SNOW 45 



With the record fresh of what mail-coaches had 

 endured in winter time, it was an anxious ques- 

 tion, in the very early days of railways, how the 

 trains would fare in snow of a depth sufficient to 

 hinder or stop a road coach. That question was soon 

 set at rest. On December 20, 1836, in the deep 

 cutting through the Cowran hills, on the Newcastle 

 and Carlisle railway (along which the mails had just 

 begun to be sent), the snow had accumulated to the 

 depth of four or five feet,*' and a crowd of country 

 people assembled to see what would happen to the 

 train. Down came the Hercules steam-engine ; it 

 dashed right into the drift, cutting its way through 

 with perfect ease and flinging snow chimney high, as 

 the foam of a stormy sea. 



On the occasion of the same storm, the snow lay 

 on parts of the Dover road in drifts from eighteen 

 to thirty feet deep. The French mails were sent by 

 steamers from the Thames, and by the same vessels 

 inland mails were landed at Gravesend and Eamsgate. 

 Between Canterbury and Dover the mails were con- 

 veyed by stages. The road was not reopened until 

 the new year had turned. 



On Sunday, December 25, all the mail-coaches due 

 reached London. On Monday, the 26th, only sixteen 

 out of twenty-four arrived at all (twenty- seven were 

 despatched nightly, but on the return journey twenty- 

 four coaches were due as night mails and three as day 

 mails). On Tuesday only two came in before noon, 



* ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 1842. 



