228 History of Inland Transport 



the interests of the four coach proprietors then carrying 

 passengers on their own account on the lines. 



Actual experience had thus nullified the expectation that a 

 / railway would be simply a rail- road upon which anyone would 

 be able to run his own conveyances as on an ordinary turn- 

 l pike road. 



From October, 1833, the whole of the passenger traffic (then 

 undergoing rapid expansion) was conducted by the com- 

 pany. In April, 1834, the directors, who had by this time 

 acquired some other and better engines, announced that 

 they had commenced to run, six times a day, both " coaches " 

 (for passengers) and " carriages " (for goods) by locomotives ; 

 and this date, probably, marks the final disappearance of 

 the horse as a means of traction for passenger traffic on public 

 railways in England, though the word " coaches," introduced 

 into the railway vocabulary under the circumstances here 

 narrated, has remained in use ever since among railway men 

 as applied to rolling stock for passenger traffic. 



Unlike its predecessors in Surrey, and though facing various 

 difficulties at the outset, the Stockton and Darlington line 

 attained to a considerable degree of prosperity. After under- 

 going various extensions from time to time, and playing a 

 leading part in the industrial expansion of the district it 

 served, it was incorporated into what is now the North- 

 Eastern Railway system. 



Summing up the respects in which the Stockton and Dar- 

 lington line had carried forward the story of railway develop- 

 ment, we find that it (i) established the practicability of 

 substituting locomotive for horse traction on railways ; 

 (2) introduced the provision of waggons by the railway com- 

 pany, instead of leaving these to be found by carriers and 

 traders ; (3) proved that railways were as well adaptedTto 

 the transport of passengers as they were to the carriage^of 

 goods ; (4) showed by actual experience that the idea of a 

 common user of railways was impracticable ; and (5) pre- 

 pared the way for the eventual recognition, even by Parlia- 

 ment itself, of the principle that transport on a line of rail- 

 way operated by locomotives must, in the nature of things, 

 be the monopoly of the owning and responsible railway 

 company. 



While the Surrey Iron Rail-way and the Stockton and 



