SOME FAMOUS RAILWAY TRAINS AND THEIR STORY.

By Henry Frith.

III.—THE "FLYING SCOTCHMAN."

ne minute, sir; just let my mate brush up the dust a bit, and sprinkle a drop o' water on the foot-plate, and we'll be all right and comfortable."

So said an engine-driver on one occasion to the writer, and we are reminded of it when we step up to the "eight-foot" engine which is to carry us from King's Cross Station to York. To pull the fastest train in Great Britain, or indeed in the world, for one hundred and eighty-eight miles, at more than forty-eight miles an hour, is first-rate running. "Scotchmen" run also from the Midland Station at St. Pancras, and from Euston, but the quickest one is that on the Great Northern, and it is also the most punctual.

Now, what do you say to a journey of one hundred and five miles, to Grantham? We will leave King's Cross, if you please, at ten in the morning—a nice comfortable time. We have had our breakfast, and the engine has had its meal of coal and plenty of water. It will want something, for it will travel fast.

Here we are puffing up the incline, between the walls, and through the little tunnels which abound near London, on our way to Barnet. We could tell tales of Barnet, had we time. We could give you a long—perhaps much too long—description of the place near which the Yorkists and Lancastrians contended on that fatal fifth of April, when the Great Warwick was slain and Edward made king.

But our engine-driver does not care for history much. He would rather tell us of his terrible winter journey a few years ago (in 1880), when he had to keep time, and did keep time, through snow and wind, the bitter blast making icicles on the engine out of steam, and hanging inches long from the carriage roofs.

Now our "Flying Scotchman" runs through Peterborough—the Proud, as it was once called, when its monastery flourished, and where is now the splendid cathedral on which the Ironsides of Cromwell laid such hard hands. Shame upon them who destroyed the beautiful chapter-house and cloisters! Perhaps you do not associate your history at your school with the actual places you see, young readers, but a little time bestowed upon the history of the places you pass in a holiday trip will very greatly assist you in gaining a good knowledge of the past.

Look at Peterborough. Here lies Queen Katherine, and here lay Mary, Queen of Scots, for you a long—perhaps much too long—description a while, till James buried her in Westminster; and Scarlett, the sexton, who buried both queens, lies in the nave. But we cannot pause at Peterborough, though we should like to do so, for our iron steed is steaming along, and our driver is thinking of the ice and snow which he had to contend against. The Midland line runs overhead near here, and after a rapid run we pull up at Grantham.

"his first sketch." (See p. 204.)"

During our stay we hear a little tale from our "fireman," who remembers on one of his trips an engine getting loose in front of the up express, and how he and another man got on a fresh engine, and ran after it on the other line. Oh, what a chase they had after the runaway! and at last they caught it in time to prevent a serious accident. It was a brave, but rash act, to set off after a "mad" engine, which had run away, no one knew how, out of the siding on to the main line.

From Grantham to Doncaster the railway opens up so many memories. We pass Newark, near which the ruins of the old castle may be seen. King John died here; Cardinal Wolsey lodged here, and James I. also stayed within its walls; the whole place teems with memories of Charles and his Parliamentary foes. We pass on near Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood and his merry men lived, and fought, and stole the king's deer; and then past Doncaster, where the engines and carriages of the Great Northern Railway, which ends near here, are made and repaired.

Doncaster was a very important place in olden times, and a whole volume of adventures might be written concerning the personages who visited it.

While we are talking, the "Flying Scotchman," the quickest of all the Scotch trains, goes tearing along to York. We have heard of Dick Turpin's celebrated ride to York on his bonnie "Black Bess," but we have a finer horse—a green-painted steed—to ride on. In the "good old times" which we read about so much it took four days to get to York, sleeping on the road; now our trains run the distance in less than four hours! Coaching is very pleasant as an amusement, but for business we must have our Iron Horse.

We can lunch at York. Our train waits for no one, but if we like we can eat our sandwich on the platform, and look over old York city, with its dear old Minster, its river, its red-roofed houses; and if we close our eyes for a few minutes, our mental vision will show us many stirring scenes here.

