Lives of George and Robert Stephenson by Samuel Smiles: Part 2: Chapter 11

Chapter XI. Stephenson again appointed engineer. Chat Moss. Construction of the railway.

THE appointment of principal engineer of the railway was taken into consideration at the first meeting of the directors held at Liverpool subsequent to the passing of the act of incorporation. The magnitude of the proposed works, and the vast consequences involved in the experiment, were deeply impressed on their minds, and they resolved to secure the services of a resident engineer of proved experience and ability. Their attention was naturally directed to George Stephenson; at the same time, they desired to have the benefit of the Messrs. Rennie's professional assistance in superintending the works. Mr. George Rennie had an interview with the board on the subject, at which he proposed to undertake the chief superintendence, making six visits in each year, and stipulating that he should have the appointment of the resident engineer. But the responsibility attaching to the direction in the matter of the efficient carrying on of the works would not admit of their being influenced by ordinary punctilios on the occasion, and they accordingly declined Mr. Rennie's proposal, and proceeded to appoint George Stephenson principal engineer at a salary of £1,000 per annum.

He at once removed his residence to Liverpool, and made arrangements to commence the works. He began with the "impossible thing" to do that which some of the principal engineers of the day had declared that no man in his senses would undertake to do, namely, to make the road over Chat Moss! It was, indeed, a most formidable undertaking, and the project of carrying a railway along, under, or over such a material as that of which it consisted would certainly never have occurred to an ordinary mind. Michael Drayton supposed the Moss to have had its origin at the Deluge. Nothing more impassable could have been imagined than that dreary waste; and Mr. Giles only spoke the popular feeling of the day when he declared that no carriage could stand on it "short of the bottom." In this bog, singular to say, Mr. Roscoe, the accomplished historian of the Medicos, buried his fortune in the hopeless attempt to cultivate a portion of it which he had bought.

Chat Moss is an immense peat-bog of about twelve square miles in extent. Unlike the bogs or swamps of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, which consist principally of soft mud or silt, this bog is a vast mass of spongy vegetable pulp, the result of the growth and decay of ages. Spagui, or bog-mosses, cover the entire area; one year's growth rising over another, the older growths not entirely decaying, but remaining partially preserved by the antiseptic properties peculiar to peat. The remarkable fact that, though a semi-fluid mass, the surface of Chat Moss rises above the level of the surrounding country. Like a turtle's back, it declines from the summit in every direction, having from thirty to forty feet gradual slope to the solid land on all sides. From the remains of trees, chiefly alder and birch, which have been dug out of it, and which must have previously flourished on the surface of the soil now deeply submerged, it is probable that the sand and clay base on which the bog rests is saucer-shaped, and so retains the entire mass in position. In rainy weather, such is its capacity for water that it sensibly swells, and rises in those parts where the moss is the deepest. This occurs through the capillary attraction of the fibres of the submerged moss, which is from twenty to thirty feet in depth, while the growing plants effectually check evaporation from the surface.

This peculiar character of the Moss has presented an insuperable difficulty in the way of draining on any extensive system such as by sinking shafts in its substance, and pumping up the water by steam-power, as has been proposed by some engineers. For, supposing a shaft of thirty feet deep to be sunk, it has been calculated that this would only be effectual for draining a circle of about one hundred yards, the water running down an incline of about 5 to 1; indeed, it was found, in the course of draining the bog, that a ditch three feet deep only served to drain a space of less than five yards on either side, and two ditches of this depth, ten feet apart, left a portion of the Moss between them scarcely affected by the drains.

The three resident engineers selected by Mr. Stephenson to superintend the construction of the line were Mr. Joseph Locke, Mr. Allcard, and Mr. John Dixon. The last was appointed to that portion which included the proposed road across the Moss, the other two being any thing but desirous of exchanging posts with him. On Mr. Dixon's arrival, about the month of July, 1826, Mr. Locke proceeded to show him over the length he was to take charge of, and to install him in office. When they reached Chat Moss, Mr. Dixon found that the line had already been staked out and the levels taken in detail by the aid of planks laid upon the bog. The cutting of the drains along each side of the proposed road had also been commenced, but the soft pulpy stuff had up to this time flowed into the drains and filled them up as fast as they were cut.

