CHAP. IX. THE COACHING TRAFFIC DESCRIBED. 173 



panics, who horsed and managed them under an arrange- 

 ment as to tolls, in like manner as the u Experiment " 

 had been worked. Now began the distinction of inside 

 and outside passenger, equivalent to first and second 

 class, paying different fares. The competition with 

 each other upon the railway, and with the ordinary 

 stage-coaches upon the road, soon brought up the speed, 

 which was increased to ten miles an hour the mail- 

 coach rate of travelling in those days, and considered 

 very fast. 



Mr. Clephan, a native of the district, has described 

 some of the curious features of the competition between 

 the rival coach companies : " There were two separate 

 coach companies in Stockton, and amusing collisions 

 sometimes occurred between the drivers who found on 

 the rail a novel element for contention. Coaches cannot 

 pass each other on the rail as on the road ; and, as the 

 line was single, with four sidings in the mile, when two 

 coaches met, or two trains, or coach and train, the ques- 

 tion arose which of the drivers must go back ? This 

 was not always settled in silence. As to trains, it came 

 to be a sort of understanding that light waggons 

 should give way to loaded ; and as to trains and coaches, 

 that the passengers should have preference over coals ; 

 while coaches, when they met, must quarrel it out. At / 

 length, midway between sidings, a post was erected, / 

 and a rule was laid down that he who had passed the / 

 pillar must go on, and the * coming man ' go back. At/ 

 the Goose Pool and Early Nook, it was common for/ 

 these coaches to stop ; and there, as Jonathan wouldj 

 say, passengers and coachmen ' liquored.' One coach'j 

 introduced by an innkeeper, was a compound of two 

 mourning-coaches, an approximation to the real rail- 

 way coach, which still adheres, with multiplying excep- 

 tions, to the stage-coach type. One Dixon, who drove 

 the ' Experiment ' between Darlington and Shildon, is 

 the inventor of carriage-lighting on the rail. On a dark 



