house, Piccadilly Hall? Or was it, as Pennant thought, from the “piccadills” (cakes) which may have been sold in the surrounding fields? Who in the year 1903 can decide?

Here I pause. The rest of the new Tube’s route to Stamford Hill is useful but prosaic, and none of the remaining ten stations, except Cranbourn Street, Covent Garden, and Holborn are surrounded with any remarkably interesting associations, either historical or modern.

From South Kensington to Piccadilly this railway is certainly an aristocratic one. Daintily-clad ladies will, doubtless, use it largely for shopping and paying visits. The rank and fashion of London will patronise it. Countesses, marchionesses, even duchesses, may condescend to travel by it; nay, royalty may even give it a trial! Nobody would be surprised to see its booking-office æsthetically designed; the officials well-groomed and decorous as bank clerks; the lifts luxuriously upholstered with seats for all; the cars-de-luxe (for which an extra charge would be made) beautifully decorated, warmed in winter and delightfully cooled during summer heats, with fresh flowers provided, and perfumes sprayed at intervals to remove the least trace of bad smell; copies of the Court Guide and the most fashionable magazines at the disposal of the passengers; umbrella and parasol stands; special and comfortable quarters for pet dogs; the smoking-cars models of elegance and comfort; and the guards’ uniform scarlet and gold.

Seriously, however, is there or is there not, “one little rift within the lute”? Will the size of the tunnels—11½ feet in diameter—suffice for maintaining an equable and pure atmosphere throughout the year? Doubtless it will; for special attention has been given to this matter by the distinguished consulting engineer, and inlets for fresh, and up-cast shafts for foul air, together with fans worked by machinery, will be liberally provided.

CHAPTER XI

ELECTRIC TRAMWAYS GENERALLY

His first attempt was at Birkenhead, in 1860; and three years later he laid down a line, four miles long, from Hanley to Burslem, in Staffordshire, and also a short one at Darlington. In the year 1861 he constructed a line from the Marble Arch along the Uxbridge Road, and another from Westminster Bridge to Kennington Park. The track was ballasted, not paved, and the macadam very soon “rutted” on each side of the rail; but the worst feature was that the tread of the rail being an inch below the road surface, the wheels of vehicles were seriously injured and sometimes wrenched clean off as they endeavoured to leave the lines.

A tremendous agitation ensued against the tramway system. Train’s rails were compulsorily taken up, and his ideas were dismissed as impracticable.

Yet the bread had been cast upon the waters, destined to be found much later on, but not by George Francis Train. For ten years after the Birkenhead line was laid down, tramways remained in a very primitive condition, the sole aim being to obtain a smooth track, and so lessen the wear and tear caused by the uneven macadam. The rolling-stock was crude in the extreme, and the rails were fastened down to longitudinal sleepers, so that the spikes invariably worked up, but this defect was remedied when steel girders came into use. The trams were, of course, drawn by horses, for until 1880 no better means of traction appears to have been thought of. Nobody was a bit interested in the tramways, and carriage-folk detested them, so they were banished to the outskirts of the City and “over the water.”

The West End recognised them not, except to sign petitions against their introduction. The “poor man’s street railway,” it affirmed, must keep its proper place in the south, the far north, and the far east of London.

It was left to private enterprise to run the lines, and practically four companies—the North Metropolitan, the London Street Tramways, the South London Company, and the London Tramways Company—monopolised the business, there being no enterprising London County Council to compete with.

VARIOUS METHODS OF HAULAGE

For a decade—up to 1890—all kinds of improved methods of haulage were tried: compressed air, coiled springs, underground cables (a well-known example of which was the Highgate line, which was always breaking down), and, lastly, gas traction and steam traction.

To all these methods there are serious objections. Horse traction is expensive, besides being distressingly trying to the animals themselves. It is necessary to keep up a large stud for each car, and the horses when idle are eating their heads off. Their fullest speed with the heavy cars is necessarily low. Starting is a slow process, and at the best the rate of progress (including stoppages) does not exceed four miles an hour.

Compressed air and coiled springs may both be consigned to pigeon-holes, labelled respectively “doubtful” and “impossible,” there being of the former scarcely half a dozen examples in Great Britain, though in America it is said to have worked well and on an extensive scale.