Proceeding across the Moss on his first day's inspection, the new resident, when about half way over, slipped off the plank on which he walked, and sank to his knees in the bog. Struggling only sent him the deeper, and he might have disappeared altogether but for the workmen, who hastened to his assistance upon planks, and rescued him from his perilous position. Much disheartened, he desired to return, and even for the moment thought of giving up the job; but Mr. Locke assured him that the worst part was now past; so the new resident plucked up heart again, and both floundered on until they reached the farther edge of the Moss, wet and plastered over with bog sludge. Mr. Dixon's assistants endeavoured to comfort him by the assurance that he might in future avoid similar perils by walking upon "pattens," or boards fastened to the soles of his feet, as they had done when taking the levels, and as the workmen did when engaged in making drains in the softest parts of the Moss.

Still the resident engineer could not help being puzzled by the problem of how to construct a road for a heavy locomotive, with a train of passengers or goods, upon a bog which he had found to be incapable of supporting his own individual weight! Stephenson's idea was that such a road might be made to float upon the bog simply by means of a sufficient extension of the bearing surface. As a ship, or a raft capable of sustaining heavy loads, floated in water, so, in his opinion, might a light road be floated upon a bog which was of considerably greater consistency than water. Long before the railway was thought of, Mr. Roscoe had adopted the remarkable expedient of fitting his plough-horses with flat wooden soles or pattens, to enable them to walk upon the Moss land which he had brought into cultivation. These pattens were fitted on by means of a screw apparatus, which met in front of the foot and was easily fastened. The mode by which these pattens served to sustain the horse is capable of easy explanation, and it will be observed that the rationale alike explains the floating of a railway. The foot of an ordinary farm horse presents a base of about five inches diameter, but if this base be enlarged to seven inches the circles being to each other as the squares of the diameters it will be found that, by this slight enlargement of the base, a circle of nearly double the area has been secured, and consequently the pressure of the foot upon every unit of ground on which the horse stands has been reduced one half. In fact, this contrivance has an effect tantamount to setting the horse upon eight feet instead of four.

Apply the same reasoning to the ponderous locomotive, and it will be found that even such a machine may be made to stand upon a bog by means of a similar extension of the bearing surface. Suppose the engine to be twenty feet long and five feet wide, thus covering a surface of a hundred square feet, and, provided the bearing has been extended by means of cross sleepers supported upon a matting of heath and branches of trees covered with a few inches of gravel, the pressure of an engine of twenty tons will be only equal to about three pounds per inch over the whole surf ace on which it stands. Such was George Stephenson's idea in contriving his floating road something like an elongated raft across the Moss; and we shall see that he steadily kept it in view in carrying the work into execution.

The first thing done was to form a footpath of ling or heather along the proposed road, on which a man might walk without risk of sinking. A single line of temporary railway was then laid down, formed of ordinary cross-bars about three feet long and an inch square, with holes punched through them at the end and nailed down to temporary sleepers. Along this way ran the wagons in which were conveyed the materials requisite to form the permanent road. These wagons carried about a ton each, and they were propelled by boys running behind them along the narrow bar of iron. The boys became so expert that they would run the four miles across at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour without missing a step; if they had done so, they would have sunk in many places up to their middle. The slight extension of the bearing surface was sufficient to enable the bog to bear this temporary line, and the circumstance was a source of increased confidence and hope to our engineer in proceeding with the formation of the permanent road alongside.

The digging of drains had been proceeding for some time along each side of the intended railway, but they filled up almost as soon as dug, the sides flowing in and the bottom rising up, and it was only in some of the drier parts of the bog that a depth of three or four feet could be reached. The surface-ground between the drains, containing the intertwined roots of heather and long grass, was left untouched, and upon this were spread branches of trees and hedge-cuttings; in the softest places rude gates or hurdles, some eight or nine feet long by four feet wide, interwoven with heather, were laid in double thicknesses, their ends overlapping each other; and upon this floating bed was spread a thin layer of gravel, on which the sleepers, chairs, and rails were laid in the usual manner. Such was the mode in which the road was formed upon the Moss.

It was found, however, after the permanent road had been thus laid, that there was a tendency to sinking at those parts where the bog was the softest. In ordinary cases, where a bank subsides, the sleepers are packed up with ballast or gravel, but in this case the ballast was dug away and removed in order to lighten the road, and the sleepers were packed instead with cakes of dry turf or bundles of heath. By these expedients the subsided parts were again floated up to the level, and an approach was made toward a satisfactory road, But the most formidable difficulties were encountered at the centre and toward the edges of the Moss, and it required no small degree of ingenuity and perseverance on the part of the engineer successfully to overcome them.

