Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland Part 4

Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland Part 4

He confided to his chief clerk, who was my friend, that one day he had seen me, in business hours, in the city, smoking a cigarette and looking at the girls, and was sure I would never do much good. He had very strict business notions. I confessed to the cigarette, but not to the graver charge. It was a wholesome tonic, however, and pulled me up. I wanted to get on in life; ambition was stirring within me; and I formed some good resolutions which, as time went on, I kept more or less faithfully.

At St. Rollox one's daily lunch was a matter of some difficulty. It was a district of factories, and the only restaurants were the Great Western Cooking Depots, where one could get a steak and bread and cheese for fivepence, but the rooms and tables and accessories were, to say the least, unappetising. Hunger had to be satisfied, however, and I had to swallow my pride and my five-pennyworth. I varied this occasionally by bringing with me my own sandwiches and eating them seated on a tombstone in Sighthill cemetery, which was less than a quarter of a mile distant from the stores department.

My work, as I have said, was monotonous enough: writing letters from dictation, an occupation which gave but little exercise to one's faculties. I obtained some variation by occasionally taking a turn through the various stores and getting into touch with the practical men in charge. They were always very civil and ready to talk of their business, and so I learned something of the nature, quality, uses and cost of many things necessary to the working of a railway, which I afterwards found very useful. Occasionally also I visited the laboratory, in which an a.n.a.lytical chemist was regularly engaged.

The event which, in my short service of two years with the Caledonian, seemed to me of the greatest moment, was that, after six months or so, I became a taxpayer! This was an event indeed. In the offices at Derby it was only, as a rule, middle-aged or old men who attained this proud distinction; and here was I, not yet twenty-two, with my salary raised to 100 pounds a year, paying income tax at the rate of _threepence_ in the pound on forty pounds, for an abatement of sixty pounds was allowed.

Until I got used to the novelty I was as proud as Lucifer.

The office in which I now worked had no Apollos, no literary geniuses, no Long Jacks, no boy benedicts, such as adorned our desks at Derby, but it rejoiced in one _rara avis_, who came a few months after and left a few months before me. He was a middle-aged, aristocratic, kind, good-hearted, unbusinesslike man, and was brother to a baronet. He professed a knowledge of medicine and brought a bottle, a bolus or a plaster, whichever he deemed best, whenever any of us complained of cold or cough, of headache or backache or any ailment whatever. When he left we all received from him a parting gift. Mine was a handsome, expensive, red-felt chest protector. I wore it constantly for a year or two and, for aught I know, it may be that by its protecting influence against the rigour of Glasgow winters, the bituminous atmosphere of St. Rollox and the smoke-charged fogs of the city, I am alive and well to-day. Who can tell? It is certain that I then had a bad cough nearly always; and this I am sure was what decided the form of his parting gift to me.

It was about this time that I attended my first public dinner and made my first speech in public. Several days before the event I was told that, being in the Volunteer Force, I had been placed on the toast list to reply for the Army, Navy and Volunteers. It was a railway dinner, for the purpose of celebrating the departure to England, on promotion, of the chief clerk in the Midland Railway Company's Scottish Agency Office. The dinner was largely attended. The idea of having to speak filled me with trepidation. But to my great surprise I acquitted myself with credit.

Once on my legs I found that nervousness left me, words came freely and I even enjoyed the novel experience. To suddenly discover oneself proficient where failure had been feared increases self esteem and adds to the sum of happiness. At this dinner I also made my first acquaintance with that "Great chieftain o' the puddin' race," the _Haggis_, which deserves the pre-eminence it enjoys.

One night, towards the end of December, in 1874, when skating by moonlight, not far from Cambuslang, I chanced to meet a young friend, a clerk in the Glasgow and South-Western Railway, who, like myself, was enjoying the pleasures of the ice. Tom was not with me, for he, poor fellow! was not well enough to be out o' nights in winter. My young friend gave me, with great eagerness, a rare piece of news. Mr.

