The northern extremity of the long Watford tunnel, twenty miles from London, is reached just thirty-three minutes from the time of starting; yet it has been climbing work all the while, and the climbing work continues still farther to Tring, eleven miles more distant from London; but the hill is not so steep as it was at starting. Long it is; but Tring is, nevertheless, only some 750 feet higher than Euston, and some 350 feet higher than the top of the cross of the noblest Protestant Church in the world—St. Paul’s. Has the engine felt it? Not she. She has only shown that she knows the difference between a gradient of 1 in 80 and 1 in 300, by the bound she made into higher speed, as, escaping from the stiffer incline, she dashed on to more level ground through the Points of Camden.
In the by-gone days of the early railway, the engine that could gain the heights of Tring without baiting on the way was a wonder. In 1844, when experiments were made preparatory to running express trains between London and Birmingham in three hours, the exultation was great when it was found that a tender could be constructed to hold water enough to convey a light train as far as Wolverton without stopping.
Finality is an unknown element on the railway: Progress is its only pass-word. The tender was no sooner found capable of carrying water to Wolverton, than it was determined to extend the distance to Blisworth. Not very long afterwards the run was increased to Rugby, twenty miles farther. Engines and trains have for some years run these eighty-two miles without stoppage; but of late the water-crane has been supplemented by the water-trough, of which we shall take occasion to speak presently.
From Tring to Leighton the ground is gone over in nearly as few minutes as there are miles—one only conspicuous object being visible in the intervening distance—the noble house built, not ten years ago, for the great Rothschild, by the still greater Paxton.
As the train flies through Leighton Station, the engineman’s watch tells that he has completed his forty miles in his appointed time, fifty-six minutes from that at which he left London. Well that he is quick of glance, for before the watch is replaced in its pocket, the engine and train enter in the Linsdale Tunnel. It is the worst on the line, for though short—only 284 yards in length—you are half-way through it before the first gleam of daylight is caught streaming in at its opposite entrance. “I have got the distant signal all right, Jack, put some coal on”—says the engineman to his fireman, and the furnace door has scarcely been opened for three shovels full, before the iron-clad is dashing through Bletchley Station—46½ miles from London,—twenty years ago, a small road-side station; now, a first-class and intricate junction, whence a branch juts off to the right to Bedford, and thence to Cambridge; another on the left to Oxford. It is thus that the two Universities are brought into railway connection, and the rival seats of learning and of boat racing are only three-and-a-half hours apart from each other. Might not Cam do well by an occasional training visit to the banks and stream of Isis?