The Moss, as has been already observed, was highest in the centre, and it there presented a sort of hunchback with a rising and falling gradient. At that point it was found necessary to cut deeper drains in order to consolidate the ground between them on which the road was to be formed. But, as at other parts of the Moss, the deeper the cutting the more rapid was the flow of fluid bog into the drain, the bottom rising up almost as fast as it was removed. To meet this emergency, a quantity of empty tar-barrels was brought from Liverpool, and, as soon as a few yards of drain were dug, the barrels were laid down end to end, firmly fixed to each other by strong slabs laid over the joints, and nailed; they were then covered over with clay, and thus formed an underground sewer of wood instead of bricks. This expedient was found to answer the purpose intended, and the road across the centre of the Moss having thus been prepared, it was then laid with the permanent materials.

The greatest difficulty was, however, experienced in forming an embankment on the edge of the bog at the Manchester end. Moss, as dry as it could be cut, was brought up in small wagons by men and boys, and emptied so as to form an embankment; but the bank had scarcely been raised three or four feet in height when the stuff broke through the heathery surface of the bog and sunk overhead. More moss was brought up and emptied in with no better result, and for many weeks the filling was continued without any visible embankment having been made. It was the duty of the resident engineer to proceed to Liverpool every fortnight to obtain the wages for the workmen employed under him, and on these occasions he was required to colour up, on a section drawn to a working scale suspended against the wall of the directors' room, the amount of excavation, embankment, etc., executed from time to time. But on many of these occasions Mr. Dixon had no progress whatever to show for the money expended on the Chat Moss embankment. Sometimes, indeed, the visible work done was less than it had appeared a fortnight or a month before! The directors now became seriously alarmed, and feared that the evil prognostications of the eminent engineers were about to be fulfilled.

The resident himself was greatly disheartened, and he was even called upon to supply the directors with an estimate of the cost of filling up the Moss with solid stuff from the bottom, as also the cost of piling the roadway,, and, in effect, constructing a four-mile viaduct of timber across the Moss, from twenty to thirty feet high. But the expense appalled the directors, and the question then arose whether the work was to be proceeded with or abandoned! Stephenson himself afterward described the alarming position of affairs at a public dinner given at Birmingham on the 23d of December, 1837, on the occasion of a piece of plate being presented to his son after the completion of the London and Birmingham Railway. He related the anecdote, he said, for the purpose of impressing upon the minds of those who heard him the necessity of perseverance.

"After working for weeks and weeks," said he, "in filling in materials to form the road, there did not yet appear to be the least sign of our being able to raise the solid embankment one single inch; in short, we went on filling in without the slightest apparent effect. Even my assistants began to feel uneasy, and to doubt of the success of the scheme. The directors, too, spoke of it as a hopeless task; and at length they became seriously alarmed, so much so, indeed, that a board meeting was held on Chat Moss to decide whether I should proceed any farther. They had previously taken the opinion of other engineers, who reported unfavourably. There was no help for it, however, but to go on. An immense outlay had been incurred, and great loss would have been occasioned had the scheme been then abandoned, and the line taken by another route.

So the directors were compelled to allow me to go on with my plans, of the ultimate success of which I myself never for one moment doubted." During the progress of this part of the works, the Worsley and Trafford men, who lived near the Moss, and plumed themselves upon their practical knowledge of bog-work, declared the completion of the road to be utterly impracticable. "If you knew as much about Chat Moss as we do," they said, "you would never have entered on so rash an undertaking; and depend upon it, all you have done and are doing will prove abortive. You must give up altogether the idea of a floating railway, and either fill the Moss up with hard material from the bottom, or else deviate the line so as to avoid it altogether." Such were the conclusions of science and experience.

