Note 87 — Chapter XVII
Reading edition
The atmospheric lines had for some time been working very irregularly and very expensively. Robert Stephenson, in a letter to Mr. T. Sopwith, F.R.S., dated the 8th of January, 1846, wrote: "Since my return [from Italy] I have learned that your atmospheric friends are very sickly. A slow typhus has followed the high fever I left them in about three months ago. I don't anticipate, however, that the patient will expire suddenly. There is every appearance of the case being a protracted one, though a fatal termination is inevitable. When the pipes are sold by auction, I intend to buy one and present it to the British Museum." During the last half year of the atmospheric experiment on the South Devon line in 1848, the expenditure exceeded the gross income (£26,782) by £2487, or about 9-3/4 per cent. excess of working expenses beyond the gross receipts.