The Albany register. [volume] (Albany, Or.) 1868-18??, 1874-10-30
SIXTY NILES AN H0UR.

G1A 1R1L6O an MUM.
Mr.. George Bangs, Superintendent of
the Railway Postal Service, is making
arrangements, so it is said, for the more
rapid transportation of the mails. He
proposes that mail trains, consisting
simply of locomotive and a mali car,
shall be run between the chief cities of
the Unien at rate of speed much above
that of ordinary express trains. By
this means it is expected that the mails
can be carried from New York city to
Chicago in twenty-four hours, and that
q similar reduction of time can be made
by mail trains on other routes. Com |
menting on this, the New York Graphic |
says tThere is no doubt that the
speed of railway trains IN this country
can be greatly increased. On the Hud- |
son River road, within the last two or
three years, the fast express which runs
between this city and Albany, stopping
only at Poughkeepsie, has attained a
rate of speed which compares favorably
with that of the fastest English ex-
presses while the morning tnewspa-
per trains between New York and
Philadelphia run at the rate of nearly
sixty miles an hour" This increased
speed has been rendered possible by
improvements in the road-bed and rails
which have latterly been made. It is
as safe to travel fifty miles an hour over
steel rails bolted together with -" fish
plates " as it formerly was to travel at
speed of thirty miles an hour over iron
rails loosely connected by cast iron
sch airs" Our railroads are suscepti-
BILE of still further improvement, and
there is no reason why, when steel rails
and iron bridges come into general use
and sharp curves and heavy grades are
modified, we should not be able to travel
at nearly double the speed now prac-
ticable on most of our great railway
lines. The mail trains proposed by
Mr.. Bangs viii materially hasten the
day of rapid travel. It will be found
that speed of fifty miles an hour is,
with proper precaution, and over prop
erly built road, quite as safe as the
ordinary speed of express trains. In a
short time the railway companies will
find it greatly to their advantage to at
tach passenger cars to the mail trains,
which will run for hundreds of miles
without stopping except for coal and
water, and the speed of which will be
emulated to some extent by other ex-
presses. We shall probably be able to
ride from New York city to Chicago be-
fore many years in eighteen or twenty
hours. Before this speed can, however,
become general, the plan of Mr.. Van
derbilt in providing separate tracks for
passenger and freight trains will have
to be adopted. With passenger trains
running at a speed of sixty miles an
hour, there would hardly be possibi-
ity of carrying on the freight business
over the same line of rails with either
safety or dispatch.
EYGLLSH MATRIMONIAL STA TLSTICS
An English writer commenting on
the facts brought out by the last census
of Great Britain, says: "The women
of Great Britain, as rule, marry at a
far earlier age than common experience
would lead one to imagine, there being
no less than thirty four thousand wives
under twenty, and some-the authori-
ties, for some reason best known to
themselves, do not say how many-who
are under fifteen are included in this
column. The husbands take differ
ent view, for we find only six thousand
married men under twenty, or about
one-sixth of the number of wives in the
same period of age, But perhaps the
most remarkable feature In these matri-
monial statistics is the extraordinary
disparity of ages between husbands and
wives. Thus, out of million husband
whose ages at the demonstrating varied
from thirty to forty, six hundred and
seventy thousand were ten years young
er, and fifteen hundred were under
twenty. The reverse of the picture is,
however, also to be shown in eighty
thousand of these million couples the
wives were ten years older than the hus-
bands, four thousand were twenty years
older, and three hundred were thirty
years older, forty-two were forty years
older, and-WiI1 it be believed -Four
of these husbands ranging in age from
thirty to forty, were living with wives
from eighty to ninety, or, as people COM
monty say, with women old enough to
be their mother"
LONDON PROPER.
We are apt, says the Chicago Tribune,