In the midst of all these alarms and prophecies of failure, Stephenson never lost heart, but held to his purpose. His motto was "Persevere!" "You must go on filling in," he said; "there is no other help for it. The stuff emptied in is doing its work out of sight, and if you will but have patience, it will soon begin to show." And so the filling in went on; several hundreds of men and boys were employed to skin the Moss all round for many thousand yards, by means of sharp spades, called by the turf-cutters "tommy-spades;" and the dried cakes of turf were afterward used to form the embankment, until at length, as the stuff sank and rested upon the bottom, the bank gradually rose above the surface, and slowly advanced onward, declining in height and consequently in weight, until it became joined to the floating road already laid upon the Moss. In the course of forming the embankment, the pressure of the bog turf tipped out of the wagons caused a copious stream of bog-water to flow from the end of it, in colour resembling Barclay's double stout; and when completed, the bank looked like a long ridge of tightly-pressed tobacco-leaf. The compression of the turf may be understood from the fact that 670,000 cubic yards of raw moss formed only 277,000 cubic yards of embankment at the completion of the work.

At the western, or Liverpool end of the Chat Moss, there was a like embankment; but, as the ground there was solid, little difficulty was experienced in forming it, beyond the loss of substance caused by the oozing out of the water held by the moss earth.

At another part of the Liverpool and Manchester line, Parr Moss was crossed by an embankment about a mile and a half in extent. In the immediate neighbourhood was found a large excess of cutting, which it would have been necessary to "put out in spoil-banks" (according to the technical phrase) but for the convenience of Parr Moss, into which the surplus clay, stone, and shale were tipped, wagon after wagon, until a solid but congealed embankment, from fifteen to twenty feet high, was formed, although to the eye it appears to be laid upon the level of the adjoining surface, as at Chat Moss.

The road across Chat Moss was finished by the 1st of January, 1830, when the first experimental train of passengers passed over it, drawn by the "Rocket;" and it turned out that, instead of being the most expensive part of the line, it was about the cheapest.

The total cost of forming the line over the Moss was £28,000, whereas Mr. Giles's estimate was £270,000! It also proved to be one of the best portions of the railway. Being a floating road, it was as smooth and easy to run upon as Dr. Arnott's water-bed is soft and easy to lie upon the pressure being equal at all points.

There was, and still is, a sort of springiness in the road over the Moss, such as is felt when passing along a suspended bridge; and those who looked along the Moss as a train passed over it said they could observe a waviness; such as precedes and follows a skater upon ice.

During the progress of the works the most ridiculous rumours were set afloat. The drivers of the stage-coaches, who feared for their calling, brought the alarming intelligence into Manchester from time to time that "Chat Moss was blown up!" "Hundreds of men and horses had sunk in the bog; and the works were completely abandoned!" The engineer himself was declared to have been swallowed up in the Serbonian bog; and "railways were at an end forever!"

In the construction of the railway, George Stephenson's capacity for organizing and directing the labours of a large number of workmen of all kinds eminently displayed itself. A vast quantity of ballast wagons had to be constructed for the purposes of the work, and implements and materials had to be collected, before the mass of labour to be employed could be efficiently set in motion at the various points of the line. There were not at that tune, as there are now, large contractors, possessed of railway plant, capable of executing earthworks on a large scale. Our engineer had, therefore, not only to contrive the plant, but to organize the labour, and direct it in person. The very labourers themselves had to be trained to their work by him; and it was on the Liverpool and Manchester line that Mr. Stephenson organized the staff of that formidable band of railway navvies, whose handiworks will be the wonder and admiration of succeeding generations. Looking at their gigantic traces, the men of some future age may be found to declare, of the engineer and of his workmen, that "there were giants in those days."

Although the works of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway are of a much less formidable character than those of many lines that have since been constructed, they were then regarded as of a stupendous kind. Indeed, few works of such magnitude had before been executed in England. It had been the engineer's original intention to carry the railway from the north end of Liverpool round the red sandstone ridge on which the upper part of the town is built, and also round the higher rise of the coal formation at Rainhill, by following the natural levels to the north of Knowsley. But the opposition of the land-owners having forced the line more to the south, it was rendered necessary to cut through the hills, and go over the high grounds instead of round them. The first consequence of this alteration in the plans was the necessity for constructing a tunnel under the town of Liverpool a mile and a half in length, from the docks at Wapping to the top of Edgehill; the second was the necessity for forming a long and deep cutting through the red sandstone rock at Olive Mount; and the third and worst of all was the necessity for ascending and descending the Whiston and Sutton hills by means of inclined planes of 1 in 96. The line was also, by the same forced deviation, prevented passing through the Lancashire coal-field, and the engineer was compelled to carry the works across the Sankey valley at a point where the waters of the brook had dug out an excessively deep channel through the marl-beds of the district.

