Joseph Tatlow - Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland

J >> Joseph Tatlow >> Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland

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Of the _railway mania_ period I have spoken in a previous chapter. For a
time enormous success attended some of the lines. Amongst others the
Liverpool and Manchester and the Stockton and Darlington enjoyed mouth
watering dividends; the former ten, the latter fifteen per cent.! Said
the Government to themselves, "'Tis time we saw to this," and accordingly
they passed the _Railway Regulation Act_ of 1844. This Act provided that
if at any time, after twenty-one years, the dividend of any railway
should exceed ten per cent., the Treasury might revise the rates and
fares so as to reduce the profits to not more than ten per cent. This
expectation of high dividends, I need hardly say, has not been realised,
and the Act in this respect has been a dead letter. The Act also
conferred an option on the Treasury to acquire future railways at twenty-
five years purchase of the annual profits; or, if such profits were less
than ten per cent., the price was to be left to arbitration.

It is interesting now, when, owing to the war, the railways of the land
are under temporary Government control, and their future all uncertain,
to remember that, on the Statute Book to-day, there is an Act which
provides for State purchase of the railways of the country. Whether a
solution of the difficulty will be found in State purchase or in State
control it is hard to say, but it is clear that some solution of the
problem will become imperative when the war is ended and normal
conditions return. Justice and reason demand it.

In the year 1845 three long Acts of Parliament came into force; the
_Companies Clauses_, the _Lands Clauses_ and the _Railway Clauses Acts_.
Between them they contained no less than 483 sections. Each Act was a
consolidating measure. The first contained provisions usually inserted
in Acts for the constitution of public companies, the second the same in
regard to the taking of land compulsorily, and the third consolidated in
one general statute provisions usually introduced into Acts of Parliament
authorising the construction of railways.

The _Railway Clauses Act_ authorised railway companies to use locomotive
engines, carriages and wagons; to carry passengers and goods, and to make
reasonable charges not exceeding the tolls authorised by their special
Acts. Since then the whole of the trade of transit by rail has been
conducted by the companies owning the lines.

The gauge of railways in Great Britain was not fixed upon any scientific
principle. At first it followed the width of the coal tram-roads in the
north of England, which was adopted simply on account of its practical
convenience (five feet being the usual width of the gates through which
the "way-leaves" led) and so four feet eight and a-half inches became the
ordinary gauge, but in the early days it was by no means the universal
gauge. Five feet was chosen for the Eastern Counties Railway; seven feet
for the Great Western and five feet six was used in Scotland. The Ulster
Company in Ireland made twenty-five miles of the line from Belfast to
Dublin on a gauge of six feet two, while the Drogheda Company, which set
out from Dublin to meet the Ulster line, adopted five feet two. When the
Ulster Company complained of this, the Irish Board of Works, it is said,
admitted that it was a little awkward, but added that, as it was not
likely the intervening part would ever be made, it did not much matter.
The subject was, I believe, in Ireland referred to a General Pasley, who
consulted the authorities (who were many) throughout the kingdom. He
ultimately solved the question by adding up the various gauges the
authorities favoured, and recommended the mean, which was five feet three
inches; and so, for Ireland, five feet three became the standard gauge.

"The battle of the gauges," as it was styled at the time, was lively and
spirited. Eventually it was decided by Parliament, which in the year
1846 passed the _Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act_. This Act ordained that
in Great Britain all future railways were to be constructed on a gauge of
four feet eight and a-half inches, and in Ireland of five feet three
inches, excepting only certain extensions of the broad gauge Great
Western Railway.

Up to this time no action at common law was maintainable against a person
who by his wrongful act, neglect or default caused the immediate death of
another person, and an Act (known as _Lord Campbell's Act_), "for
compensating the Families of Persons Killed by Accidents," became law.
This enactment was due principally to the railway accidents that
occurred. They were relatively more numerous than they are now, for the
many modern appliances for ensuring safety had not then been introduced.
The Act provided that compensation would be for the benefit of wife,
husband, parent and child of the person whose death shall have been
caused. The Act did not apply to Scotland. Perhaps it was because the
laws of the two countries differed more then than now, and the life of
the railways in Scotland was young, England being well ahead. Probably
England thought she was doing enough when she legislated for herself by
passing this Act. It must be observed, however, that the Act applies to
Ireland as well as England.

