360 MEMOIR OF DAXIEL TREADWELL. 



be of greater public utility, than a double set used in the ordinary mode. They are aware that 

 this is a bold, perhaps it will be said a i*ash avowal. But as the opinion has been deliberately 

 formed, the committee do not hesitate to declare it thus frankly and explicitly. All of which 

 is respectfully submitted." 



The plan proposed did not meet with favor. It was stoutly opposed at tlie 

 Board of Directors, and by a committee to whom the report was referred. This 

 committee, in a long counter report, declared it " impracticable to collect at the 

 station so many people with their baggage, to start at a prescribed time, to 

 move with a prescribed velocity, to pass over a prescribed space, and arrive at a 

 prescribed minute, like tlie movements of a machine ; that the effect of this 

 system will be to bring all persons who use the road into trains or caravans, which 

 shall move majestically on, and by their united strength and influence the weak, 

 lame, and imfortunate will be sustained, and all accidents set at defiance. Whether 

 all the concourse of people are to be fed upon the road, or marched into some great 

 hall for their meals, is not explained ; that they must be kept in their ranks in some 

 form or other, and a prescribed form to feed provided, seems to be a necessary part 

 of the system." It was estimated that " the number of cars required would occupy 

 2,660 feet, making a line of carriages and horses more than one mile and an eighth 

 in length when arranged close together." It would involve delays and great loss of 

 time, not only in starting, but throughout the whole line ; delays which would be 

 increased by the fact that the amount of freight will be greater in one direction 

 than in the other, and require a corresponding difference in velocity. The plan, it 

 was said, " may be true in theory, but in the opinion of your present committee it is 

 of that kind of theory which cannot be reduced to practice." It had not been tried in 

 England where are many railroads, nor is it mentioned in any book on the subject. 

 " No citation is given to show that anything was ever thought of which Avould bear 

 a comparison with that part of the new system called regulated velocities, and, if 

 we understand it rightly, nothing in the whole range of human affairs can ever be 

 thought of to which its application would be so ruinous and destructive as to the 

 very railroad (the Boston and Albany) now under consideration." The onlj^ proper 

 mode of construction, in their opinion, " is a double set of tracks with well con- 

 structed joining places from one set to the other within fifty or sixty rods of each 

 other." In support of this statement they can, they say, cite the experience of the 

 best English railways. 



This report was followed by Mr. Treadwell with another, in which he explained 

 still more fully his plan of the collecting of carriages in trains, with fixed times of 

 starting, and moving with regulated velocities, so that the meeting and passing shall 