The principal difficulty was experienced in pushing on the works connected with the formation of the tunnel under Liverpool, 2,200 yards in length. The blasting and hewing of the rock were vigorously carried on night and day; and the engineer's practical experience in the collieries here proved of great use to him. Many obstacles had to be encountered and overcome in the formation of the tunnel, the rock varying in hardness and texture at different parts. In some places the miners were deluged by water, which surged from the soft blue shale found at the lowest level of the tunnel. In other places beds of wet sand were cut through, and there careful propping and pinning were necessary to prevent the roof from tumbling in until the masonry to support it could be erected. On one occasion, while Stephenson was absent from Liverpool, a mass of loose moss-earth and sand fell from the roof, which had been insufficiently propped. The miners withdrew from the work; and on the engineer's return he found them in a refractory state, refusing to re-enter the tunnel. He induced them, however, by his example, to return to their labours; and when the roof had been secured, the work went on again as before. When there was danger, he was always ready to share it with the men; and, gathering confidence from his fearlessness, they proceeded vigorously with the undertaking, boring and mining their way toward the light.

The Olive Mount cutting was the first extensive stone cutting executed on any railway, and to this day it is one of the most formidable. It is about two miles long, and in some parts more than a hundred feet deep. It is a narrow ravine or defile cut out of the solid rock, and not less than four hundred and eighty thousand cubic yards of stone were removed from it. Mr. Vignolles, afterward describing it, said it looked as if it had been dug out by giants.

The crossing of so many roads and streams involved the necessity for constructing an unusual number of bridges. There were not fewer than sixty-three, under or over the railway, on the thirty miles between Liverpool and Manchester. Up to this time bridges had been applied generally to high roads, where inclined approaches were of comparatively small importance, and in determining the rise of his arch the engineer selected any headway he thought proper. Every consideration was indeed made subsidiary to constructing the bridge itself, and the completion of one large structure of this sort was regarded as an epoch in engineering history. Yet here, in the course of a few years, no fewer than sixty-three bridges were constructed on one line of railway! Mr. Stephenson early found that the ordinary arch was inapplicable in certain cases, where the headway was limited, and yet the level of the railway must be preserved. In such cases he employed simple cast-iron beams, by which he safely bridged gaps of moderate width, economizing headway, and introducing the use of a new material of the greatest possible value to the engineer. The bridges of masonry upon the line were of many kinds; several of them were skew bridges, while others, such as those at Newton and over the Irwell at Manchester, were straight and of considerable dimensions. But the principal piece of masonry on the line was the Sankey viaduct. This fine work is principally of brick, with stone facings. It consists of nine arches of fifty feet span each. The massive piers are supported on two hundred piles driven deep into the soil; and they rise to a great height the coping of the parapet being seventy feet above the level of the valley, in which flow the Sankey brook and Canal. Its total cost was about 45,000.

By the end of 1828 the directors found they had expended £460,000 on the works, and that they were still far from completion. They looked at the loss of interest on this large investment, and began to grumble at the delay. They desired to see their capital becoming productive; and in the spring of 1829 they urged the engineer to push on the works with increased vigour. Mr. Cropper, one of the directors, who took an active interest in their progress, said to Stephenson one day, "Now, George, thou must get on with the railway, and have it finished without farther delay: thou must really have it ready for opening by the first day of January next." "Consider the heavy character of the works, sir, and how much we have been delayed by the want of money, not to speak of the wetness of the weather: it is impossible." "Impossible!" rejoined Cropper; "I wish I could get Napoleon to thee he would tell thee there is no such word as 'impossible' in the vocabulary." "Tush!" exclaimed Stephenson, with warmth, "don't speak to me about Napoleon! Give me men, money, and materials, and I will do what Napoleon couldn't do; drive a railroad from Liverpool to Manchester over Chat Moss!" And truly the formation of a high road over that bottomless bog was apparently a more difficult task than the making even of Napoleon's far-famed road across the Simplon.

