The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-10 00:00:00

THE RAILWAYS.

Since the railway system was brought into operation,
we have never, in this country, had anything like the
general blocking-up of all means of communication which
we have witnessed during the past week. Indeed, for
several winters after the first opening of railways, it was
entered as one in the numerous catalogue of real and ima-
ginary virtues inherent in railways, that they would be
found unassailable in the regularity of their transit, by
the rudest assaults of even the wildest snow-storms ; it
being maintained, and partially demonstrated, by slight
experience, that while snow-drifts could not form to any
formidable extent on the embanked portions of railways,
the currents, which are generally found to scour the cut-
tings, would effectually clear them of falling snow, and
prevent any accumulations which would not readily yield
to the impetuosity and power of the majestic yet obedient
locomotive. Alas ! for the fallibility of human speculation !
Such expectations were obviously built upon the sandy
foundation of ignorance, and proceeded upon the supposi-
tion that currents of air must always travel in railway
cuttings, obedient to the wishes of those gentlemen who
could find no engineering difficulties in forming a railway
to the summit of Snowdon, or beneath the hidden depths
of the vast Atlantic. Tuesday night and Wednesday
morning must have rudely awakened such dreamers, if
any such were still remaining ; for it made palpable the
fact that cross currents would sweep open districts, and
bury in gelid and impenetrable snow, miles upon miles of
cutting, setting at defiance the mighty steam-steed, and
laughing to scorn, for a time at least, the anxieties, the
energies, and the active ingenuity of man.
Some of the heaviest falls of snow being accompanied
by a strong easterly wind, the snow, especially in cuttings,
was swept up by the blast into immense drifts of great
length and depth. The monster drift, perhaps, was that
on the London and North-western Railway between
Crewe and Whitmore, which, besides being many feet deep,
is said to have stretched not less than ten miles in length
along the line. But all the lines in this part of the king-
dom have been more or less obstructed by snow-drifts, and
have only been freed by the labours, day and night, of
large gangs of workmen, with pickaxes, spades, shovels,
and other implements. Every railway line has its story
to tell of snowed-up passengers, benighted, bedless, and in
some cases without sufficient provisions, detained for hours,
unable to proceed either forward or return backward, till
the line had been cleared by manual labour. Some in-
stances of great exhaustion from working many hours at
this unusual sort of " diggings," have been recorded. In
some cases female passengers have had to be carried from
one end of a short drift to another, before they could pro-
ceed on their railway journey; and in hundreds, perhaps
thousands of instances, persons after getting half-way to
their destination, after many hours' detention, have found
themselves compelled to abandon their business or other
object of their journey, and return home, after passing one
night sitting by some fire, unable to procure a bed, and
never having had their clothes off, The railway com-
panies generally have made- great exertions to rid their
lines of these disagreeable blockades ; and we have heard
that on the great drift between Crewe and. Whitmore,
from 800 to 1,000 labourers were employed during the
greater part of Wednesday, Wednesday night, and Thurs-
day, so that at length the line was got partially clear of
its snowy barricade on Thursday evening. The stoppage
of the London and North-western line has been
most seriously felt; for not only have thousands of
passengers been prevented from reaching their desti-
nations, and been kept in most uncomfortable situa-
tions for long periods, but the whole of this district has
been deprived of all postal communication with the metropo-
lis to the very serious interruption ofmercantile transactions.
At Crewe, where, from its central position, a large assem-
blage of storm-stayed passengers was accumulated, every
exertion was made by the railway officials and authorities,
and by the keepers of the station refreshment-rooms, and
the hotel keepers of the town, to render the detention as
little disagreeable as possible ' • and the same remark, we
may add, is applicable to all the other points at which
insurmountable obstructions were experienced ; still the
disproportion of the demand, and its protracted duration,
pressed so heavily on the resources, as to occasion serious
inconvenience and privation to many, notwithstanding
every exertion for their comfort and accommodation. The
occurrences at Crewe may be received as a fair indication
mutatis mutandis of what took place in other localities.
