The Sun.
London, England, 1852-01-29 00:00:00

AMERICAN RA ILWAYS.

(From Watkin's " Trip to the United States.")
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 26, 1851.
The American railway system is the American rail-
way system; original, so far as the realisation of the
same idea by separate agencies can be so, and in con-
sonance with the age and limited surplus means of the
country, and the genius of its people.
The moment that the opening of the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway had solved the question of prac-
ticability of working locomotive engines with profit and
success, the United States took up the new enterprise
with an almost prophetic zeal, While the English Par-
liament urns throwing out the London and Birmingham,
and other railway Bills, in 1834-5, on the ground of
fancied residential damage to some three or four land-
owners, several hundred miles of railway had been got
to work, and a thousand miles more wero projected, in
the older states of the Union. Since that period the
construction of railways in the United States has pro-
ceeded with great rapidity, monetary difficulties alone
checking their progress from time to time, in this as in
all other counts ies.

In 1832, the United States had 129 miles of railway
open for traffic; in 1840, 3
3,855 miles. It is estimated that there399mites; and in 1845,
10,199 miles in operation,
outlay
and are now, in 1851,
7,560 miles in course of
construction. The total
dollars; or, after deducting th mheoenebyeeexu expend
,esd9o l 1
upon,
the unopened lines,6
an average,, cost per mile of about
5,500/. sterling, including equipments."
The number of miles of
the United Kingdom, accordirailway open for traffic in
ng i
nto
courseth e la
os
ft
constructionret urns, w was.
artt
6,621, and 551 miles mores
were
The total expenditure 242,000,000/. ; giving an
average of about 35,000/.
Pe
one :300f.
cost would seem, at
mile, including stations
and stock, or 6i times as mutrch as the average cost of
the railways of the United States.
This extraordinary differenceae
first sight, difficult to
for; especially as two
great items of expenditure, iron and labour, are dearer
in the United States than in England.
In the first place, however, it must be remembered,
that whereas the greater portion of the English rail-
ways are double, nearly the whole of the American rail-
ways are single, tracks. Then
the sums paid for land in
England, of necessity high in
•an old and populous
country, have been magnified and exaggerated in all con-
ceivable ways; the railway companies having paid from
four to five times the real value
of the property they
have taken. In the United States,ou the contrary, much
companies
of the land taken has cost the panies absolutely no-
thing; and, from all that I havelearned, I believe that
the average cost of the land for the whole mileage con-
structed cannot have exceeded 200/
• per mile. In Eng-
land, I have little doubt that it hasexceeded 5,000/. per
Parliamentary
mile: in both cases I include station land.
expenses, too, which in England have probably averaged
600/. per mile,
in the United States have cost next to
nothing.
But, after all, the excessive cost in our case, and the
States, smaller cost in the case of the United has pro-
ceeded rather from the different spirit
by and temper in
which the railways were conceivedtheir promoters,
and treated by the Legislature and the public, in the
two countries, than from any other cause.
In England, railways have never been o
ppul ar, except
were in times of excitement, and when shares _ ere at a pre-
mium. At the outset they were rather forced upon the
country than received with welcome. Every conceivable
impediment was thrown in their way on the
road to Par-
liament, and every harsh restriction whichcould
their after construction was there adopted againstlmpede
s been
them.
h
Of late years the wisdom of the Legislature eenexhi;
bited in the sanction of Acts of Parliament,a ostensibly
designed to promote the convenience of the public and
of private owners; but really having the effect of
en-
hancing
the cost, disfiguring the construction, and les-
sening the capacity and safety of the railways. For
example, the Act for the regulation of s
railway provides
that every turnpike road bridge shall have acleard span
an
of 35 feet, and a clear headway of 16 feet; that
every public road bridge shall have a clear span of 25
feet, and a clear headway of 15 feet. According to this
Act, framed by the Railway Board, a road is
a road—
no matter whether it be used all day long, o
passed over once a month by a milk cart;
andthor only
result
is, that splendid bridges, costing on the average perhaps
3,500/, each—the cost of a mile of ordinary railway in
America—are now standing by the hundred on English
railways, over roads almost obliterated, and of the
covered not
surface of which, when travelled over at all,
one-fifth part is ever made usa of. The same absurdity
attachesand to all other works affecting roads, water-ways,
. the occupation of land. And thus a vast amount of
national capital has been wasted, and the gradients of
many lines have been rendered steeper than they need
otherwise have been. I know of one bridge, for an un-
important road on a branch line in England, which has
cost2o,ooo/. I have travelled for a hundred miles
ahead
on American lines without seeing a single over-
bridge; and I have seen a railway in Indiana and Mi-
chigan,
of 200 miles in length, which, including stations,
working
stock and all, will not, when finished, have cost
more than the difference between the sum which Mr.
Stephenson originally estimated for the great
bridge
over the Menai, and that which the Admiralty, in their
desire to keep a minute navigation -
in s.t atu quo, com-
pelled him ultimately to expend.
In the United States, railways have been looked upon
almost
universally
as involving the public d a vantage,
and not as mero private speculations; and therefore the
Federal Government the separate governments of each
state, the counties, and • •
even the cities and towns, have,