The directors had more than once been embarrassed by want of funds to meet the heavy expenditure. The country had scarcely yet recovered from the general panic and crash of 1825, and it was with difficulty that the calls could be raised from the shareholders. A loan of 100,000 was obtained from the Exchequer Loan Commissioners in 1826; and in 1829 an act was passed enabling the company to raise farther capital, to provide working plant for the railway. Two acts were also obtained during the progress of the undertaking, enabling deviations and alterations to be made; one to improve the curves and shorten the line near Rainhill, and the other to carry the line across the Irwell into the town of Manchester. Thanks to the energy of the engineer, the industry of his labourers, and the improved supply of money by the directors, the railway made rapid progress in the course of the year 1829. Double sets of labourers were employed on Chat Moss and at other places in carrying on the works by night and day, the night shifts working by torch and fire light; anat length, the work advancing at all points, the directors saw their way to the satisfactory completion of the undertaking.

It may well be supposed that Stephenson's time was fully occupied in superintending the extensive and for the most part novel works connected with the railway, and that even his extraordinary powers of labour and endurance were taxed to the utmost during the four years that they were in progress. Almost every detail in the plans was directed and arranged by himself.

Every bridge, from the simplest to the most complicated, including the then novel structure of the "skew bridge," iron girders, siphons, fixed engines, and the machinery for working the tunnel at the Liverpool end, had all to be thought out by his own head, and reduced to definite plans under his own eyes. Besides all this, he had to design the working plant in anticipation of the opening of the railway. He must be prepared with wagons, trucks, and carriages, himself superintending their manufacture.

The permanent road, turn-tables, switches, and crossings in short, the entire structure and machinery of the line, from the turning of the first sod to the running of the first train of carriages on the railway, went on under his immediate supervision.

And it was in the midst of this vast accumulation of work and responsibility that the battle of the locomotive engine had to be fought a battle not merely against material difficulties, but against the still more trying obstructions of deeply-rooted mistrust and prejudice on the part of a considerable Tranority of the directors.

He had no staff of experienced assistants not even a staff of draughtsmen in his office but only a few pupils learning their business, and he was frequently without even their help. The time of his engineering inspectors was fully occupied in the actual superintendence of the works at different parts of the line, and he took care to direct all their important operations in person. The principal draughtsman was Mr. Thomas Gooch, a pupil he had brought with him from Newcastle.

"I may say," writes Mr. Gooch, "that nearly the whole of the working and other drawings, as well as the various land-plans for the railway, were drawn by my own hand. They were done at the company's office in Clayton Square during the day, from instructions supplied in the evenings by Mr. Stephenson, either by word of mouth, or by little rough hand sketches on letter-paper. The evenings were also generally devoted to my duties as secretary, in writing (mostly from his own dictation) his letters and reports, or in making calculations and estimates. The mornings before breakfast were not unfrequently spent by me in visiting and lending a helping hand in the tunnel and other works near Liverpool the untiring zeal and perseverance of George Stephenson never for an instant flagging, and inspiring with a like enthusiasm all who were engaged under him in carrying forward the works."

The usual routine of his life at this time if routine it could be called was to rise early, by sunrise in summer and before it in winter, and "break the back of the day's work" by midday.

While the tunnel under Liverpool was in progress, one of his first duties in the morning before breakfast was to go over the various shafts, clothed in a suitable dress, and inspect the progress of the work at different points; on other days he would visit the extensive workshops at Edgehill, where most of the "plant" for the line was manufactured. Then, returning to his house in Upper Parliament Street, Windsor, after a hurried breakfast, he would ride along the works to inspect their progress, and push them on with greater energy where needful. On other days he would prepare for the much less congenial engagement of meeting the board, which was often a cause of great anxiety and pain to him; for it was difficult to satisfy men of all tempers, some of which were not of the most generous kind. On such occasions he might be seen with his right-hand thumb thrust through the topmost button-hole of his coat -breast, vehemently hitching his right shoulder, as was his habit when labouring under any considerable excitement. Occasionally he would take an early ride before breakfast, to inspect the progress of the Sankey viaduct. He had a favourite horse, brought by him from Newcastle, called "Booby" so tractable that, with his rider on his back, he would walk up to a locomotive with the steam blowing off, and put his nose against it without shying. Bobby," saddled and bridled, was brought to Stephenson's door betimes in the morning, and, mounting him, he would ride the fifteen miles to Sankey, putting up at a little public house which then stood upon the banks of the canal. There he had his breakfast of crowdie, which he made with his own hands. It consisted of oatmeal stirred into a basin of hot water a sort of porridge which was supped with cold sweet milk. After this frugal breakfast he would go upon the works, and remain there, riding from point to point for the greater part of the day. If he returned home before midday it would be to examine the pay-sheets in the different departments sent in by the assistant engineers, or by the foremen of the workshops; all this he did himself with the greatest care, requiring a full explanation of every item.

