The Sun.
London, England, 1845-06-23 00:00:00

BATTLE OF THE GAUGES.

The " battle of the gauges," which was fought in the House of
Commons on Friday night, has ended in the temporary triumph af.
the broad, and the discomfiture of the narrow; but the real com-
parative merits of the two seem to be still as undecided as the
lawyers and the engineers, who reap all the profit of the contest,
could possibly desire. It is certainly very desirable that one uni-
form gauge should be established upon all the lines of railway
throughout the kingdom, for, however skilfully the operation may
be performed, there must be both delay and risk in shifting pas-
sengers and goods, by " lifting the carriage off the waggon, or
lifting the carriage, waggon and all, on to a truck suited to another
gauge,"—a feat which, we are told by Sir Thomas Wilde, there
can easily be an apparatus for accomplishing. It nevertheless does
appear very necessary that before the " battle of the gauges" can
be finally decided by the complete victory of either, some under-
standing should be come to as to which is really to be preferred; bet
this appears to be a point that will not be very easily settled. As
far as can be ascertained from the evidence of the engineers—
no two of whom agreed in their opinion when examined on the
subject before the Parliamentary Committee—the qnestion of the
gauges is not yet ripe for solution ; and we are told by Mr..
Shaw, the chairman, that though he examined every engineer on
that particular point, " not one would commit himself to a posi-
tive opinion as to what would now be the best width of 'gauge."
It is evident therefore, that it would be highly premature to begin
tearing up existing rails for the sake of uniformity, when the plats
adopted might turn out ultimately to be uniformly wrong; for
though the paving people do occasionally amuse themselves by
alternating between wood and stone in the great metropolitan
thoroughfares—now indulging their fancy for one and now giving
a turn to the other, so that the city is kept constantly in a state
ofsemi.blockade—it would he much too expensive and inconvenient
a game to be carried on with reference to railroads. The great diffi-
culty appears to be, how we are to get at the superiority of one
gauge over the other, for the engineers will give no opinion
at all ; and when we rush to General Pasley for relief from our
perplexity we are left in greater bewilderment than before, for he
recommends "splitting the difference" between the broad and
narrow gauges, a suggestion which, if it is to have any weight at
all, must be unfavourable to both of them. He proposes to let the
gauges meet each other half way : the broad gauge drawing itself
in a little, and the narrow gauge making a slight advance towards
its competitor ; so that, by the broad giving a few inches and the
narrow taking something less than an ell, they might both come to
the same point without sacrificing the principle of either. How
this important question of the gauges is to be treated we hardly
know, but we are told that experience is the only test by which it
can be settled. Experience, we are afraid, when used with refe-
rence to the safety of any principle applied to railroad travelling, is
only another word for the returns of killed and wounded. We had
rather that the engineers could have made up their minds about
the respective merits of the broad and narrow gauges
without waiting for a table of the victims of each, and then
striking a balance in favour of the ens that has been attended witb
the smaller number of accidents. We must, however, do both the
gauges the justice to say, that we think the matter would be des-
tined to remain very long undecided if the sort of tables to which
we have alluded were waited for, inasmuch as either may be secure
with care and proper management; to the absence of which, In
some degree, nearly every railway casualty that occurs may now be
attributed. There is either a screw loose in some of the rails, or a
waggon with four wheels has been placed among others with six,
or the luggage van has been too light, or something has occurred
quite irrespective of the width of the gauges, the uniformity of
which Is perhaps not so indispensable to safety as it is desirable fer
the sake of convenience. We have little remark to make on the
debate of Friday night, which was hardly conducted with that calm.
ness which bespeaks the perfect disinterestedness of those who are
about to rote; and by the confusion which interrupted every one who
rose to speak, it was evident that most of the Hon. Members pre-
sent had come prepared to divide, rather than to hear or delibee
rate. The interests involved were those of the Great Western and
London Birmingham fines; and it was clear that both of these
powerful Companies had been active in exerting their influence.
It is somewhat awkward that the Select Committee and the Com-
mittee of the Board of Trade should be directly at issue as to the
merits of the two competing schemes, even after Mr. Shaw had
very ingeniously suggested a loophole to the Bard of Trade, by
suggesting that if it had had before it the whole of the facts it
would have decided in the same way as the Select Committee had
done, after sitting twenty.five days and examining more than a
hundred witnesses. Sir George Clerk would not compromise the
opinion of the Board of Trade, and insisted that it had heard aB
that was worth hearing; which it possibly might have done with.
out listening to the hundred witness power of testimony that the
Committee had patiently endured, in addition to "counsel at great
length "—a horror which the phrase, suggestive as it is of
suffering, gives one but a faint conception of. All this, too, for
the purpose of deciding a question which, according to Mr. Shaw,
the Chairman of the Committee, a glance at the map is sufficient
to settle. But " counsel at great length" would soon succeed In
destroying, by their own longitude and latitude, any plain and de-
finite notions derived from a:glance at the map, and we are not sur-
prised at the difficulty experienced by the Committee in getting
their heads clear again. We cannot quit this subject without say-
ing a few words about the very characteristic speech of the Pre.
mier. He, indeed, almost surpassed himself in tact, for he coo.
triv eti at the same time to present a petition one way, vote another,
and make a speech quite independent of either. The professor
who plays the drum, the Pandean pipes, and the triangle all at
once, is an indifferent performer compared with Sir Robert Peel,
who can manage three different tunes at once without any very
apparent discord.— Times.