IV

CHESTER CARLISLE - THE TWEED

As

S we stand at the centre of the vast gridiron of tracks over which pass hundreds, perhaps thousands, of trains a day, the differences between English railways and our own are more apparent than ever. The track is here called the rails, and you are shunted to a siding, when you supposed you were switched to a sidetrack. Where our conductor shouts, "All right" or "Go ahead," their guard calls out, "Straight away." Baggage is luggage; merchandise is sent by a goods train; and the railroad is the railway. Your trunk is your box, and the ticket-office is the booking-office. The tracks, heavily ballasted with stone, add greatly to security, speed, and comfort, and look as if they would never need renewing. Grade-crossings are rare, indeed; and the swift trains glide past or over you with a singular smoothness and lack of noise, which latter is greatly enhanced by the infrequency with

which the locomotive whistle is used. Strange as it may seem, it actually appears to be restricted to occasions of necessity! And how solidly built are the stations and their ample stone platforms, extending far up and down the track, with the name displayed on standards at their outer extremities, often, however, obscured by advertisements. The problem as to where you are arriving is often a difficult one to solve in a hurry, as of course announcements cannot be made in the carriages, but only on the platforms as the train enters the station, and then often in an unrecognizable lingo. It is, perhaps, easier of solution in the night, since the name of the place is (though rather inconspicuously) printed on the many glass globes which surround the gaslights.

You are oftener locked in than on the Continent; and though there is a bell-rope running through the train, it is carefully hidden from sight, and the printed directions rather warn against its use than encourage it in case of need. That such need may and does exist for isolated and defenceless travellers is proved by continued occurrences in the very suburbs of London. Precautions for safety are perfect at the stations themselves; and, unless you

prostrate yourself before the car of Juggernaut, you are out of danger. Opposing platforms, except at junctions, generally mean that one is only for trains in a certain direction, and the other for the reverse, tracks being double, and passage to the left instead of right; and often these platforms are not set directly but diagonally opposite, having of course separate entrances. If there is not a subway for crossing beneath the tracks, there is a bridge over them, like the one at Coventry, where Tennyson tells us in the opening of "Godiva" that he "hung with grooms and porters," while waiting for the train, and at the same time composed the poem. Its passage is often a tedious business, but certainly a very salutary one. Tickets are generally surrendered as one leaves the station gate; but in two cases ours were not taken up at all.

Precautions for safety do not always extend to those for comfort. The whole system is comfortless as compared with our own. Distances are short in Great Britain, and it makes less difference, it is true. Changes too, except on through trains, are exasperatingly frequent, and one is perpetually getting in and out. But little provision can be made for invalids; the

methods of heating are very inadequate, and one must actually suffer in the winter-time. And as for night travel, the solace of reading is practically denied, since compartments are generally lighted only by a feeble gaslight overhead that barely serves to make darkness visible. Sleeping-cars are of course found on the longer lines. There is said to be but one short route in the south of England which is thoroughly equipped with American parlor-cars and coaches. Their introduction is coming slowly on some of the great trunk lines to the north. We saw some dining-cars that appeared extremely comfortable, but had no opportunity to use even a buffet. The system of furnishing hot and cold lunches, in baskets which one takes with him from one station, leaving the "débris" at another designated stopping-place, is preferred by English travellers. Corridortrains are in use on certain lines like the North Western, where the compartments are shortened in width, and open at one side into an aisle by which one can pass the whole length of the train through vestibules. The compartments are often decorated by pretty photographs of scenery, and the ventilation is of course much better. As for engines, they

sometimes appear very odd affairs, with the engineer and stoker often exposed to the weather, without a roof over their heads. They are smaller than our huge monsters, and draw lighter loads than our Pullmans, but make it up in brilliancy of color. We saw

them painted in many hues, like Joseph's coat; but imagination sickened when it came to some painted a solid pea-green with white wheels! It is a pity, too, that the smoke-stack is so insistently like a mere upright length of stove-pipe, for these features are little less than a violent insult to the lovely scenery, of which the moving trains often form a part.

But all other comfort in travel is subordinate to certainty which train to take. And this is often in England the one thing of which no traveller can be sure. The landlord or landlady seems to care for none of these things. "Boots" is supposed to be authority, and is generally summoned, and makes voluble appeal to time-tables. But, probably because Bradshaw is a double-and-twisted enigma beyond the wit of man to unravel, the directions boots gives you are as likely to be wrong as right. The agent at the booking-office knows whether the train just leaving goes to London