Cable traction has many advantages, and for a long time was successfully adopted in America, but is now abandoned. With the funicular system, in vogue in Edinburgh, Birmingham, Paris, and Melbourne, travellers have long been familiar. Where a large number of cars are employed, it has the advantage of cheapness in working, and the machinery does not easily get out of order. But the initial cost is very heavy, and it is not suitable for complicated lines, or for tramways with several branches; and therefore extensions, unless straight, are almost impracticable, though it is superior to all others, save that of electricity, for very severe gradients. As the cable moves at a uniform rate, a car can neither vary its speed nor reverse its course. Then there is a difficulty in dealing with the gas and water-pipes during construction (that is, if they are near the surface), and the conduit forms a receptacle for street refuse, and becomes insanitary. But the chief defect is that three-fourths of the total power required to haul the cars is absorbed in driving the cable.

On a small scale, and with but little success, gas traction has been recently tried. There is a difficulty in starting the engines, therefore they have to work continuously, which causes the unpleasant noise familiarised to us by petrol-driven motor-cars when standing still. There is a decided smell from the “exhaust” of the engine; the vibration is considerable; and, as at present designed, the cars cannot mount a moderately steep hill.

Steam traction has been in use for some time, but has not improved, and is not popular. Great wear and tear of the track is caused by the weight of the locomotive, and the public object to the long intervals of service, consequent upon the necessity, for economical reasons, of using large cars. Steam involves sulphurous gases and general dirtiness, besides the apprehension, fanciful or real, of an occasional “blow up.”

VARIOUS METHODS OF ELECTRIC TRAMWAY TRACTION

Dismissing all these systems, we turn to electricity, as admittedly the best agent for tramway traction, and, until some marvellous discovery displaces it as a force, likely to remain and to become universally adopted.

Blackpool was first in the field with an electric tramway in 1883. Several other provincial districts followed suit, including Bristol and Stockton-on-Tees. London, in 1900, welcomed the completion of Mr. J. Clifton Robinson’s great scheme for electrifying that portion of the London United Tramways running between Hammersmith and Kew.

The year 1903 sees metropolitan and suburban electric trams in every direction; while in the provinces they will soon cover the face of the land, so extraordinarily rapid has been their acceptance. On every hand signs are evinced of the direct influence upon the general prosperity, comfort, and pleasure of all classes of people by a cheap and rapid electric tramway service.

The electric system admits of an easy extension of routes, and is of all systems the simplest to work. The cars can be readily backed or diverted in any direction. They are roomy, clean, well lighted and ventilated, and, if necessary, can be heated; the seats are comfortable; and the speed is double that of horses, while, without any fuss, gradients of 1 in 8 can be tackled. Of its popularity none can doubt, especially in hot weather, when exhausted town-dwellers swarm on the roof of the cars for a breath of fresh air as they travel merrily along at the rate of twelve miles an hour.

Existing tramways can be adapted to this system with rapidity, and all experts bear testimony to the fact that electric haulage is comparatively so cheap, and the development of traffic on its adoption so great, that horse traction has no chance against it.

There are four kinds of electric-tramway traction which, though apparently rather puzzling, are readily explained. These are the Conduit; the Surface Contact; the Overhead (or trolley); in each of which the current is conveyed to the line—as in an electric railway—from a power house; and the Accumulator, or Self-contained Car, the motive power being obtained from storage batteries carried on the car itself, and these supply the current direct to the motor on the car.

In the conduit system the main conductors (or feed-wire), always in this country placed underground, are carried in a conduit or tube under the track, which has a narrow longitudinal slit on its upper surface level with the road. Through this slit passes a bracket carried by the car in such a manner as to make contact with the two conduit-conductors. The objections to this system are the heavy cost of construction, its liability to derangement from floods, the expense of cleaning the conduits, and its tendency to accumulate filth.

The closed conduit, or surface contact system, consists of a series of plates or studs placed along the track a few feet apart and flush with the road, and insulated from each other. Under ordinary circumstances these are disconnected with the conductor, which is laid entirely below the surface, but when a car passes over them they become, by means of switches, automatically connected with it, so that the current can be conveyed through them to the car motors. In other words, the studs are “alive” while the car is over them, and “dead” as soon as it has passed. This is a very practicable method, and in certain cases is preferable to the open conduit. Defects, however, there are, but the Dolter apparatus claims to have overcome them, and it is greatly in its favour that the system has been successfully worked in Paris for more than two years. It has the merit of readily lending itself to a combination with the overhead trolley system.

Of all systems, by far the best known to the public is that of “overhead,” recognised immediately by the tall iron poles inseparable from its adoption. Ninety-five per cent. of the world’s electric tramways are worked on the overhead principle. The distribution of electric energy is by means of a wire, called the trolley wire, upheld by insulated brackets on poles twenty feet above the ground, along the entire track, which is divided into sections, each section taking its current from the main conductor-wire, which is laid underground, through the iron poles. Should any one section of the trolley wires meet with mishap, only the cars working on that section are stopped; those on the remaining divisions, having an independent source of current, continue to run