In the year 1854 Parliament considered that _regulations_ were necessary
to further control the companies and passed an important statute, the
_Railway and Canal Traffic Act_. Known, for short, in railway parlance,
as "the Act of '54," its main provisions dealt with:--

Reasonable facilities for receiving and forwarding traffic
The subject of undue preference, which was forbidden
Railways forming part of continuous lines to receive and forward
through traffic without obstruction
The liability of railway companies for loss of, or damage to, goods or
animals

and it preserved to railway companies the _protection_ of the _Carriers'
Act_, to which I have referred.

The Select Committees of 1858 and 1863 sat on the subject of the great
length of time and the immense cost which railway promotion in those days
entailed, when Bills were fiercely contested, and protracted struggles
before Parliamentary Committees took place. Two Acts resulted from their
deliberations: the _Railway Companies' Powers Act_, 1864, and the
_Railway Construction Facilities Act_ of the same year. These Acts
empowered railway companies to enter into agreements with each other in
regard to maintenance, management, running over or use of each others
lines or property and for joint ownership of stations. They also enabled
powers to be obtained from the Board of Trade to construct a railway
without a special Act of Parliament, subject to the conditions that all
the landowners concerned agreed to part with the requisite land, and that
no objection was raised by any other railway or canal company. Little
use has ever been made of this well-intentioned enactment. Landowners
have rarely been disposed to accept terms which the companies thought
fair; and rival railways, in the days gone by, dearly loved a fight.

By the _Companies Clauses Consolidation Act_ of 1845 railway companies
were required to keep full and true accounts of receipts and expenditure,
but it was not until the year 1868 that Parliament placed upon the
companies an obligation to keep their accounts in a prescribed form. This
form was scheduled to the _Regulation of Railways Act_, 1868. It
provides for half-yearly accounts, and is the form which has been
familiar to shareholders for many years. This Act (1868) also ordained
that smoking compartments be provided on all trains, for all classes, on
all railways, except on the railway of the Metropolitan Company. Up to
then the railway smoker had to obtain the consent of his fellow
passengers in the same compartment before he could light up, or brave
their displeasure; and many were the altercations that ensued. The Act
also imposed penalties on railways who provided trains for attending
prize fights, which was hard on companies of sporting instincts. A
clause provided for means of communication between passengers and the
servants of the company in charge of trains running twenty miles without
stopping; and another clause gave the companies power to cut down trees
adjoining their line which might be dangerous. Prior to 1868, although
railways had then existed for three and forty years, the accounts of one
company could not usefully be compared with those of another, for
scarcely any two companies made up their accounts in the same way.
Variety may be charming, but uniformity has its advantages.

The Board of Trade, in 1871, was endowed with further powers. By the
_Regulation of Railways Act_ of that year, they were given additional
rights of inspection; authority to enquire into accidents, and further
powers in regard to the opening of additional lines of railway, stations
or junctions. And by this statute the companies were required to furnish
the Board of Trade with elaborate statistical documents, annually, in a
form prescribed in a schedule to the Act.

