30, 1852, the tunnel from
Moor Street to Monmouth Street being finished on June 6th previous. The
original estimated cost of this line was but L900,000, which was swelled
to nearly L3,000,000 by the bitter fight known as the "Battle of the
Gauges." The line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton was opened Nov. 14,
1854. The first train to Stratford-on-Avon was run on Oct. 9, 1860. The
Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton line was opened in May, 1852. The
broad gauge was altered in 1874.

~Railway Jottings.~--The London and Birmingham line cost at the rate of
L23,000 per mile, taking nearly five years to make, about 20,000 men
being employed, who displaced over 400,000,000 cubic feet of earth. The
Grand Junction averaged L16,000 per mile, and at one time there were
11,000 men at work upon it. Slate slabs were originally tried for
sleepers on the Birmingham and London line.

The first railway carriages were built very like to coaches, with an
outside seat at each end for the guard, though passengers often sat
there for the sake of seeing the country.

The fares first charged between Birmingham and London were 30s. by first
class, and 20s. second class (open carriages) by day trains; 32s. 6d.
first class and 25s. second class, by night. In 1841 the fares were 30s.
first, 25s. second, and 20s. 3d. third class; they are now 17s. 4d.,
13s. 6d., and 9s. 5d.

"Booking" was a perfectly correct term when the lines were first used,
as when passengers went for their tickets they had to give their names
and addresses, to be written on the tickets and in the book containing
the counterfoils of the tickets.

The day the Grand Junction line was opened was kept as a general holiday
between here and Wolverhampton, hundreds of tents and picnic parties
being seen along the line.

The directors of the Birmingham and Gloucester line ordered eleven
locomotives from Philadelphia at a cost of 85,000 dollars, and it was
these engines that brought their trains to Camp Hill at first. In
comparison with the engines now in use, these Americans were very small
ones. The trains were pulled up the incline at the Lickey by powerful
stationary engines.

On the completion of the London line, the engineers who had been
employed presented George Stephenson at a dinner held here with a silver
tureen and stand worth 130 guineas. This celebrated engineer made his
last public appearance at a meeting in this town of the Institute of
Mechanical Engineers, July