From time
to time the driver took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his
blinking eyes.
London was now well to the rear. The vermilion engine had been for some
time flying like the wind. This train averages, between London and
Carlisle forty-nine and nine-tenth miles an hour. It is a distance of
299 miles. There is one stop. It occurs at Crewe, and endures five
minutes. In consequence, the block signals flashed by seemingly at the
end of the moment in which they were sighted.
There can be no question of the statement that the road-beds of English
railways are at present immeasurably superior to the American road-beds.
Of course there is a clear reason. It is known to every traveler that
peoples of the Continent of Europe have no right at all to own railways.
Those lines of travel are too childish and trivial for expression. A
correct fate would deprive the Continent of its railways, and give them
to somebody who knew about them.
The continental idea of a railway is to surround a mass of machinery
with forty rings of ultra-military law, and then they believe they have
one complete. The Americans and the English are the railway peoples.
That our road-beds are poorer than the English road-beds is because of
the fact that we were suddenly obliged to build thousands upon thousands
of miles of railway, and the English were obliged to build slowly tens
upon tens of miles.
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