398 



THE RAILWAY GAUGES. 



CHAP. XVII]. 



from the first a great cause of contention. But Mr. 

 Brunei had always an aversion to follow any man's 

 lead ; and that another engineer had fixed the gauge 

 of a railway, or built a bridge, or designed an engine, in 

 one way, was of itself often a sufficient reason with him 

 for adopting an altogether different course. Robert 

 Stephenson, on his part, though less bold, was more 

 practical, preferring to follow the old routes, and to 

 tread in the safe steps of his father. 



Mr. Brunei, however, determined that the Great 

 Western should be a giant's road, and that travelling 

 should be conducted upon it at double speed. His am- 

 bition was to make the best road that imagination could 

 devise ; whereas the main object of the Stephensoiis, 

 both father and son, was to make a road that would pay. 

 Although, tried by the Stephenson test, Brunei's mag- 

 nificent road was a failure so far as the shareholders 

 in the Great Western Company were concerned, the 

 stimulus which his ambitious designs gave to mechanical 

 invention at the time proved a general good. The 

 narrow-gauge engineers exerted themselves to quicken 



phenson from the first anticipated the 

 general extension of railways through- 

 out England ; and one of the ideas 

 with which he started was, the essen- 

 tial importance of preserving such 

 a uniformity as would admit of per- 

 fect communication between them. 

 When consulted about the gauge of 

 the Canterbury and Whitstable, and 

 Leicester and Swannington Railways, 

 he said, " Make them of the same 

 width : though they may be a long 

 way apart now, depend upon it they 

 will be joined together some day." 

 All the railways, therefore, laid down 

 by himself and his assistants in the 

 neighbourhood of Manchester, extend- 

 ing from thence to London on the 

 south, and to Leeds on the east, were 

 constructed on the Liverpool and 

 Manchester, or narrow gauge. Be- 

 sides the Great Western Railway, 

 where the gauge adopted was seven 

 feet, the only other line on which a 



broader gauge than four feet eight 

 and a-half inches was adopted was 

 the Eastern Counties, where it was 

 five feet, Mr. Braithwaite, the engi- 

 neer, being of opinion that an in- 

 crease of three and a-half inches in 

 the width of his line would give him 

 better space for the machinery of the 

 locomotive. But when the northern 

 and eastern extension of the same line 

 was formed, which was to work into 

 the narrow-gauge system of the Mid- 

 land Railway, Mr. Robert Stephenson, 

 its new engineer, strongly recom- 

 mended the directors of the Eastern 

 Counties line to alter their gauge ac- 

 cordingly, for the purpose of securing 

 uniformity; and they adopted his re- 

 commendation. Mr. Braithwaite him- 

 self afterwards justified the wisdom of 

 this step, and stated that he consi- 

 dered the narrow gauge " infinitely 

 superior to any other," more especially 

 for passenger traffic. 