Johnstone, the Glasgow and South-Western general manager, was retiring and Mr. Wainwright was to succeed him! Well, that did not excite me, and I wondered at his earnestness; but more was to follow. Mr. Wainwright, as general manager, required a princ.i.p.al clerk and there was, it seemed, no one in the place quite suitable. He must be good at correspondence, and expert at shorthand. I was, my young friend said, the very man; I must apply. Mr. Wainwright was English, so was I; I came from the Midland, and the Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western were hand and glove. How lucky we had met; he had not thought of me till this very moment. It was fate. Would I write tonight? By this time I was as eager as himself. No more skating for me that night. I hurried home, Tom and I composed a careful and judicious letter. I posted it in Her Majesty's pillar box hard by; went to bed, but was too excited to sleep.

An answer soon came, and an interview with Mr. Wainwright followed. I received the appointment, at a salary of 120 pounds a year to begin with; and in the early days of the new year, two years after my first appearance in Scotland, entered upon my duties, not at Saint Enoch Station, where the headquarters of the Glasgow and South-Western now are, but at Bridge Street Station on the south side of the river, where the office staff of the company was then accommodated.

CHAPTER IX.

GENERAL RAILWAY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT

Such unromantic literature as Acts of Parliament had not, it may be supposed, up to this, formed part of my mental pabulum. I knew that an Act was a necessary preliminary to the construction of a railway, and this was all I knew concerning the relations between the railways and the State. Whilst a little learning may be a dangerous thing, in my new situation, I soon discovered that a general manager's clerk would be the better of possessing some knowledge of the numerous Acts of Parliament that affected railway companies. Almost daily questions arose in which such knowledge was useful; so I determined to become acquainted with them, and in my leisure hours made as profound a study as I could of that compilation which, in railway offices was then in general use--_Bigg's General Railway Acts_. I found the formidable looking volume more readable than I had imagined and less difficult to understand than I had expected.

Governments have ever kept a watchful eye on railway companies. Up to 1875, the year at which we have now arrived, no less than 112 general Acts of Parliament affecting railways had been placed on the Statute Book of the realm. They were applicable to all railways alike, and in addition to and independent of the special Acts which each company must obtain for itself, first for its incorporation and construction, and afterwards for extensions of its system, for the raising of capital, and for various other purposes.

Many of the general Acts have been framed upon the recommendations of various Select Committees and Royal and Vice-Regal Commissions, which have been appointed from time to time since railways began. From 1835 down to the present year of 1918 some score or more of these Committees and Commissions have gravely sat and issued their more or less wise and weighty reports.

What are these numerous Acts of Parliament and what are their objects, scope, and intentions?

Whilst neither time nor s.p.a.ce admit of detailed exposition, not to speak of the patience of my readers, a few observations upon some of the princ.i.p.al enactments may not be inapposite or uninteresting.

Pride of place belongs to the _Carriers' Act_ of 1830, pa.s.sed in the reign of William IV., five years after the first public railway (the Stockton and Darlington) was opened. This Act, although in it the word _railway_ does not appear, is an important Act to railway companies, and possesses the singular and uncommon merit of having been framed for the _protection_ of Common Carriers. It is int.i.tuled "_An Act for the more effectual Protection of Mail Contractors, Stage Coach Proprietors, and other Common Carriers for Hire, against the Loss or Injury to Parcels or Packages delivered to them for Conveyance or Custody, the Value and Contents of which shall not be Declared to them by the Owners thereof_."

The draughtsman of this dignified little Act it is clear was greatly addicted to _capitals_. Probably he thought they heightened effect, much as Charles Lamb spelt plum pudding with a _b_--"plumb pudding," because, he said, "it reads fatter and more suetty." At the time this Act came into being, railways in the eye of Parliament were public highways, upon which you or I, if we paid the prescribed tolls, could convey our traffic, our vehicles, or ourselves. In the years 1838-1840 many of the companies obtained powers enabling them to act as public carriers; and in 1840 questions having arisen in Parliament as to the rights of the public in this respect the subject was referred to a Select Committee of the House of Commons. The Committee's report disposed of the view which, until then, Parliament had held, and expressed the opinion that the right of persons to run their own engines and carriages was a dead letter for the good reason, amongst others, that it was necessary for railway trains to be run and controlled by and under one complete undivided authority.

After the _Carriers' Act_, which applied to all carriers as well as to railways, the first general railway Act of importance was the _Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act_ of 1838. This Act enabled the Postmaster-General to require railway companies to convey mails by all trains and to provide sorting carriages when necessary, the Royal Arms to be painted on such carriages, and in 1844, under the _Railway Regulation Act_, it was further enacted that the Postmaster-General could require, for the conveyance of mails, that trains should be run at any rate of speed, _certified to be safe_, but not to exceed 27 miles an hour!

