the crowd again. As
there were no sidings on that early road, and the connections between the
tracks had, as a measure of safety, been temporarily removed, the
ministerial train in moving towards Liverpool had necessarily pushed
before it the engines belonging to the other trains. The unfortunate
guests on those other trains, thus left to their fate, had for the rest
of the day a very dreary time of it. To avoid accidents, the six trains
abandoned at Manchester were united into one, to which were attached the
three locomotives remaining. In this form they started. Presently the
strain broke the couplings. Pieces of rope were then put in requisition,
and again they got in motion. In due time the three other engines came
along, but they could only be used by putting them on in front of the
three already attached to the train. Two of them were used in that way,
and the eleven cars thus drawn by five locomotives, and preceded at a
short distance by one other, went on towards Liverpool. It was dark, and
to meet the exigencies of the occasion the first germ of the present
elaborate system of railroad night signals was improvised on the spot.
From the foremost and pioneer locomotive obstacles were signalled to the
train locomotives by the very primitive expedient of swinging the lighted
end of a tar-rope. At Rainhill the weight of the train proved too much
for the combined motive-power, and the thoroughly wearied passengers had
to leave their carriages and walk up the incline. When they got to the
summit and, resuming their seats, were again in motion, fresh delay was
occasioned by the leading locomotive running into a wheel-barrow,
maliciously placed on the track to obstruct it. Not until ten o'clock
did they enter the tunnel at Liverpool. Meanwhile all sorts of rumours
of general disaster had for hours been circulating among the vast
concourse of spectators who were assembled waiting for their friends, and
whose relief expressed itself in hearty cheers as the train at last
rolled safely into the station.

We have also Miss Kemble's story of this day, to which in her letter of
August 25th she had looked forward with such eager interest. With her
father and mother she had been staying at a country place in Lancashire,
and in her account of the affair, written in 1876, she says:--

"The whole gay party assembled at Heaton, my mother and myself included,
went to Liverpool for the opening of the railroad. The thro