This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
p.iLIVES
of the
ENGINEERS.
THE LOCOMOTIVE.
GEORGE AND ROBERT STEPHENSON.
BY SAMUEL SMILES,
author of ‘character,’ ‘self-help,’ etc.
“Bid Harbours open, Public Ways extend;
Bid Temples, worthier of God, ascend;
Bid the broad Arch the dang’rous flood contain,
The Mole projected break the roaring main,
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers through the land.
These honours, Peace to happy Britain brings;
These are imperial works, and worthy kings.”Pope.
A NEW AND REVISEDEDITION.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1879.
The right of Translation isreserved.
p. iiiINTRODUCTION.
Since the appearance of this book in its original form, someseventeen years since, the construction of Railways has continuedto make extraordinary progress. Although Great Britain,first in the field, had then, after about twenty-fiveyears’ work, expended nearly 300 millions sterling in theconstruction of 8300 miles of railway, it has, during the lastseventeen years, expended about 288 millions more in constructing7780 additional miles.
But the construction of railways has proceeded with equalrapidity on the Continent. France, Germany, Spain, Sweden,Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, have largely added to theirrailway mileage. Austria is actively engaged in carryingnew lines across the plains of Hungary, which Turkey is preparingto meet by lines carried up the valley of the Lower Danube. Russia is also occupied with extensive schemes for connectingPetersburg and Moscow with her ports in the Black Sea on the onehand, and with the frontier towns of her Asiatic empire on theother.
Italy is employing her new-born liberty in vigorouslyextending railways throughout her dominions. A direct lineof communication has already been opened between France andItaly, through the Mont Cenis Tunnel; while p. ivanother hasbeen opened between Germany and Italy through the BrennerPass,—so that the entire journey may now be made by twodifferent railway routes (excepting only the short sea-passageacross the English Channel) from London to Brindisi, situated inthe south-eastern extremity of the Italian peninsula.
During the last sixteen years, nearly the whole of the Indianrailways have been made. When Edmund Burke, in 1783,arraigned the British Government for their neglect of India inhis speech on Mr. Fox’s Bill, he said: “England hasbuilt no bridges, made no high roads, cut no navigations, dug outno reservoirs. . . . Were we to be driven out of India thisday, nothing would remain to tell that it had been possessed,during the inglorious period of our dominion, by anything betterthan the ourang-outang or the tiger.”
But that reproach no longer exists. Some of the greatestbridges erected in modern times—such as those over th