As I have said, the Select Committee of 1840 reported against the right of the public to run their own engines and carriages on railways. They made recommendations which led to the pa.s.sing of the _Railway Regulation Act_ of that year, and in that Act powers were, for the first time, conferred upon the Board of Trade in connection with railways. It was the beginning of that authority, which since has greatly grown, but which the Board of Trade have in the main exercised with an impartiality, which public authorities do not always display. The Act empowered the Board, before any new railway was opened, to require notice from the railway company. This power was repealed by an Act of 1842, and larger powers granted in its place, including the right to compel the inspection of such railways before being opened for traffic. The Act of 1840 also required the companies, under penalty, to furnish to the Board of Trade returns of traffic, as well as of all accidents attended with personal injury; and to submit their bye-laws for certification.

Of the _railway mania_ period I have spoken in a previous chapter. For a time enormous success attended some of the lines. Amongst others the Liverpool and Manchester and the Stockton and Darlington enjoyed mouth watering dividends; the former ten, the latter fifteen per cent.! Said the Government to themselves, "'Tis time we saw to this," and accordingly they pa.s.sed the _Railway Regulation Act_ of 1844. This Act provided that if at any time, after twenty-one years, the dividend of any railway should exceed ten per cent., the Treasury might revise the rates and fares so as to reduce the profits to not more than ten per cent. This expectation of high dividends, I need hardly say, has not been realised, and the Act in this respect has been a dead letter. The Act also conferred an option on the Treasury to acquire future railways at twenty- five years purchase of the annual profits; or, if such profits were less than ten per cent., the price was to be left to arbitration.

It is interesting now, when, owing to the war, the railways of the land are under temporary Government control, and their future all uncertain, to remember that, on the Statute Book to-day, there is an Act which provides for State purchase of the railways of the country. Whether a solution of the difficulty will be found in State purchase or in State control it is hard to say, but it is clear that some solution of the problem will become imperative when the war is ended and normal conditions return. Justice and reason demand it.

In the year 1845 three long Acts of Parliament came into force; the _Companies Clauses_, the _Lands Clauses_ and the _Railway Clauses Acts_.

Between them they contained no less than 483 sections. Each Act was a consolidating measure. The first contained provisions usually inserted in Acts for the const.i.tution of public companies, the second the same in regard to the taking of land compulsorily, and the third consolidated in one general statute provisions usually introduced into Acts of Parliament authorising the construction of railways.

The _Railway Clauses Act_ authorised railway companies to use locomotive engines, carriages and wagons; to carry pa.s.sengers and goods, and to make reasonable charges not exceeding the tolls authorised by their special Acts. Since then the whole of the trade of transit by rail has been conducted by the companies owning the lines.

The gauge of railways in Great Britain was not fixed upon any scientific principle. At first it followed the width of the coal tram-roads in the north of England, which was adopted simply on account of its practical convenience (five feet being the usual width of the gates through which the "way-leaves" led) and so four feet eight and a-half inches became the ordinary gauge, but in the early days it was by no means the universal gauge. Five feet was chosen for the Eastern Counties Railway; seven feet for the Great Western and five feet six was used in Scotland. The Ulster Company in Ireland made twenty-five miles of the line from Belfast to Dublin on a gauge of six feet two, while the Drogheda Company, which set out from Dublin to meet the Ulster line, adopted five feet two. When the Ulster Company complained of this, the Irish Board of Works, it is said, admitted that it was a little awkward, but added that, as it was not likely the intervening part would ever be made, it did not much matter.

The subject was, I believe, in Ireland referred to a General Pasley, who consulted the authorities (who were many) throughout the kingdom. He ultimately solved the question by adding up the various gauges the authorities favoured, and recommended the mean, which was five feet three inches; and so, for Ireland, five feet three became the standard gauge.

"The battle of the gauges," as it was styled at the time, was lively and spirited. Eventually it was decided by Parliament, which in the year 1846 pa.s.sed the _Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act_. This Act ordained that in Great Britain all future railways were to be constructed on a gauge of four feet eight and a-half inches, and in Ireland of five feet three inches, excepting only certain extensions of the broad gauge Great Western Railway.

