The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-16 00:00:00

EXETER LINES.

The railroad question still maintains an unabated in-
terest in this good city. The county, both east and west,
has been seized on by the surveyors, and rumour is
active in preparing the public mind for an extraordinary
development of projects both broad and narrow, to
occupy the attention of the forthcoming session of Par-
liament. The Great Western Company are suddenly
enamoured of a short line, and claim a right to put the
best gauge upon the shortest route. The South-Western
Company are prepared to meet them with a comprehen-
sive narrow gauge project, which shall study the require-
ments of the whole western district of country. The
several companies which appeared in connexion with the
South-Western last year, are now to be merged into a
South-Western Extension Company, which will be iden-
tified with the South-Western itself, and the stock of
the old companies is probably to be exchanged for the
South-Western Extension stock. Negotiations to effect
this arrangement are, we understand, now pending.
The Great Western have been taught a severe lesson.
They has-a learnt that a cathedral city is not to be so
easily extinguished as some of their flatterers imagined,
and that a community of some 40,000 souls possesses a
means of operating on public opinion (especially when it
has justice and common sense on its side) with a degree
of effectiveness and power which even a great company
cannot afford to despise. It is unnecessary now to ask
if a line of railway preferring the northern coast as much
as it well can on its road to Exeter, and thence crossing
to the south coast, and hugging that from Exeter to
Plymouth, and thence to Falmouth, can be
,received as
the sole trunk line of the west ? Common sense answers
that it cannot. The Great Western Company have a
right to indulge in a great roundabout propensity. They
have a right to neutralise the merits of their gauge by
the circuitousness of their route—they have a right to
clap ten miles of way upon the natural distance between
Exeter and Plymouth (considering perhaps that now our
good bishop talks of beginning to think about coming
back to his palace a few years hence, the further these
two towns can be placed apart the better)—the great
company have a right to outrage common sense, and to
set at nought public feeling, and to scorn local advice,
and turn a deaf ear to local appeals—but !having neg-
lected to take the straight path, and to construct the
trunk line of the West of England, they have no right
to stand as obstructives in the way of persons ready and
willing to do the work which it is their fault that it now
remains to be done.
The trunk line must and will be made. The Great
Western people have decided that it is to be a narrow
gauge line, for they have steadfastly refused to make a
broad gauge trunk line. Circumstances render a narrow
gauge the best line, because the Legislature has deter-
mined to limit the extension of the broad gauge, and a
narrow gauge line restoring to Exeter, in the first place,
her old direct line of route to London, and the revival of
her connexions with the several towns thereon—and in
the second place connecting the great arsenals of the
empire together, and placing the western port of Fal-
mouth in junction with London, Manchester, and the
great marts of commerce, by an uninterrupted and un-
broken line of communication—all this, we say. will show
the citizens of Exeter, and the community at large, the
importance of supporting the direct line.
With respect to the speed of the two gauges, let it be
remembered that we are in the infancy of the atmos-
pheric system of traction, and that it is calculated that a
speed of 75 miles an hour may be obtained upon it ;
this rate of speed is frequently attained on the
Croydon line, although the machinery was made with
the imperfection necessarily attendant on inexperi-
ence. If the atmospheric succeed, the great
charm of the broad gauge is lost, and the expen-
siveness of its construction will alone remain. The
triumph of the atmospheric will be a tower of strength
to the narrows, and that triumph the broad gaugers are
doing their best to consummate. We are assured, on all
sides, that the atmospheric principle is daily surmount-
ing the difficulties which novelty and inexperience en-
tailed upon it, and that when the South Devon line is
opened with it, the locomotives will be banished.
We should entrust the South-Western witt..absolute
power as reluctantly as we should the Great Western.
But it is due to the South-Western to say, that they
have never outraged public opinion so offensively as the
Great Western have ; nor have they disregarded local
feeling so much ; whilst they have studied the feelings
and comforts of the poor third-class passenger to a very
eminent degree. We do not want to prefer one com-
pany to the other, we want to prefer both to either—
give us the old direct road—and above all, give us com-
petition.
The success of the atmospheric will equalise the speed
of both the gauges.— Western Times.