CHIPS.

RAILWAY COMFORT

In all the utilities of Railway travelling, England is supreme. Speed, represented by from thirty to sixty miles an hour, “just (to quote the words of Lubin Log) as the passenger pleases;” punctuality, that admits of the setting of watches by arrivals and departures; and safety, exemplified by the loss of no human life from any other cause than the carelessness of the sufferer, during the past two years, are proofs of British supremacy in locomotion. Yet—by a strange perversity not easily accounted for in a country known all over the rest of the world as the Kingdom of Comfort—the point apparently aimed at is to render the transit of the human frame as uncomfortable an operation as possible. Every elegance and luxury is bestowed upon waiting-rooms where extreme punctuality renders it unnecessary for people to wait; and upon refreshment-rooms in which travellers are allowed ten minutes to scald themselves with boiling coffee, or to choke themselves with impossible pork-pies; but carriages in which travellers have to be cramped up, often for hours, and sometimes for whole days, are apparently contrived to inflict as much torture as practicable. In order to force those who cannot afford it into the first-class, second and third-class carriages are only one and two degrees removed from cattle pens. And that these should not be too delicious, the humbler order of passengers will not easily forget that a director once proposed to hire a number of chimney-sweeps to render—what, with the best company, are nothing better than locomotive hutches—perfectly untenable.

They manage these things better abroad. There a detestable class-feeling—a contemptible purse-worship, which rigidly separates people according to their pecuniary circumstances; which metes out the smallest privilege or comfort at a price—does not exist to prevent the managers of railways from making the journeys of their customers and supporters as pleasant as possible. On the French railroads, (setting aside the question that the fares are much lower,) the second-class carriages are comfortably cushioned, having pretty silk blinds to keep out the sun; windows that really are capable of being pulled up and down, besides hooks for hats,—a great convenience on a journey. For the blinds, indeed, an enterprising blind-maker in France agreed to furnish them to one railway company, gratis, on condition that they used no other for a certain number of years, and allowed him to make them the medium of his advertisements. Talk of advertising vans—can they be compared to the brilliant notion of advertising railways—trains of puffs, wafting the genius of inventors faster than the wind! We throw out the hint to the “advertising world” in this country.

In winter, even in an English first-class carriage, there is no protection against frost and damp; but in nearly all the foreign railways, no sooner does the winter set in than the first-class traveller finds the bottom of his carriage provided with a long tin case full of hot water. In the cold months, masses of woollen cloth and railway wrappers, are seen shaking in the corners of first-class English carriages with shivering, comfortless, human beings inside them, despairing of any sort of warmth whatever.

Comfort in railway travelling is, however brought to the highest perfection in Germany. An esteemed correspondent at Vienna writes to us on this subject in the following terms:—On the “Wiener-Neustäder Eisenbahn,” (the Vienna and Neustadt Railway), the carriages of the first, second, and third-class may each be said to resemble a spacious room, furnished with seats, something like a concert-room, and having a broad passage down the middle. Thus one may get up, walk towards a friend a dozen seats off; or, if you require more air or a change of position, you will find the backs of the seats shift so as to enable you to turn round, and sit down the other way without inconvenience to any one. I need not say that on this railway there is no struggle for “that corner place with your back 450to the engine,” which is a desirable object throughout our three kingdoms,—for every place is a corner place, having light and air, and you may sit which way you please.

Attached to each carriage, and going the whole length of the train, is a broad wooden plank, along which the guards are constantly walking, so that the slightest thing amiss could scarcely occur without their perceiving it immediately. Just before the arrival of the train at any station, one of these functionaries—for there are several—quietly opens the door and, instead of calling out “I say, you sir!” or “Come, marm, your ticket, I carn’t be a waitin’ here all day,” as we have heard in England, walks without any hurry or bustle down the division from one end to the other, repeating, in a clear and ordinary tone of voice the name of the station which is being approached, and requiring the tickets of such passengers as are going to alight there. With such an arrangement—giving ample time for the gathering together of coats, canes, umbrellas, reticules, and so forth—even Martha Struggles herself might have got through a journey unscathed and “unflustered.”

The admirable arrangement displayed in America, as well as in Germany, for receiving tickets without that delay which has been so much complained of in England, cannot be sufficiently applauded. When however delay is unavoidable, to receive the mails, or from some other cause, no sooner does the train stop, than a waiter, or sometimes a pretty waitress—who is more likely to find customers—trips up the steps with a tray laden with iced water and lemonade, glasses of light wine or maitrank,(a kind of Burridge-cup,) biscuits, cakes, and other edible nick-nacks, so that the passenger may take some slight refection without getting down.

In the railway from Bonn to Cologne, on the Rhine, they have pushed convenience yet farther, having provided the first-class carriages with tables, so that during the journey, one pressed for time may write letters with the greatest ease; pens and a portable inkstand being all that is necessary for that purpose. Paper may be had at the station.

It has been also suggested on several of the continental railways, that such travellers as chose to pay for the space, might have a regular bed; a great convenience for ladies or invalids, unable to bear the fatigue of a journey of many hours by night.

These hints might be followed with very great advantage to the shareholders in particular and to the public in general, by the directors of British lines.