Up to this time no action at common law was maintainable against a person who by his wrongful act, neglect or default caused the immediate death of another person, and an Act (known as _Lord Campbell's Act_), "for compensating the Families of Persons Killed by Accidents," became law.

This enactment was due princ.i.p.ally to the railway accidents that occurred. They were relatively more numerous than they are now, for the many modern appliances for ensuring safety had not then been introduced.

The Act provided that compensation would be for the benefit of wife, husband, parent and child of the person whose death shall have been caused. The Act did not apply to Scotland. Perhaps it was because the laws of the two countries differed more then than now, and the life of the railways in Scotland was young, England being well ahead. Probably England thought she was doing enough when she legislated for herself by pa.s.sing this Act. It must be observed, however, that the Act applies to Ireland as well as England.

In the year 1854 Parliament considered that _regulations_ were necessary to further control the companies and pa.s.sed an important statute, the _Railway and Ca.n.a.l Traffic Act_. Known, for short, in railway parlance, as "the Act of '54," its main provisions dealt with:--

Reasonable facilities for receiving and forwarding traffic The subject of undue preference, which was forbidden Railways forming part of continuous lines to receive and forward through traffic without obstruction The liability of railway companies for loss of, or damage to, goods or animals

and it preserved to railway companies the _protection_ of the _Carriers'

Act_, to which I have referred.

The Select Committees of 1858 and 1863 sat on the subject of the great length of time and the immense cost which railway promotion in those days entailed, when Bills were fiercely contested, and protracted struggles before Parliamentary Committees took place. Two Acts resulted from their deliberations: the _Railway Companies' Powers Act_, 1864, and the _Railway Construction Facilities Act_ of the same year. These Acts empowered railway companies to enter into agreements with each other in regard to maintenance, management, running over or use of each others lines or property and for joint ownership of stations. They also enabled powers to be obtained from the Board of Trade to construct a railway without a special Act of Parliament, subject to the conditions that all the landowners concerned agreed to part with the requisite land, and that no objection was raised by any other railway or ca.n.a.l company. Little use has ever been made of this well-intentioned enactment. Landowners have rarely been disposed to accept terms which the companies thought fair; and rival railways, in the days gone by, dearly loved a fight.

By the _Companies Clauses Consolidation Act_ of 1845 railway companies were required to keep full and true accounts of receipts and expenditure, but it was not until the year 1868 that Parliament placed upon the companies an obligation to keep their accounts in a prescribed form. This form was scheduled to the _Regulation of Railways Act_, 1868. It provides for half-yearly accounts, and is the form which has been familiar to shareholders for many years. This Act (1868) also ordained that smoking compartments be provided on all trains, for all cla.s.ses, on all railways, except on the railway of the Metropolitan Company. Up to then the railway smoker had to obtain the consent of his fellow pa.s.sengers in the same compartment before he could light up, or brave their displeasure; and many were the altercations that ensued. The Act also imposed penalties on railways who provided trains for attending prize fights, which was hard on companies of sporting instincts. A clause provided for means of communication between pa.s.sengers and the servants of the company in charge of trains running twenty miles without stopping; and another clause gave the companies power to cut down trees adjoining their line which might be dangerous. Prior to 1868, although railways had then existed for three and forty years, the accounts of one company could not usefully be compared with those of another, for scarcely any two companies made up their accounts in the same way.

Variety may be charming, but uniformity has its advantages.

The Board of Trade, in 1871, was endowed with further powers. By the _Regulation of Railways Act_ of that year, they were given additional rights of inspection; authority to enquire into accidents, and further powers in regard to the opening of additional lines of railway, stations or junctions. And by this statute the companies were required to furnish the Board of Trade with elaborate statistical doc.u.ments, annually, in a form prescribed in a schedule to the Act.

