The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-03-01 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER, SHEF-
FIELD AND MANCHESTER, ANI) MANCIIES-
TER AND LEEDS RAILWAYS.

Amongst the incentives to the conduct recently manifested
by the hoard of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, towards
the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester line, with

respect to a proposed junction at their Manchester termini,
we have ever viewed as the chief, the rooted jealousy with
which the former gentlemen regard the progress of an un-
dertaking which promises at no distant period to be a formi-
dable competitor, with theirs, for the traffic from the heart
of Yorkshire and the north-eastern portion of England.

From its being first projected, in L 435, the Sheffield and
Manchester Railway has been the constant object of the
sneers and the misrepresentations of the gentlemen of the
Manchester and Leeds line, their engineers, and their various
A continual under-current of hostilities has been
directed against it. The press has teemed with anonymous

official

slanders to its prejudice, nine-tenths of which, it is too cer-
tain, have emanated, not from the "injured shareholders,"
the "sufferers," and other small unknown, whose senti-
ments and sufferings they purported to express,—but from
the board-room or the private parlours of Leeds and Man-
chester directors and shareholders, whose jaundiced vision
saw in every step made in the progress of this undertaking a
ray shorn from the magnificent prospects which, in imagina-
tion, surrounded their own line. And it is chiefly because
the directors of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway have
refused to shut their eyes to the claims of Sheffield and
the eastern district of the -north of England to be connected
with Liverpool, that the storm of vituperation, and the ac-
cusations of want of faith, which we have recently noticed,
have been drawn down upon them from the officials and the
anonymous partisans of the Manchester and Leeds direction.
We have taken some interest in this controversy so far,
and have come in for some small share of visitations usually
received when such warfare is raging. We stood forward in
defence of the course pursued by the Liverpool and Man-
chester board, not merely because that undertaking was,. to
some extent, a Liverpool undertaking—not because we have
the pleasure of receiving any extraordinary favours from its
directors—or that our journal was (as represented by our
able contemporary, the Railway Times) "in their secrets ;"
but because, upon general grounds, we were satisfied that in
that course they were right. Whilst entertaining the ques-
tion of a junctiou with the.Matichester and Leeds Railway,
we were convinced that they could not, with propriety and
justice, or with advantage to the interests of their under-
taking and of the port of Liverpool, overlook the importance
of a junction with all the lines which diverge eastwards from
Manchester ; and that amongst those lines the Sheffield
Railway possessed especial claims which they could not and
ought not to overlook.

It is partly in justification of our former advocacy, and
partly because, as journalists, taking a deep interest in the
prosperity of railway undertakings, we cannot in silence see
any line borne down by systematic misrepresentation, that
we purpose now placing before our readers, from the docu-
ments presented at the last half-yearly meeting, the actual
present position and prospects of the Sheffield and Man-
chester Railway.
And first, with respect to the cost of its execution, as thus
far tested by experience. The public have heard abundance
of stories, from anonymous correspondents of the Railway
Times, with respect to the enormous probable cost of por-
tions of the works. Let us see what are the facts.

The total length of the line from Manchester to Sheffield
is 40 1-3rd miles. The total cost as estimated by Mr.
Vignoles, the late eminent engineer of the company, was
£1,000,000, which was divided in detail, as follows :
Manchester to Glossop, 11 miles £248,600
Glossop to Tunnel, 71 , ..
Tunnel, 3 „
From Tunnel to Sheffield, 19 „

Cost of Works

Land
Management .
Stations and Stock
Tunnel Contingencies
Unforeseen ditto

£666,138
80,571
37;336
125,571
24,617
65,767

£1,000,000

Of the entire length of 40 1-3 d miles, a distance of nearly
nine miles is already completed and opened. Another por-
tion extending to Glossop, is under contract; and the cost of
the first eleven miles out of Manchester, which is stated by
Mr. Locke, the present engineer of the company, (upon
whose competence as a judge we need not, in Liverpool en-
large,) to contain one half of the entire earthwork of the
line,) is £253,000—a difference, between the estimate and
the general cost of but £4,400 in an amount of a quarter of a
!