After a late dinner, winch occupied very short time and was always of a plain and frugal description, he would proceed to dispose of his correspondence, or prepare sketches of drawings, and give instructions as to their completion. He would occasionally refresh himself for this evening work by a short doze, which, however, he would never admit had exceeded the limits of " winking," to use his own term. Mr. Frederick Swanwick, who officiated as his secretary after the appointment of Mr. Gooch as resident engineer to the Bolton and Leigh Railway, has informed us that he then remarked what in after years he could better appreciate the clear, terse, and vigorous style of Stephenson's dictation; there was nothing superfluous in it, but it was close, direct, and to the point in short, thoroughly business-like. And if, in passing through the pen of the amanuensis, his meaning happened in any way to be distorted or modified, it did not fail to escape his detection, though he was always tolerant of any liberties taken with his own form of expression, so long as the words written down conveyed his real meaning. His strong natural acumen showed itself even in such matters as grammar and composition a department of knowledge in which, it might be supposed, he could scarcely have had either time or opportunity to acquire much information. But here, as in all other things, his shrewd common sense came to his help, and his simple, vigorous English might almost be cited as a model of composition.

His letters and reports written, and his sketches of drawings made and explained, the remainder of the evening was usually devoted to conversation with his wife and those of his pupils who lived under his roof, and constituted, as it were, part of the family.

He then delighted to test the knowledge of his young companions, and to question them upon the principles of mechanics. If they were not quite "up to the mark" on any point, there was no escaping detection by evasive or specious explanations on their part. These always met with the verdict of, "Ah! you know naught about it now; but think it over again, and tell me the answer when you understand it." If there was even partial success in the reply, it would at once be acknowledged, and a full explanation was given, to which the master would add illustrative examples for the purpose of impressing the principle more deeply upon the pupil's mind.

It was not so much his object and purpose to "cram" the minds of the young men committed to his charge with the results of knowledge as to stimulate them to educate themselves to induce them to develop their mental and moral powers by the exercise of their own free energies, and thus acquire that habit of self-thinking and self-reliance which is the spring of all true manly action. In a word, he sought to bring out and invigorate the character of his pupils. He felt that he himself had been made stronger and better through his encounters with difficulty, and he would not have the road of knowledge made too smooth and easy for them. "Learn for yourselves think for yourselves," he would say: "make yourselves masters of principles; persevere be industrious and there is then no fear of you." And not the least emphatic proof of the soundness of this system of education, as conducted by George Stephenson, was afforded by the after history of the pupils themselves. There was not one of those trained under his eye who did not rise to eminent usefulness and distinction as an engineer. He sent them forth into the world braced with the spirit of self-help inspired by his own noble example; and they repeated in their after career the lessons of earnest effort and persistent industry which his daily life had taught them.

Mr. Stephenson's evenings at home were not, however, exclusively devoted either to business or to the graver exercises above referred to. He would often indulge in cheerful conversation and anecdote, falling back from time to time upon the struggles and difficulties of his early life. The not infrequent winding up of his story, addressed to those about him, was, "Ah! ye young fellows don't know what wark is in these days!" Mr. Swanwick delights recalling to mind how seldom, if ever, a cross or captious word, or an angry look, marred the enjoyment of those evenings.

The presence of Mrs. Stephenson gave them an additional charm: amiable, kind-hearted, and intelligent, she shared quietly in the pleasure of the party; and the atmosphere of comfort which always pervaded her home contributed, in no small degree to render it a centre of cheerful, hopeful intercourse, and of earnest, honest industry.

When Stephenson retired for the night, it was not always that he permitted himself to sink into slumber. Like Brindley, he worked out many a difficult problem in bed; and for hours he would turn over in his mind and study how to overcome some obstacle, or to mature some project, on which his thoughts were bent. Some remark inadvertently dropped by him at the breakfast-table in the morning served to show that he had been stealing some hours from the night in reflection and study. Yet he would rise at his accustomed early hour, and there was no abatement of his usual energy in carrying on the business of the day.

See Also

• Lives of George and Robert Stephenson by Samuel Smiles
• Lives of George and Robert Stephenson by Samuel Smiles: Part 2: Chapter 10
• Lives of George and Robert Stephenson by Samuel Smiles: Part 2: Chapter 12