# The Working and Management of an English Railway

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THE
WORKING AND MANAGEMENT
OF AN
ENGLISH RAILWAY.
BY GEORGE FINDLAY,
LIEUT.-COL. ENGINEER AND RAILWAY VOLUNTEER, STAFF CORPS; ASSOC. INST. CIVIL ENGINEERS; GENERAL MANAGER OF THE LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS,
Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
LONDON: WHITTAKER & CO., White Hart Street, Paternoster Square; GEORGE BELL & SONS, York Street, Covent Garden.
1889.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
In the early part of last year I accepted an invitation from the Commandant of the Royal Engineers at Chatham to lecture at the School of Military Engineering at the Brompton Barracks upon the subject of "The Working of an English Railway." On that occasion, the theme was necessarily approached from the point of view of the utility of the railways in the event of the country being invaded; and although this led up to a description, within certain limits, of the methods of working and managing the railways, there were, of course, many branches of the subject which could not be brought within the scope of an evening's lecture, and would indeed scarcely have interested the audience to whom it was addressed. The lecture, however, in the printed form in which it afterwards appeared, attracted a certain amount of attention on the part of those interested in such matters, which eventually resulted in a suggestion that I should endeavour to deal with the subject in a more comprehensive manner than had previously been contemplated. The result of my attempt (I fear a very inadequate one) to carry out this suggestion is embodied in the following pages.
I must not omit to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. Francis W. Webb, the Chief Locomotive Engineer ​of the London and North-Western Railway; to Mr. Harry Footner, the Assistant Engineer; to Mr. A. M. Thompson, the Signalling Superintendent; Mr. J. W. Fletcher, the Telegraph Superintendent, and to the other Chief Officers and Heads of Departments of that Company for the able assistance they have rendered to me in the preparation of the work, and I must further confess my indebtedness to the valuable "History of the English Railway," published by Mr. John Francis in 1851, and to the "Treatise on the Law of Carriers," published by Messrs. Chitty and Temple, Barristers-at-Law, in 1856, both of which works had great interest for me during my early career as a Railway Manager.
In Chapter XV. of the present edition of the work, I have endeavoured to make what I trust may be a useful contribution to the discussion of a subject which has been, in recent years, much debated in railway circles, viz., the Composition of Passenger Trains and the Relation of the Classes. I scarcely venture to hope for universal concurrence in the views which I have expressed, but I know they are fully shared by many of those best qualified to form an opinion upon the subject, and I hope at least that the enumeration of the undoubted facts which I have been able to adduce as the result of actual experience, may have the effect of inducing those most interested to bestow their serious attention upon a question having so much importance for those whose capital is invested in English railway enterprise.
G. F.
Hill House, Edgware, 1889.
CONTENTS.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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