The Possibility Of Road Locomotives In The
Reasonable Sense Of The Term Was Not Even In The Minds Of The Framers.
Yet, By A Singular Perversity, This Very Act Has Shut Off Steam From One
Of Its Most Legitimate Functions.
It is quite possible that the depression of agriculture may have the
effect of drawing attention to this subject, and if so it will be but
tardy justice to the rest of society that the very calling whose engines
now block the roads should thus in the end open them.
We should then see
goods trains passing every farm and loading at the gate of the field.
Such a road goods train would not, of course, run regularly to and fro in
the same stereotyped direction, but would call as previously ordered, and
make three or four journeys a day, sometimes loading entirely from one
farm, sometimes making up a load from several farms in succession.
Besides the quick communication thus opened up with the railway station
and the larger towns, the farmer would be enabled to work his tenancy
with fewer horses. He would get manures, coal, and all other goods
delivered for him instead of fetching them. He would get his produce
landed for him instead of sending his own teams, men, and boys. In a
short time, as the railways began to awaken to the new state of things,
they would see the advantage of accommodating their arrangements, and
open their yards and sidings to their competitor. In the case of long
journeys, and with some kinds of goods, in order to save the cost of
transhipment, it would be possible to transfer the bed of the road truck
from its frame on to the frame of the railroad truck, so that the goods,
with one loading, might pass direct to London. Our American cousins are
quite capable of inventing a transferable truck of this kind. In return,
goods loaded in London would never leave the same bottom till unloaded at
the farmyard or in the midst of the village. For all long journeys the
rails would probably always remain the great carriers, and the road
trains serve as their most valuable feeders. When farmers found it
possible to communicate with the cities at reasonable rates, and at
reasonable speed, they would be encouraged to put forth fresh efforts, to
plant vegetables, to grow fruit, to supplement their larger crops with
every species of lesser produce. This, in its turn, would bring new
traffic to the lines; for instead of one or two crops in the year only,
there would be three or four requiring carriage. There would be then
speedy results of such improved communication. One would be an increased
value of land; the second, an increase in the number of small areas
occupied and cultivated; the third, an increase in the rural population.
A fourth would be that the incredible amount of money which is now
annually transferred to the Continent and America for the purchase of
every kind of lesser produce would remain in this country to the
multiplication of the accounts at Post Office savings banks. Every one
who possibly could would grow or fatten something when he could just put
it on a road train, and send it off to market.
Two through passenger road trains a day, one in each direction, carrying
light parcels as well, and traversing say forty or fifty miles or less,
would probably soon obtain sufficient support, as they ran from village
to village and market town to market town. At present, those who live in
villages are practically denied locomotion unless they are well enough
off to keep a horse and trap and a man to look after them. A person
residing in a village must either remain in the village, or walk, or go
by carrier. The carrier stops at every inn, and takes a day to get over
ten miles. The exposure in the carrier's cart has been the cause of
serious illness to many and many a poor woman obliged to travel by it,
and sit in the wind and rain for hours and hours together. Unless they
ride in this vehicle, or tramp on foot, the villagers are simply shut off
from the world. They have neither omnibus, tramway, nor train. Those who
have not lived in a village have no idea of the isolation possible even
in this nineteenth century, and with the telegraph brought to the local
post office. The swift message of the electric wire, and the slow transit
of the material person - the speed of the written thought, and the
slowness of the bodily presence - are in strange contrast.
When people do not move about freely commerce is practically at a
standstill. But if two passenger road trains, travelling at an average
speed of not more than eight miles an hour, one going up and the other
down, and connecting two or more market towns and lines of railway,
passed through the village, how different would be the state of things!
Ease of transit multiplies business, and, besides passengers, a large
amount of light material could thus be conveyed. There would be depots at
the central places, but such trains could stop to pick up travellers at
any gate, door, or stile. If the route did not go through every hamlet,
it would pass near enough to enable persons to walk to it and join the
carriages. No one objects to walk one mile if he can afterwards ride the
other ten. Besides these through trains, special trains could run on
occasions when numbers of people wanted to go to one spot, such as sheep
or cattle fairs and great markets. Large tracts of country look to one
town as their central place, not by any means always the nearest market
town; to such places, for instance, as Gloucester and Reading, thousands
resort in the course of the year from hamlets at a considerable distance.
Such road trains as have been described would naturally converge on
provincial towns of this kind, and bring them thrice their present trade.
Country people only want facilities to travel exactly like city people.
It is, indeed, quite possible that when villages thus become accessible
many moderately well-to-do people will choose them for their residence,
in preference to large towns, for health and cheapness.
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