in their combined' and corporate capacities, vied with
private capitalists in urging forward an enterprise so
necessary for the progress of the
country. Money has
been burrowed on stato and city
become stockholders; Government "
beenleaunrditiyaa;aStates have
con-
ceded to promoters—and indeed every effort has y been
made, and is still making, to
In complete the railway spa
rn te of the Republic.the mean time, facilities of the
most extreme nature for the construction of railways
have been accorded by public feeling. Not alone
of
through the finest squarethe aristocratic quarter of
New York, as well as the
thronged business streets of
that city, but through the
thoroughfares of Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and many
are rails laid down
connecting tho lines outside
With
the heart of the dense
lesser
cities'
population. And thus, for
objects attempted in England by all
practical purpose?, the
thoss " city extensions"
and " metropolitan termini,,, which have swamped so
many dividends, are here obtained, not to perfection I
admit, but at least at an •
Insignificant outlay of capital.
Then, at the crossing of
stead of the expensive bridge or ornamental lodge (with
by night),—a mere policemen, one by day and one
opening across the line, destitute
even of a gate, and with
thenot a soul to watch it, is left to
admit of a passage; and
is previded for simply by th safety of a sovereign people
on two high poles, with th o erection of a great board
inscription—" Look out for
the locomotive when the beel
But apart from the absencei ris.
impedi-
ments, and in addition to the of legislative
permitting its comfort, and indulgeece of the public in
trenched upon,—the cost f even safety, to be thus
brought down by the eAmerican lines has been
go a great way, and by necessitythe sacrifice of making a little capital
sacrifice of many of the ele-
ments of permanent endurance which attach to our rail-
final improvement in the the invention of railways a
have, therefore, constructetTeans of locomotion, and we
" f mortar. We have made our
our drainage capacious any Possible weight of engine;
able flood; our cuttings enough to remove any conceiv-
which defy the chance ofactO embankments vrth slopes
for many times the weil Vs; our bridges firm enough
gh
them; and our tunnels with that can ever come upoa
of such magnitude—not _a solidity worthy of works
1" faces," seen only by
our forgetting their huge stone
the architecture of h
2 eataengine-drivers, but equal to
ornament; our paint, fancyc9mbs. Then our display of
our Elizabethan architecti Iron-work, and plantations;
all testimonies of the spirite and triumphal arches,—are
who esteem it a public dut of some of our t coun rymen,
their country, without referencee mercenary fine teem
sideration as dividend, toed a
In America, the answer to a
a young country, and must be satisfiedlithis is, that " they are
prac-
tical and essential."
Theytell' with the
railways for work, and
that you also that they want
the rails strong enough, and ait. the roadway is sound,
not care if the line be singles gradients good, they do
fencing rough, or the slopes, the bridge of piles, the
that our desire for " permanence'.'
unsoiled. They say, too,
while their plan of
is a bar to future im-
provement;will do," leaves the door cal,3f Putting up with " what
with the exception of a fevi;Voer4 for invention. Thus,
the older railwas were at first. the New England lines,
" flat bar track;' that is, With Sucballasted, and laid as
nailed on to longieudinal sleeper thin, flat bar of iron
fast on this road; and "snake ha. Tle cars cannot ran
the bar under the wheels, meads," the starting up of
This kind of track has, howeverlist frequent accidents.
superseded by a well-ballasted road, eion to a great extent
verse sleepers, and solid flat-bottomed
with good trans-
-72 Ilse. to the yard. These rails are d rails of from 56 to
down to the sleepers, or have a
wrought
either simply spiked
chair at the joints, the intermediatereught or cast iron
cured. by 3 inch spikes only. The sleepers being se-
most in vogue is made from a pieoewrought iron chair
eight inches by six, cut on each sid °f half-inch plate,
receive the thin, flat, bottom flan e' and turned up to
ge of the •
four spike-holes. rail, and has
On many of the newer lines there
and as permanent as our own; and 0 are works as fine
the difficult works, tested by their ea all these railways
of admiration. The terminal statioenelaelnY' are worthy
costly, and always capacious, and thew ork too, are often
tools equal or superior to ours in all practicalsho respects.s have
Although daily wages are hi her gin the
the States than
with us, I imagine that the work of construction is done
as cheaply. In a recent contract, made
country where the average of prices is notin a part of the
any transient or permanent causesa—the disturbed by
earthwork in embankments, Bd. ere
work in common excavations 7d. aa cube yard; earth-
;per cube
yard; rock
cutting, ss. 3d. per cube yara ; masonr 295. 2d. per
cube yard ; cleaning and grubbing, 31,:i.
fencing, 6s. 3d. per rod of 16 feet. The yard ;
Central Company have let the lifting Michigan
with gravel of 21 miles of their old fait and
bar. reballasting
per cube yard, the company find Power t
and rack, at bid.
Some of the railway enterprises now in .waggons.
States are truly grand conceptions. 11
0 lnhand in the
where population exists is one thing, butt make a railway
make one in
order to call forth a population is another.
—The " Pacific Railrocd," which is the beginning
iron way from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean, of an
"Illinois Central Railroad," which is the northern
and the
link` of
a complete connexion between the greatlakes and the
Gulf of Mexico, are instances of how far
enterprise in
America can look ahead, and by anticiparu
f g,ensure the
progress of population, and the cultivation otherwise
inaccessible tracts of country. To aid both these great
enterprises, the Federal Government have ranted
ranted to the
states through which the intended lines and their pro-
spective extensions are to pass, alternate sections of land,