Here the passengers, by the express and other trains,
arriving in rapid succession, without any available means
for their passing forward in any direction, soon filled
every description of place in which accommodation could
be found. Successive arrivals continuing to swell the
"pressure from without," all parties had to submit to
crowding and inconvenience, which, under other circum-
stances,
would have been found, and declared to be
insufferable ; but which here, the good sense and good
nature of the conjoint sufferers were employed to render
as little irksome as possible. The commencement of the
detention must serve as an illustration of the general
scene, the difference being that the difficulties at first
experienced, increased with each succeeding arrival, and
were not diminished by the continuance of the period of
the blockade. The passengers by the express and other
trains which speedily arrived, soon filled all the refresh-
ment-rooms at the station, in which large fires were
made ; orders were given by the station-master that the
guards and porters should pay every attention to the
wants of the passengers ; and as evening approached,
coffee and bread and butter were supplied to all those who
chose to partake of it. Many of the first-class passengers
went to the refreshment-rooms and hotels in the town,
and spent the night there ; but the great proportion re-
mained at the station, refreshments being supplied three
or four times during the night. The female passengers
were accommodated in rooms appropriated to them exclu-
sively, and the male passengers were informed that any car-
riage at the station was at their disposal, if they could make
themselves more comfortable there than in the rooms.
To say that, under such circumstances, disappointments
were numerous, would be trite ; and it is scarcely necessary
to add, that at the various blockaded points the causes of
such disappointments were both varied and incongruous.
In one corner of the same apartment might be seen the
eager man of business, fretting because ho was unwillingly
withheld from the prosecution of remunerative enterprise ;
in another, was cooped up the regretful anxiety of him
who sought by personal exertion and sagacity to stay the
current of an adverse commerce,—here was detained the
chafed mourner of domestic or family bereavement—there
the impatient lover, suddenly checked in that journey
which was to end in the reward of his affection, the fruition
of his hopes. But who can picture the conflicting emotions
of hope and fear—of joy and sorrow which hover round
that arrested stream of correspondence which, securely
locked up in leathern cerements, is here detained in a tem-
porary sepulchre of snow ?
The above remarks, it will be seen, apply chiefly to the
London and North-western line, and the stoppage at Crewe;
but other lines, and other points of that line were in a
similar manner blockaded and beset ; while some of the
less important lines and stations were but little incom-
moded. On the Macclesfield line the fall of snow was so
heavy near Cheadle, on Tuesday evening, that the 8.40
train from Manchester to Macclesfield got embedded near
Poynton, and could not be dragged out again. The agent
of Lord Vernon sent about 100 colliers to assist in the ex-
trication ; but after digging for several hours, the task was
given up as hopeless, and the train was left with the snow
up to the windows of the carriages. Two or three of the
colliers were so overcome by the cold and exposure, that
they became lethargic, and almost fell into a sleep, and
had to be carried to the station, where stimulants were ad-
ministered. A young lady, a passenger, also. suffered
severely.—On the Yorkshire lines, and on the branches of
the London and North-western in that district, there have
been many drifts.—The train which left Stalybridge for
Stockport, at 11.15 on Wednesday morning, had not ar-
rived, nor had anything been heard of it at nine o'clock in
the evening. Some men were sent from Stockport to search
for it ; and they at length found it about 400 yards beyond
Guidebridge, almost buried, the snow around being nearly
12 feet deep. The engine was a small " tank," and the steam
that had issued from it had melted the snow, which, rapidly
freezing again, had covered the sides with most fantastic
festoons, or else covered them with a thick coating of ice.
On the Manchester and Liverpool line the traffic was not
stopped, nor were the trains very materially delayed. The
North Union line, too, has been kept clear with but little
trouble. On the Lancashire and Yorkshire line, the mail
train which left Normanton, at 11 20,4 am., on Wednes-
day, got very deeply:embedded near Blue Pitts. The drift
into which the train ran was from focit feet to six feet
deep ; and the intelligence received at the Victoria. station
early in the afternoon was-such that all bookings sus-
pended. Immediately on steaming the state of :things,
Mr. Blackmore, superintendent of this division of the;line,
started with two powerful goods engines coupled tegetlitt
and ran through the Newton Heath drift as close to- the
embedded trains as ,possible, -After considerable „dia.