66 Professor W. E. Ayrton [March 24, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, March 24, 1882. 



Warren De La Kue, Esq. M.A. D.C.L. F.R.S. Vice-President, 



in the Chair. 



Professor W. E. Ayrton, F.K.S. 

 ' Electric Hailways. 



We have grown so accustomed to the regular announcement — 

 "serious accident on such and such a railway, several passengers 

 injured " — that we have almost come to regard railway accidents as 

 inevitable, just as parents mistakingly think the measles and whooping 

 cough necessary accompaniments of childhood. But speed no more 

 means disaster than a densely crowded city means disease. The first 

 effect of overcrowding is undoubtedly to produce fever and other 

 complaints. If, however, the knowledge and practice of the laws of 

 hygiene increase more rapidly than the population of a town, the 

 death rate, as we have seen, diminishes, instead of augmenting. And 

 so it is with locomotion ; the stage-coach journeys of our ancestors 

 were slow enough for the most staunch conservative, and yet the per- 

 centage of the passengers injured on their journeys was far greater 

 than even now with our harum-scarum railway travelling. The 

 number of passengers has increased enormously, but the safety has 

 increased in an even greater rate. If then we can devise methods 

 introducing still greater security, a far larger number of passengers 

 may travel at a far greater speed and with less fear of danger than 

 at present. 



Accidents constitute one charge against railway conveyance, but 

 there is another, and that is the cost. Cheap as railway travelling 

 now is, compared with the departed stage-coach locomotion, the price 

 of the tickets is still far too high for railways to fulfil, even in a 

 small degree, one of their most important functions, and that is trans- 

 porting labourers from parts of the country where labour is scarce, to 

 others where it is abundant and labourers in demand. 



But how is a happier state of things to be realised ? We cannot 

 expect the railway companies to lower their fares merely to benefit 

 humanity. If, however, we can prove to them that the present system 

 of railways is neither the most remunerative to themselves nor the 

 most beneficial to the community at large, we may hope to win the 

 attention of railway directors, whose stock question is, and quite 

 rightly, " Will it pay ? " 



Those of you who have read the life of Stephenson know what a 

 protracted fight he had to carry one of his most cherished ideas, and 

 that was the employment of a locomotive engine to draw the train, 

 instead of a stationary engine to pull it with ropes or chains. His 



