The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-10-02 00:00:00

THE DARLINGTON CELEBRATION.

The Thms, of Monday, has the following leader on the
fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Stockton and Dar-
Hilton Railway:—

Half a century ago Darlington was but a small town
unknown to Parliament and to travellers, except
those bound on business, surrounded by collieries, and
but indifferently served by the Tees in the carriage of
its products to Stockton, at the mouth of that river.
It was and is an unattractive region, at least to those
'mho are apt to resent the violence inflicted by indus-
trial art upon Nature. But on September 27, 1825,
Darlington witnessed an event which has changed the
world. It saw what was wonderful indeed as
a successful result, but much more remark-
able as an effort of well-directed ingenuity,
long patience, self-confidence, and courage. On
that morning started the first railway ;passenger
train expressly designed to compete with the existing
modes of travelling. As the greatest of all difficulties
in those days was to believe that any considerable
number of people would trust themselves to the mercy
of a moving steam-engine, or would have any need for
that eccentric kind of travelling, the "first class" on
this occasion was the inside cf an old stage-coach put
on a truck; the "second class" was the outside of
it, and the third class the ordinary coal waggons.
These, however, were pretty well filled, and as the
train gathered speed the public gathered courage,
and it is related that it entered Stockton with
as many as 600 in the waggons, or clinging to them.
The " Experiment "—that is, the old coach, with its
new motive power—had attained a speed, it is said,
of fifteen miles an hour. The whole load on that
day was ninety tons, and the whole journey was
done at an average rate of eight miles an hour. In
mere mechanical art the noticeable points in this event
were the formation of a line graded and curved for im-
proved speed, longer and stronger rails, better bedding
for them, an engine that would not shake itself to
pieces at eight or nine miles an hour, and an economical
use of coal. When one thinks how small a beginning
it was, and how immensely surpassed, and that very
soon, one feels how much there is to be taken into
account for a due appreciation of the Jubilee to be
celebrated at Darlington this day. It is necessary to
take into account the moral difficulties, which in this,
35 in all other matters of progress, were infinitely more
formidable than the material. As had happened often
before, a world packed with selfishness, prejudice, and
folly found itself rebuked and set right by a simple son
of toil, who was not only an extraordinary mechanical
genius, but a great and a good man.
All the elements of the mechanical question had
long been familiar to the public. In colliery districts
there had for years been seen everywhere small loco-
motive engines, which, with much clanging and
rattling, puffing and smoking, with both a chimney
and a steam vent, drew along, at the sufficient pace of
two or three miles an hour, a dozen or more small iron
waggons loaded with coal. A man would walk by the
side to open gates, remove impediments, or assist at a
difficulty. The colliers themselves would sometimes
get into the empty waggons, as a tired carter will get
into his empty dung-cart or sit on the shaft. Station-
ary engines had come to a high degree of perfection,
but the "tramway" of those days consisted of light
festoons of iron between block and block, of wood or
stone, which had worn for themselves sockets in the
soft ground. This sort of construction seemed a fatal
impediment where exactness and equality of movement
veerenecessary. But those were the days of Macadam, and
even of solid stone tramways, such as that from the
East-end to Poplar, and it only wanted courage to un-
derstand that any degree of hardness and smoothness
was possible. But perhaps the most extraordinary
fact bearing upon the tardy introduction of passenger
railways is the very great and rapid proeress then
already accomplished in steam navigation. It was only
eleven years before the event to be celebrated this day
that the first thing to be called a steamship made its
appearance in English waters, and already, for several
years before 1825, many fine steamers had plied regu
larly, and with fair speed, between London and Edin
burgh. One of them, the James Watt, built abo u
1820, held its own against all improvements till
it became a veteran in the service, and at the
period we are speaking of might have been
hailed twice or thrice a week off the mouth of the
Tees. Thus the freer element of the sea had got the
start of the land. Winds, waves, and currents, rocks
and shoals, darkness, collisions, leaks, and all that
makes the sea so terrible, had been more easily over-
come than the invariable and merely surface difficul-
ties of the land. But the greatest difficulty of all was
that peculiar to the land. Many powerful interests
held the land in possession. Landowners, canal pro-
prietors, road commissioners, the prejudiced or the
rapacious, considered it their sacred duty to object