The only other important Act down to the year 1875 is the _Regulation of
Railways Act_ of 1873. This Act was passed for the purpose of making
"better provision for carrying into effect the _Railway and Canal Traffic
Act_ of 1854, and for other purposes connected therewith." In 1872 a
Joint Committee of both Houses sat and, following upon their report, this
Act was passed. It established a new tribunal, to be called the _Railway
and Canal Commission_, to consist of three Commissioners, of whom--one
was to be experienced in the law, one in railway business, and it also
authorised the appointment of not more than two _assistant_
Commissioners. As to the _third Commissioner_, no mention was made of
qualifications. This tribunal, though styled a _Commission_, conducted
its work as if it were a court; and a regularly constituted court in time
it became. By the _Railway and Canal Traffic Act_, 1888, the section in
the Act of 1873 appointing the Commission was repealed and a new
Commission established consisting of two appointed and three _ex officio_
Commissioners, such Commission to be "a Court of Record, and have an
official seal, which shall be judicially noticed." One of the
Commissioners must be experienced in railway business; and of the three
_ex officio_ Commissioners, one was to be nominated for England, one for
Scotland and one for Ireland, and in each case such Commissioner was to
be a Judge of the High Court of the land. Under the Act of 1873, the
chief functions of the Commissioners were: To hear and decide upon
complaints from the public in regard to undue preference, or to refusal
of facilities; to hear and determine questions of through rates; and to
settle differences between two railway companies or between a railway
company and a canal company, upon the application of either party to the
difference. The Act of 1888 continued these and included some further
powers.

In my humble opinion the Railway Commissioners have done much useful work
and done it well. For more than forty years I have read most if not all
the cases they have dealt with. On several occasions I have been engaged
in proceedings before them, and not always on the winning side.

CHAPTER X.
A GENERAL MANAGER AND HIS OFFICE

January, 1875, was a momentous time for me. In the second week of that
month I commenced my new duties at Glasgow and bade farewell for ever to
the tall stool and "the dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood." Before me
opened a pleasing prospect of attractive and interesting work, brightened
by the beams of youthful hope and awakened ambition. I was now chief
clerk to a general manager. Was it to be wondered at that I felt proud
and elated if also a little scared as to how I should get on.

Mr. Wainwright assumed the office of general manager on the first day of
the year. I say _office_, but in fact a general manager's office
scarcely existed. His predecessor, Mr. Johnstone, a capable but in some
respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an
office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but
first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan
Swift's. A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no
hobby, did not long survive his retirement from active business life.

Mr. Wainwright, who, like myself, was born in Sheffield, was twenty-three
years my senior. His early railway life was passed in the Manchester,
Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (now the Great Central), of which the
redoubtable Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edward Watkin was then the lively
general manager.

A different man to his predecessor was Mr. Wainwright. Unlike Mr.
Johnstone he was modern and progressive. _He_ never scorned delights or
loved, for their own sake, laborious days; pleasure to him was as welcome
as sunshine; and work he made a pleasure.

As I have said, no general manager's _office_ existed. Of systematic
managerial supervision there was none. What was to be done? Something
certainly, and soon. Mr. Wainwright concurred in a suggestion I made
that I should visit Derby, see the general manager's office of the
Midland there, and learn how it was conducted. This I did. E. W. Wells,
a principal clerk in that office, who was married to my cousin, showed
and told me everything. I returned laden with knowledge which I embodied
in a report and my recommendations were adopted. Several clerks were
appointed and the general manager's office, of which I was chief clerk,
soon became efficient.

Wells afterwards became Assistant General Manager of the Midland, and
Frank Tatlow, my cousin and brother of Wells' wife, is now its General
Manager, in succession to Sir Guy Granet. I am not a little proud that
the attainments of one who bears the name of Tatlow, and is so nearly
related to myself, have enabled him to reach the topmost post on a
railway such as the Midland Railway of England. He commenced as a junior
clerk in the General Manager's office and worked his way step by step to
that eminent position. No adventitious circumstances helped him on.

I became fond of railway work, which it seems to me for interest and
variety holds a high place among all the occupations by which man, who
was born to labour, may earn his daily bread. My duties were certainly
arduous but intensely interesting. The correspondence with other railway
companies regarding agreements, joint line working, Parliamentary
matters, and many other important subjects, conducted as it required to
be, with skill, care and precision, was for me a liberal education. The
fierce rivalry which, in those days, raged in Scotland for competitive
traffic culminated often in disputes which could only be settled by the
intervention of the general managers, and these brought much exciting
work into the office. Again, the close and intimate relations between
the Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western involved interesting
communications, meetings and discussions, and the keeping of certain
special accounts which it fell to me to supervise.

The Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western alliance was regarded by
the West Coast Companies (the London and North-Western and the
Caledonian) with much disfavour. In their eyes it was an attack upon
their hen roost, and it certainly resulted in the loss to them of a large
share of through traffic between England and Scotland which the West
Coast route had previously had all to itself. To carry on the
competition successfully necessitated a large expenditure of capital by
the Glasgow and South-Western, and the Midland, of course, had to help in
this. The original cost of Saint Enoch Station for instance was nearly
one and three-quarter millions sterling, and a considerable outlay was
also necessary for goods stations and other accommodation. There was in
those days much doing between the general managers' offices of the
Midland and Glasgow and South-Western companies, and it was all
delightfully new and novel to me.

A Committee of Directors of the two companies, called the _Midland and
Glasgow and South-Western Joint Committee_, was established. This
committee, with the two general managers, met periodically either at
Derby, London, Carlisle or Glasgow. Mr. Wainwright acted as secretary
and I kept the minute book and papers relating to the business of the
committee.

Pullman cars had been introduced on the Midland and were run on the
through trains between Saint Pancras and Saint Enoch. The cars were the
property of Mr. Pullman, but the Midland kept them in repair, the Glasgow
and South-Western relieving them of a proportion of the cost
corresponding to the mileage run over their line. Mr. Pullman received
as his remuneration the extra fare paid by the passengers--three
shillings each for drawing-room cars and five shillings each for sleeping
cars. Other through carriages on these trains were jointly owned by the
two companies. The interesting accounts connected with these
arrangements were supervised by me. I commenced work with Mr. Wainwright
on a Monday. The following Saturday afternoon, before leaving the
office, to my great surprise and delight, he presented me with a first-
class station to station pass over the railway. With what pride I showed
it to Tom that evening! Six months later my salary was increased, and
the pleasant fact was announced to me by my kindly chief, coupled with
the expression of a wish that he and I might long work together.

On the Scottish railways the financial half-years ended, not in June and
December, as in other parts of the United Kingdom, but at the end of July
and January. This was for the better equalisation of receipts, taking a
month from the fat half-year to the lean, and giving, in exchange, a
month from the lean to the fat. Soon after the first-half-year was
concluded and the accounts published, which was in the month of September
(my first September with the Glasgow and South-Western), Mr. Wainwright
handed to me a large sheet of closely printed figures, giving a detailed
analysis and comparison of the accounts of five of the principal English
and the three principal Scottish railways in columnar form, with a
request that I should take out the figures and compile for printing a
similar statement for the past half-year, from the accounts of the eight
companies. I trembled inwardly for I had never yet looked at a railway
account, but I took them home, and, as in the case of the Acts of
Parliament, found them simpler than I thought; and, with less trouble
than I expected, succeeded in accomplishing the task.

Mr. Wainwright was himself a skilful statistician and tested everything
he could by the cold logic of figures. I was soon surprised to find that
I too had a taste for statistics and acquired some skill in their
compilation. Up to this I had always imagined that I disliked everything
in the shape of arithmetic. At school I was certainly never fond of it,
and since school my acquaintance with figures had been little more than
the adding up of long columns in huge books at the half-yearly
stocktaking in the stores department at St. Rollox, a thing I detested,
and which invariably gave me a headache. Well pleased was Mr. Wainwright
to see that statistics took my fancy. As general manager he had not much
time himself to devote to them, but the office was now well manned and we
were able to establish, and keep up, tables, statistics and returns
concerning matters of railway working in a way which I have not seen
surpassed. These statistics were of much practical use when considering
questions of economy and other matters from day to day.

My first year as general manager's clerk was, I have always thought, the
most important in my railway life. Certainly in that year I learned much
and acquired from my chief business habits which have stood me in good
stead since. Mr. Wainwright was a man of no ordinary nature, as all who
knew him will admit. He was a pattern of punctuality and promptitude,
never spared himself in doing a thing well and expected the same
thoroughness in others, though he would make allowance for want of
capacity, but not for indolence or carelessness. Straightforwardness,
honesty and rectitude marked all he did. His word was his bond. His
disposition was to trust those around him, and his generous confidence
was usually justified. High-minded and possessing a keen sense of honor
himself, he had an instinctive aversion to anything mean or low in
others. A man of great liberality and generous to a fault he often found
it hard to say no, but when obliged to adopt that attitude it was done
with a tact and courtesy which left no sting. In all business matters he
required a rigid economy though never at the expense of efficiency.

