TEMPORARY RAILWAYS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VIII, Issue 492, 22 July 1857, Page 3

TEMPORARY RAILWAYS.

(From the Times, March 17.)

The first sight of an American Railway map, to use a vulgarism, " quite takes one aback." An impression is produced rather akin to what we receive when a friend whom we have not cast eyes on for fifteen or ftwenty years comes across us, and reminds us forcibly of the fact " how old we are getting." Here is a part of the world which we have scarcely left off picturing to ourselves as aboriginal and fresh from the great act of Creation completely intersected by railways. Omitting all the intermediate stages between Chaos and Bradshaw, it has taken a violent leap into time, and from the very first seized hold of the latest results of civilization. A network of 26,000 miles of railway now covers the United States. This has been accomplished principally by Irish labour, and it is unnecessary to say that the cost of construction has been very small, compared with that in this country. The single article of the difference in the value of land would, of course, make an enormous differ- i ence. The cost of construction per mile on the New York and Massachussets Railway has been £IQ,OOO to £12,000, as compared to £35,000, on British railways. We quote the very interesting Report on the Railways of the United States by Cap. tain Douglas Galton. The cheapness of land has been one great cause, as we have just said, of this sudden and wonderful creation, more particularly as grants of land are often made, especially in the Western States. Let us take the Illinois Central Railway as an example of this method of railway-making. Congress granted to the State of Illinois 2,595,000 acres. The vacant lands, in alternate sections, within sis miles of the

road were conveyed by direct terms in the grant, and, in lieu of such portions as had been previously sold, selections were authorised to be made between 6 and fifteen miles on each side of the road. The Company raised 20,000,000 dollars by mortgage upon the security of this^land, reserving, however, 250,000 acres towards the annual payment of the interest. At the same time they call in 25 per cent, of a capital stock of 17.000,000 dollars. This pays for the Illinois Central Railway, which is there- ' fore, in fact, given to the Company, wit.l the exception of the quarter which they take>om their own stock. The State onl k charges 7 per cent, on the profits of thi railway as a compensation for its gift of land, and thus a railway of 250 miles, which forms the backbone of Illinois, and connects Cairo with Dubuque, is built at a cost to the company of 4,500,000 dollars. But the most remarkable feature which this Report brings out is the energy and impetus with which the Americans have rushed in medias res at once in the construction of their railways. This explains the rapidity and the small cost uf this vast work more than the cheapness of land or the grants of land. There are some persons who cannot begin to work till they have a perfect tool. They are fidgety and uncomfortable without it; they wait and wait, and delay operations indefinitely till their tool is nicely ground, polished, and i shaped, and a convenient handle put to it. I There are others who won't wait, but take the first tool they can get and work with it. j A bad tool is worse than a good one, but in ; the meantime they are doing so much work while the others are doing nothing, but only waiting. It depends, of course, on what the department of work is which of these two methods is the best. An epic poem | requires the very best tools and waiting; a | speech at thefhustingsor in parliament must be made with whatever tool comes to hand — i.e., with the best kind of expression we can summon at the moment. Some persons, however, cannot bring themselves to speak till they have hit on the very best word. I The late Archbishop of Canterbury was so fastidious in his fchoice of words that he used to keep his audience painfully waiting till he had tried one word after another to see how they would "fit, and, as this process took place once or twice in every sentence, the constant search for perfection was hardly repaid by the tardy discovery. In matters of " time and tide," and over which that great power to which one of the seven wise men consecrated the result of a life's wisdom, "Opportunity," presides, it .seldom answers to wait very long for your machinery. In war, for instance, you cannot.

I The object for which railways are wanted in America is in one very important respect different from that in this country ; they are wanted not simply as railways, but as roads, not only to quicken communication between different towns, but to open the way into the heart of large spaces of territory, and to carry off their produce. The railway is the carrier there. Railroads, as Captain Gal!on informs us, are cheaper than roads; there would not be funds forthcoming for making even tolerable roads over the vast prairies of the West; but the railway comes before the road in this extraordinary world of inversions ; it is the aboriginal road of the West, performing the very first function which a new country wants —that of, opening it to human labour and affording- a'channel by which the results of that labour can make their way to a purchaser. "When first opened, three years ago," says Captain Galton of the Illinois Central Railway, " the station-houses were almost the only habitations on that line; nosy there is a large village at each statioiy surrounded by vast tracts of cultivated, ground. When I passed along the line last autumn sacks of corn covered every available spot round the stations, and the means of the company were scarcely adequate toremovingthem." With boundless tracts of land then, lying idle and waiting to be used—land which will give an enormous return to cultivation, it is obviously not the interest of the American to delay his railway till he can make one with the best curves and the most evert rails. He cannot afford to wait for a chef-d'asuvre of engineering; no, every minute is lost that this land lies idle, and therefore he just lays down a railway good enough to take him into the heart of this 'profitable region, and set him down there with plough and spade, and a channel of conveyance for the produce of his farm. He bends the railway to his temporary object, and makes it serve the purpose he wants af the time he wants — i.e., now. He dashes at his end, and does not mind sharp curves and iiiclined planes. This is making the most of the.instrument' in his own case, and wielding it mostvicto- % riously aud effectively. The Baltimore and -

Ohio Railway, as first made, avoided an ex- j pensive tunnel by "a series of zigzags, ascending over a hill by a gradient of 1 in ]8 at its steepest part, each zigzag terminating in a short level space, so that the train was run up one zigzag on to this level space, and then backed up the next zigzag, and so on." This eccentric expedient was superseded hy a tunnel afterwards, but the American would not wait for perfection before he had his railway in the first, instance. We wish our Indian authorities would take a hint from American expedition. They go on waiting for perfect engineering, and doing nothing till they can do everything as it is done in this country. The Americans would have covered India with railways Lefore now. The mode of raising funds for the construction of railways by means of grants of land is, perhaps, a useful hint to .our Australian authorities. It would, however, be doing injustice to the American raihva3 Ts to omit the great conveniences and good accommodation which they afford, notwithstanding' the haste of their construction. Indeed, it is one of the most remarkable characteristics of the system how it combines roughness and expedition in the construction of the lailway with convenience and refinement in the railway furniture and carriages, even greater in many respects than those we have in this country. The average American is perhaps more particular about indoor comfort than the average Englishman; he carpets his churches, and complains of our cold rooms. The railways humours these tastes, and the carpet's, the cushions, the chairs with backs, that can be put either way, the room for moving about, the lights, and the warm airpipes, put all except our first-class carriages to shame. The ingenious contrivance on the New York and Erie Railway, of a funnel which conveys air clown into a chamber, where it is purified by spray forced up from jets below, and thence makes its way through the car, is a specimen of American railway indulgence to summer travellers. The slanting windows and the screens of tarred canvass for throwing off the dust show the same consideration, while the use of a bell instead of a whistle on leaving stations, proves a regard for the human ear at which we have not arrived in this country.