The only other important Act down to the year 1875 is the _Regulation of Railways Act_ of 1873. This Act was pa.s.sed for the purpose of making "better provision for carrying into effect the _Railway and Ca.n.a.l Traffic Act_ of 1854, and for other purposes connected therewith." In 1872 a Joint Committee of both Houses sat and, following upon their report, this Act was pa.s.sed. It established a new tribunal, to be called the _Railway and Ca.n.a.l Commission_, to consist of three Commissioners, of whom--one was to be experienced in the law, one in railway business, and it also authorised the appointment of not more than two _a.s.sistant_ Commissioners. As to the _third Commissioner_, no mention was made of qualifications. This tribunal, though styled a _Commission_, conducted its work as if it were a court; and a regularly const.i.tuted court in time it became. By the _Railway and Ca.n.a.l Traffic Act_, 1888, the section in the Act of 1873 appointing the Commission was repealed and a new Commission established consisting of two appointed and three _ex officio_ Commissioners, such Commission to be "a Court of Record, and have an official seal, which shall be judicially noticed." One of the Commissioners must be experienced in railway business; and of the three _ex officio_ Commissioners, one was to be nominated for England, one for Scotland and one for Ireland, and in each case such Commissioner was to be a Judge of the High Court of the land. Under the Act of 1873, the chief functions of the Commissioners were: To hear and decide upon complaints from the public in regard to undue preference, or to refusal of facilities; to hear and determine questions of through rates; and to settle differences between two railway companies or between a railway company and a ca.n.a.l company, upon the application of either party to the difference. The Act of 1888 continued these and included some further powers.

In my humble opinion the Railway Commissioners have done much useful work and done it well. For more than forty years I have read most if not all the cases they have dealt with. On several occasions I have been engaged in proceedings before them, and not always on the winning side.

CHAPTER X.

A GENERAL MANAGER AND HIS OFFICE

January, 1875, was a momentous time for me. In the second week of that month I commenced my new duties at Glasgow and bade farewell for ever to the tall stool and "the dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood." Before me opened a pleasing prospect of attractive and interesting work, brightened by the beams of youthful hope and awakened ambition. I was now chief clerk to a general manager. Was it to be wondered at that I felt proud and elated if also a little scared as to how I should get on.

Mr. Wainwright a.s.sumed the office of general manager on the first day of the year. I say _office_, but in fact a general manager's office scarcely existed. His predecessor, Mr. Johnstone, a capable but in some respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan Swift's. A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no hobby, did not long survive his retirement from active business life.

Mr. Wainwright, who, like myself, was born in Sheffield, was twenty-three years my senior. His early railway life was pa.s.sed in the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (now the Great Central), of which the redoubtable Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edward Watkin was then the lively general manager.

A different man to his predecessor was Mr. Wainwright. Unlike Mr.

Johnstone he was modern and progressive. _He_ never scorned delights or loved, for their own sake, laborious days; pleasure to him was as welcome as sunshine; and work he made a pleasure.

As I have said, no general manager's _office_ existed. Of systematic managerial supervision there was none. What was to be done? Something certainly, and soon. Mr. Wainwright concurred in a suggestion I made that I should visit Derby, see the general manager's office of the Midland there, and learn how it was conducted. This I did. E. W. Wells, a princ.i.p.al clerk in that office, who was married to my cousin, showed and told me everything. I returned laden with knowledge which I embodied in a report and my recommendations were adopted. Several clerks were appointed and the general manager's office, of which I was chief clerk, soon became efficient.

Wells afterwards became a.s.sistant General Manager of the Midland, and Frank Tatlow, my cousin and brother of Wells' wife, is now its General Manager, in succession to Sir Guy Granet. I am not a little proud that the attainments of one who bears the name of Tatlow, and is so nearly related to myself, have enabled him to reach the topmost post on a railway such as the Midland Railway of England. He commenced as a junior clerk in the General Manager's office and worked his way step by step to that eminent position. No advent.i.tious circ.u.mstances helped him on.

I became fond of railway work, which it seems to me for interest and variety holds a high place among all the occupations by which man, who was born to labour, may earn his daily bread. My duties were certainly arduous but intensely interesting. The correspondence with other railway companies regarding agreements, joint line working, Parliamentary matters, and many other important subjects, conducted as it required to be, with skill, care and precision, was for me a liberal education. The fierce rivalry which, in those days, raged in Scotland for compet.i.tive traffic culminated often in disputes which could only be settled by the intervention of the general managers, and these brought much exciting work into the office. Again, the close and intimate relations between the Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western involved interesting communications, meetings and discussions, and the keeping of certain special accounts which it fell to me to supervise.