We can imagine the Scots hovering around old York, assisted by the Britons, attacking the gouty Emperor Severus, who afterwards built one of the great walls across Britain to supplement Hadrian's rampart from the Solway to the "Wall's End"—a name now "familiar in our mouths as household" coals. Do you remember what the old worn-out Roman Emperor said at York when he was dying? He looked at the urn of gold in which his ashes were to be carried to Rome, and remarked, "Thou shalt soon hold what the world could scarcely contain!" Then we can see the end of the great Roses' Wars, the heads on the grim spikes of the city gates, while a long procession of kings and queens files out from the cathedral doors, on whose site a church has stood ever since Easter, 627 A.D.

If we had only time to sit and recall all the grand events which have happened in York Minster, we should have to wait for the next "Flying Scotchman," and perhaps for the next after that.

"Any more going on?" "Yes, we are." "Quick, please; all right." The train can't wait while we dream about the past; and have we not Darlington in front of us? Ah! there we must stop a little. Here are the cradles of all the "Flying Scotchmen," "Wild Irishmen," "Dutchmen," "Zulus"; of the four hundred expresses of England, and the thousands of other trains, fast and slow, which traverse the United Kingdom and the world. Yes, Darlington was the nursery of the locomotive railway-engine, and Mr. Pease the head nurse who taught it to run on the Stockton and Darlington line in 1825. To the Darlington Quaker family Stephenson's success was due, and the success of Stephenson's locomotive was owing to Hadley—William Hadley—who has been rightly called the "Father of the Modern Locomotive."

We are now on the North-Eastern line, which ends at Berwick-on-Tweed—for the true Great Northern, though its carriages run over the whole route, does not work the traffic all the way. The North-Eastern hurries us along towards Newcastle-on-Tyne, over Robert Stephenson's high-level bridge, and then over the North British line at Edinburgh.

What do we see from this breezy elevation? "Oh, earth, what changes hast thou seen!" What does a writer say of this? "The mountain stream beneath us, once a broad shallow, now affords depth for the heaviest ships. Away on the northern bank the Roman wall lies hid, its arrowy route just marked by a burial heave of the turf. Before us stands the massive keep, with sturdy Norman walls—the trains of the North-Eastern are scrunching on the curve within a yard of it. Stephenson's engine looks down on Elizabethan gables;" and so on. Near Newcastle—at Wylam and Killingworth—the first locomotive engines were born which changed the country and revolutionised travelling.

The warders at Berwick no longer look out from the castle walls to descry the glitter of Southern spears. The bell-tower from which the alarm was sounded is now silent—the only bell heard within the precincts of the castle being that of the railway porter, announcing the arrival and departure of trains. The Scotch express passes along the bridge, and speeds southward on the wings of steam. But no alarm spreads across the Border now.

We shall cross the Tweed presently, and pass through the country of the Moss-troopers and the territories of the Lords Marchers, the scene of so many conflicts and fatal raids. We first cross the Coquet, "the stream of streams," the poet calls it:—

We get a view of the Cheviots; and Tweed-mouth passed, we cross the "Royal Border Bridge," and run into Berwick.

What a record of battle has Berwick! In these peaceful times at home we can hardly picture the old walls on which we walk manned with armoured soldiery, and King John within his house, a burning torch in his hand, setting fire to the town, or hanging up the people by the feet till they told where their money-bags were hidden. In those days and in Edward's time, the "Flying Scotchmen" were Highlanders who were dispersed by the English king. Wallace avenged the slaughter, and seized Berwick; Robert Bruce and Douglas climbed into the town with their trusty men. Half Wallace's body was sent here as a trophy, and the Countess of Buchan was hung out from the walls in a cage!

Beacons again burn in the bell-tower, and Edward and Bruce again engage, and Berwick was only finally deprived of its warlike appearance when James the First united England and Scotland. These are some of the tales the old stones tell us as we pause in Berwick, which within our own memory was so specially mentioned in all forms of national prayer and thanksgiving, as being a kind of neutral ground upon the Border.

Now puffing through Dunbar, past the Field of Preston-pans, and through a district ever memorable in the history of Scotland, we reach the modern Athens "Auld Reekie"—Edinburgh the Beautiful—where the "Flying Scotchman" folds his wings and "flies" no more. His work is done this journey!