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

364 LIFE OF GEORGE STEPHENSON. [chap. xxix.
the age when he recommended that the rate of railway travelling
should not exceed forty miles an hour. He said, " I do not like
either forty or fifty miles an hour upon any line ; I think it is
an unnecessary speed ; and if there is danger upon a railway, it
is high velocity that creates it." * He had, indeed, constructed
for the Great "Western Railway an engine capable of running
fifty miles an hour with a load, and eighty miles without one.
But he never was in favour of a hurricane Speed of this sort,
believing it could only be accomplished at an unnecessary in-
crease both of danger and expense. On this subject he after-
wards observed, " The first time I went to Parliament to give
evidence on the locomotive engine, when I stated that I would
make that machine travel at twelve miles an hour, I was thought
to be mad. You will be sui-prised when I tell you that, during
my recent examination before a Committee of the House of
Commons on the management of railways, I stated, in my opin-
ion, that the speed of the locomotive should not exceed forty
miles an hour. I have been censured by many for giving that
opinion. It is true that I have said the engine might be made
to travel 100 miles an hour; but I always put a qualification on
this, namely, as to what speed would best suit the public. I
assure you I have been buifeted about in Parliament not a little
on this question of railway speed." f Although Mr. Stephenson
occasionally " girded " at Mr. Brunei and his high velocities,
there is no doubt that the determination of the latter had the
effect of spurring on the Stephensons to exert their ingenuity to
the utmost in perfecting the narrow-gauge loconiotive, and bring-
ing it to the highest possible rate of speed. By the year 1845,
Mr. Robert Stephenson had been enabled to construct the fast-
est locomotive that had yet run upon any railway,—the cele-
brated "A" engine,—which performed the forty-five miles be-
tween York and Darlington, with a train of seven carriages
behind it, in about forty-seven minutes !
Mr. Stephenson's evidence before the Select Committee of
1841 bore chiefly upon the safer working of railways, and the
* ETidenoe before the Select Committee on Railways, 2?tli May, 1841.
t Speech at Belper Mechanics' Institute, 6th July, 1841.