and their right to extort all the profit they could
from every attempt to supersede the old ways. This
is intelligible; but there was also that which cannot
be se easily explained. The very year in question,
1825, was one of those epochs of speculative fever
which invade us almost regularly at decennial
periods. England was beginning to dream of pas-
senger railways, but in much the same way as
it dreamt of traversing and peopling the air, and
making steam supply the place of fingers. There was
a great deal of fancy, and even credulity; little sense
or well-grounded confidence. The scientific people
themselves hardly attempted to draw the mean
between stupidity and enthusiasm. It must, however,
be said in their defence that when it was proposed to
revolutionize traffic with the steam-engine, everybody
was encountered by the certainty of a universal, com-
bined, obstinate, and most costly resistance by the
owner of every yard of ground, every brick every
tree that stood in the way, and by the certainty that,
as the law stood, it would be competent to any person
liable to be disturbed by sight, sound, smell, or
any sensation to oppose, and to lay claim for
damages with the probability of recovering them. The
opening of the Stockton and Darlington line confronted
this wild chaos of chimerical schemes and real or specu-
lative difficulties with the simple fact of a passenger
line at work. The battle for the Manchester and
Liverpool line was already in progress, and its pro-
moters were materially assisted by being able to point
to what had been actually done. Both the opened
line and that not yet begun, or even authorized, were
goods lines, with powers for carrying passengers
tardily and reluctantly thrown in by the Legislature.
Travelling had not yet become the one common amuse-
ment, or business, of all classes- and it was not till
the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool line that
the locomotive had so improved, as well as the other
appliances, as to make railway travelling rapid, safe,
and pleasant.
It was the glory of George Stephenson, not so much
that he solved a mechanical problem, but rather that
he saw his way, and steadily pursued his way, through
a world of difficulties and objections, even more liable
to distract the sense, confound the judgment, break
the will, destroy the temper, and wholly unnerve the
man, than those which present themselves in the work-
shop. In common with many other men, he believed
in the full dominion of man over matter, and that earth
was made for man. But he had to conquer another
world, and that was man himself. He had innumer-
able battles to fight with interest or prejudice in the
survey, on Committee, and in every other possible
sphere. But he saw in the fulness of faith the Rail-
way of the future, and he knew that he had only to
work his way to it honestly and fearlessly. The history
of so important, yet so tardy an invention, and
above all, the crowning fact that the few miles of rail-
way opened fifty years ago with purely local mirth and
joy have spread over the whole habitable world, and
all but girdled the earth with many bands of iron,
prcve not man's power over Nature, but rather his
weakness, his blindness, his stupidity, and self-com-
placency, till the providential moment or the interven-
tion of some nobler nature. The material difficulties
which man is prepared to find on his path, he is sure
to find everywhere assisted by human auxiliaries. As
the rock in old times was the home of the robber, the
stormy sea of the pirate, and night the burglar's day,
whatever presents an obstacle to improvement
is sure to be the refuge and opportunity of those
who will back themselves against the universe for any
trifling gain or passing pleasure. Surmounting smaller
difficulties was George Stephenson's amusement and
daily occupation, no matter the subject. Something
more than a faculty and a taste was necessary to make
him the founder of railways. But the industrious
neighbourhood and the generous spirits that moved it
should not be forgotten—the good friends who ap-
preciated Stephenson, invited him to the work, gave
him their full confidence intrusted him with full
powers, cheered him through his difficulties, and ac-
companied him to the happy end.
Railways are easy work in these days—at least, the
making of railways, and even of the travelling stock.
The largcst sized and most perfectly formed rail is
made and finished in two minutes, and almost any
number of locomotives and carriages can be delivered
to order in a month or two. But few know what a
work of education it was at first; wh.at watchfulness,
what invention, what fond .parental instinct the loco-
motive required. It reacs like the story of a nursery,
or the biography of a child,—how it was Stephenson
assisted the draught of the chimney by letting in Or
escape from the cylinder; how he cured the asthmatic
engine; howhe made one meal, that is one ton of coal, do
the woz k of six; how he continually assisted the growth
and brought out the powers of this' noble imp of fame."
From his own childhood he had been accustomed to
fashion the child of his future years, and put his
whole Amu into it. But they who have lived in mann.