Of the tunnel, which has ever been treated as the great
difficulty of the undertaking, and the cost of which has been
so exaggerated by interested and anonymous detractors, the
progress, thus far, developer a similar result. The estimate
of Mr. Vignoles, made upon the supposition that, from the
nature of the strata, it would not require lining throughout,
was for tunnel and contingencies £105,937. That of Mr.
Locke, allowing for lining throughout, is, as recently fur-
dished to the directors, £205,700. The discrepancy here is
undoubtedly large. It is, however, still uncertain whether
this great additional cost of lining will have to be incurred ;
and at all events it must be satisfactory to the proprietors to
know that the estimate of Mr. Locke, which has been
formed, after the nature of the strata was ascertained, the
shafts nearly completed, the necessary buildings erected, and
one third of the entire driftway executed, must necessarily
be the extreme cost of the work! So far from there being
any probability of the whole tunnel, (as it has been repre-
sented by the partisans of the Leeds and Manchester direc-
tion,) having to he formed through the same difficult and
expensive material which presented itself in the Summit
tunnel on the Leeds line, we can state, on the authority of
the resident engineer, that " they have not met with a bed
of mountain limestone, nor a bit of blue shale"—(the strata
on the Leeds line)—" in the whole range of hills through
which they are driving; and the fact will prove itself, that
on the Manchester and Leeds summit tunnel, they were
forced to line their shafts with stone or bricks, as the sides
would not stand without, whilst the shafts on the Sheffield
and Manchester tunnel are lined with boards, merely to stop
the water from pouring on the men and extinguishing the
lights ; and the best proof is this—their shale stands equally
as well as the rock."

The total revised estimate of Mr. Locke, including all
stock and contingencies, amounts to £1,113,500, the differ-
ence between which, and that of Mr. Vignoles, is principally,
as we have shown, in the cost put down for the tunnel, a
portion of which, it is probable, may be saved, although the
former gentleman has very properly, in his estimate, taken
the extreme view of the case. That this is an estimate which
with certainty may be depended upon to complete the under-
taking we think must be manifest from the following passage
in Mr. Locke'a report to the directors :
" With a view to arrive as nearly as possible at this cer-
tainty in the present case, it has occurred to me that it would
be well to obtain contracts for the entire works, to be finish-
ed in a given time, and that all liabilities of every kind, even
including the land, should ,be guaranteed to the company
under bond. If persons could not be found to take such
contracts, then a prima facie case is made out against the
sufficiency of the estimate. Upon this showing lam willing
to test the estimate I have made to you, and either to find
parties who will give the guarantee required, or at once
retire from the position I hold."
We can imagine nuthing more satisfactory than such a
declaration.
With respect to the prospects of the traffic to come upon
the line, we believe that they fully equal, now, any previous
anticipations which have been entertained. So far as the
railway has yet been open, the receipts have been highly
satisfactory, and are steadily increasing ; and when the line
is further extended to Glossop, or to the mouth of the sum-

mit tunnel, (which will be in the course of the present year,)

there is no doubt that a good available revenue, clear of-all
expenses, will be brought in. It must be borne in mind that
so far as the traffic in passengers and in goods as well, is
concerned, there can be no possible competition against this
undertaking. Between the towns of Sheffield and Manches-
ter, no canal or other conveyance, except the ordinary roads
—and bad they are !—presents itself ; and, whilst from the
comparatively light:cost of the line, (X 27,000 per mile,) the
cheapness of fuel, and other advantages, the company will
be enabled to carry upon very reasonable terms. they will
have no opposition to force them into reductions detrimental
to the profitable working of their line.

The circumstance, however, which we have no doubt has
most materially tended to produce the soreness with which
the Sheffield railway is contemplated, and to sharpen the
shafts which are launched against it by the partizans of the
Manchester and Leeds line, is the fact, that, by a movement
which is at present making on the Yorkshire side of the sum-
mit, this line threatens ultimately to become the route from
Liverpool and Manchester to Leeds itself The London
Gazette of the last week or two has contained a notice of an
application to parliament for the formation of a junction line
from Penistone, on the Sheffield and Manchester line, via the
North Midland line, near Barnsley, to Normanton, by which
route the distance between Manchester and Leeds (which by
the present line is upwards of GO miles) will be reduced to
less than 44—thus effecting a saving of 7 miles ! The plans
and sections of this line (from Penistone to the North Mid-
land) are now, we are:informed, in active progress ; and we
have no doubt that, the perfect practicability of the tunnel on
the Sheffield line being demonstrated, the junction in ques-
tion, which will open to the manufacturing districts of Man-
chester and Sheffield the vast and valuable coal fields in the
vicinity of Barnsley and Silkstone, will be vigourously pro-
secuted. Iliac illcc irce !

There can be no question, we regret to say, that the finan-
cial prospects of this undertaking are anything but satisfac-
tory ; and to this state of things there is as little question
that the ceaseless hostility which has been directed against it,
by interested opponents, has mainly conduced. Large ar-
rears of calls upon shares have accumulated ; litigation to en-
force payment has created a vast amount of exasperation,
amongst the holders, against the proceedings of the board ;
and from these circumstances, combined with the unexampled
disorganization of trade in the manufacturing districts, the
most serious difficulties in the way of the successful prosecu-
tion of the undertaking present themselves. We must, how-
ever, express our deliberate conviction that there is nothing