The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

CHAP. xxiv.J COMMERCIAL RESULTS OF THE RAILWAY. 277
feet perpendicular height; saw the rocks excavated, and the
gigantic power of man penetrating through miles of the solid
mass, and gaining a great, a lasting, an almost perennial conquest
over the powers of nature by his skill and industry ; when
I contemplated all this, was it possible for me to avoid the reflec-
tions which crowded into my mind—not in praise of man's great
success ; not in admiration of the genius and perseverance he
had displayed, or even of the courage he had shown in setting
himself against the obstacles that matter offered to his course
—
no ! but the melancholy reflection that these prodigious efforts of
the human race—so fruitful of praise, but so much more fruitful
of lasting blessings to mankind—have forced a tear from my eye
by that unhappy casualty which deprived me of a friend and
you of a representative ? "
It is scarcely necessary that we should here speak of the com-
mercial results of the Liver'pool'and Manchester Railway. Suffice
it to say that its success was complete and decisive. The antici-
pations of its projectors were, however, in many respects at
fault. They had based their calculations almost entirely on the
heavy merchandise trafSc—such as coal, cotton, and timber
relying little upon passengers ; whereas the receipts derjved
from the conveyance of passengers far exceeded those derived
'from merchandise of all kinds, which, for a time, continued a
subordinate branch of the traffic. In the evidence given before
the committee of the House of Commons, the promoters stated
their expectation of obtaining about one-half of the whole number
of passengers that the coaches then running could take, which
•was from 400 to 500 a day. But the railway was scarcely
opened before it carried on an average about 1200 passengers
a day ; and five years after the opening, it carried nearly half a
million of persons yearly.*
It was anticipated that the speed at which the locomotive
could run upon the line would be about nipe or ten miles an
hour ; but the wisest of the lawyers and the most experienced
* In the first eighteen months, upwards of 700,000 persons, or about 12?0 a
day, were conveyed on the hne without an accident. Formerly, the transit by
coach had occupied four hours. The railway passenger trains performed the
journey in an hour and a half on the average.