Intellectually he stood high, as I had ample opportunity of judging, but
if asked what were his most striking qualities I should say _goodness_
and a charm of manner which eludes description, but irresistibly
attracted all who met him. In appearance he was tall and portly, and his
bearing, carriage and presence were gentlemanly and refined. He was of
fair complexion, was possessed of a delightful smile, and had side
whiskers (turning white) continued in the old-fashioned way under the
chin, and yet he was so bright and debonair that he never looked
old-fashioned. Like myself he was a great lover of Dickens, and I think
his most prized possession was a small bookcase which had belonged to
Dickens' study and which he purchased at the sale at _Gad's Hill_. His
directors esteemed him highly, and the officers of the company were all
sincerely attached to him. In his room he held almost daily conferences.
Correspondence formed but a small part in his method of dealing with
departments. He believed in the value of _viva voce_ discussion, and
discouraged all unnecessary inter-departmental correspondence. In this
he was right I am sure. The daily conferences were cheerful and
pleasant, for he had the delightful faculty of "mixing business with
pleasure and wisdom with mirth." I consider that I was singularly
fortunate at this period of my life in finding myself placed in close and
intimate association with such a man as Mr. Wainwright, in enjoying his
confidence as I did, and in being afforded the opportunity of benefiting
by his kind precepts and fine example.

[W. J. Wainwright: wainwright.jpg]

In Glasgow there was a weekly paper of much humour and spirit called _The
Bailie_. With each issue it published an article on some prominent man
of the day under the title of _Men You Know_, accompanied by a portrait
of the person selected. It is the Glasgow _Punch_. It was established
in 1873,and "_Ma Conscience_!" is its motto. It still, I am glad to
hear, runs an honorable and profitable course, which its merits well
deserve. In its issue of September 13th, 1882, Mr. Wainwright was _The
Man You Know_, and, at the request of the Editor, I wrote the article
upon him. In it are some words which, penned when I was with him daily,
and his influence was strong upon me, are, perhaps, more true and
faithful than any I could at this distance of time write, and so I will
quote them here, and with them conclude this chapter.

"He (_The Man You Know_) is one upon whom responsibility rests gracefully
and lightly, who accomplishes great things without apparent effort, and
whose personal influence smoothes the daily friction of official life. He
rules with a gentler sway than many who are accustomed to other methods
of command would believe possible. He believes in Emerson's maxim that
if you deal nobly with men they will act nobly, and his habit towards
everyone around him, and its success, lends force to the genial truth of
the American philosopher."

CHAPTER XI.
THE RAILWAY JUBILEE, AND GLASGOW AND SOUTH-WESTERN OFFICERS AND CLERKS

The 27th day of September, 1875, was the Jubilee of the British Railway
System. It was celebrated by a banquet given by the North-Eastern
Railway Company at Darlington, for the Stockton and Darlington section of
the North-Eastern was, as I have mentioned before, the first public
railway. A thousand guests were invited. No building in Darlington
could accommodate such a number, and a great marquee, large enough to
dine a thousand people, was obtained from London. My chief attended the
banquet and I remained at home to hear the news when he returned. Dan
Godfrey's band was there, and Dan Godfrey himself composed some music for
the occasion. The _menu_ was long, elaborate and imposing; equalled only
by the _toast list_, which contained no less than sixteen separate
toasts. It was a Gargantuan feast befitting a great occasion. Could we
men of to-day have done it justice and sat it and the toast list out, I
wonder. It took place over forty years ago, when the endurance of the
race was, perhaps, greater than now; or why do we now shorten our
banquets and shirk the bottle?

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