Railway Empire Page 7

  The directors of the Barcelona to Mataró pose with the first locomotive Mataró.

  At first the tunnel was advanced as a gallery approximately 10 feet square, which was gradually extended to a 26-feet-wide tunnel, with an arched roof rising to a height of 25 feet and brick-lined throughout its length. As the tunnellers dug deeper into the mountain, compressed air alone was no longer enough for ventilation, so a technique was used that would have been familiar to medieval miners. The tunnel was divided by a horizontal brattice, so that air could be drawn into the lower half of the workings and continue on its way out along the upper section. Work was inevitably slow in the early days, as engineers and workmen alike struggled to overcome new problems with new technology. The pace gradually accelerated and the two ends met with commendable exactness on Christmas Day 1870. As a mark of his appreciation of the work put in by Bartlett on the pneumatic drill, Brassey awarded him a bonus of £5000.

  It is not possible to give details of all the works undertaken in Europe by Brassey and his associates, but a table at the end of this book (see Appendix) lists his overseas contracts, together with the length of track involved and the partners with whom he co-operated. It shows a grand total of 6598 miles of track laid in Europe, America, Asia and Australia, of which almost 2000 miles were constructed in continental Europe.

  Brassey had to be more than a mere contractor, a man brought in when the engineers and promoters had decided what was to be done. He had to be a diplomat, able to speak as an equal to politicians, aristocrats and, when needs be, emperors. Happily he was helped by his own disposition. He was sure of his own abilities, and liked to be judged by his own results; as a consequence he was inclined to judge others by the same standard rather than by whatever titles they might happen to have tagged on to their names. There is a well-known anecdote about Brassey and the honours he received:

  Returning from Vienna, Mr. Brassey was waited upon at Meurice’s Hotel, Paris, by one of his agents, who arrived in the room at the very moment his travelling servant Isidore was arranging in a little box the Cross of the Iron Crown, which Mr. Brassey had just before received from the Emperor of Austria. Made acquainted with the circumstance, the agent complimented his chief as to the well-merited recognition of his services, &c, and the conversation continued on Foreign Orders generally. Mr. Brassey remarked that, as an Englishman, he did not know what good Crosses were to him; but that he could well imagine how eagerly they were sought after by the subjects of those Governments which gave away Orders in reward for civil services rendered to the State, &c. He added, that in regard to the Cross of the Iron Crown, it had been graciously offered to him by the Emperor of Austria, and there was no alternative but to accept this mark of the Sovereign’s appreciation of the part he had taken in the construction of public works, however unworthy he was of such a distinction. ‘Have I not other Crosses?’ said Mr. Brassey. ‘Yes,’ said his agent; ‘I know of two others, the Legion of Honour of France, and the Chevaliership of Italy. Where are they?’ But as this question could not be answered, it was settled that two duplicate crosses should be procured at once (the originals having been mislaid) in order that Mr. Brassey might take them across to Lowndes Square the same evening. ‘Mrs. Brassey will be glad to possess all these Crosses.’

  He needed to have a cool head and be sure of his own ground when threading the labyrinthine ways of European politics. The negotiations over the Moldavian railway system make up a story in which the patience of Job would have been put to the test. A proposal was put to Brassey in 1858 by Adolphe de Herz of Frankfurt for a line to join the Carl-Ludwig Railway in Austria to Czernowitz on the border and hence through Moldavia to Galatz on the Danube. It was a major undertaking, a 500-mile-long route with an estimated cost of £65 million – an estimate which was highly approximate since no one had yet looked at the ground let alone surveyed it. But engineering problems were as nothing compared with political problems. Piedmont was building up an armed force and Austria was matching the movement, each inevitably claiming, in tones of shocked innocence, that they were only doing so as protection from the other. Soon France, Sardinia and the Papal States were involved and talks gave way to the harsh realities of the battlefield. Railways had to be forgotten until peace finally settled over Europe in 1861. The political situation, however, was still far from clear, so it was decided to forget about the Austrian part of the route for the time being and concentrate on the 300-mile route through Moldavia.

  In September 1861, McClean of the engineering partnership, McClean and Stileman, set off to make a survey and reported back in November with a recommendation that the works should be let to Brassey, Peto and Betts for £2,880,000. Guarantees were offered, but as they were dependent on the whole work being completed within five years nothing came of it. A proposal by Brassey and Glyn the bankers that the line be divided up and each section financed separately was turned down. Prince Leo Sapieka, chairman of the Carl-Ludwig railway, asked Brassey for advice. The reply was neat, precise and to the point.

  Prince, After full consideration of the Moldavian Railway project, it seems that we are both of opinion that there is a serious defect in it; namely, that it has no junction with your Carl-Ludwig Railway at Lemberg; and I fear you will have considerable difficulty in obtaining the support of the public to an isolated scheme for the Principality of Moldavia.

  A working replica of Mataró

  If a company could be formed for the entire line from Lemberg to Galatz, with the branches to Jassy and Okna, it would, I think, be favourably received; and I venture to suggest that your Highness endeavour to form a combination with Baron Anselm Rothschild and your friends at Vienna for carrying it out.

  You will easily be able to form an approximate idea of the capital required; and should my co-operation as contractor be thought desirable, you may consider I will accept one-third of the contract price which may be agreed upon in shares of the company.

  Rothschild, however, was to show no interest and another year ticked by. McClean and Stileman made another detailed survey in 1863, and now the government came up with a new concession at better terms, with a guaranteed interest payment and the government to put up a quarter of the capital. Things were beginning to look more hopeful when another contender appeared, the Spanish banker Marquis Salamanca, who offered to build the whole line without the government paying their quarter share – an offer which, not surprisingly, the government found irresistible. The principality now felt they were in the ideal bargaining position – with the promise of Spanish money and an alternative contractor they would acquire Brassey expertise on far better terms. Unfortunately for their calculations, the British refused to comply, announcing they were all going home and the Moldavians could get on with it. This was far from the amalgamation of Brassey and Salamanca that the Moldavian government had hoped for. Brassey, in his usual blunt manner, told Salamanca that if he would put £500,000 into the scheme, then he, Brassey, would match it. But the Spanish banker was unable to come up with the funds, and another plan collapsed. At this point De Hertz, several years and one war later, reappeared on the scene and was encouraged to approach Brassey yet again. Agreement was finally reached in 1868, ten years after negotiations had first started. Brassey, Peto and Betts had then offered to construct the railway at a rate of £9,600 per mile: now Brassey was being offered the same work at nearly double the price. Even so, he was not offered the whole route, but only 360 out of the original 500 miles. By 1870 Brassey had completed everything for which he was contracted: none of the rest was open. The politicking had produced ten years of delays, a doubling of costs and a result in which the one effective contractor had finished his part of the works, while others who had inveigled their way into the business had achieved nothing.

  The engineer Charles Vignoles had many difficulties making this section of the line beside the River Ebro on the line from Santander to Bilbao

  Political machinations were not the only problems that Brassey had to face in h
is middle-European railway days. The Lemberg and Czernowitz section of this long cross-European route was to cause him great problems; once again these were political, not engineering problems. Whilst building the line he had to pay his workforce; furthermore having bought up bonds to help finance the building, he had to pay interest on them until the line was completed and the government-guaranteed interest came into force. He held a huge stock of shares, but he needed to see a line open before he could cash in on them; until that point was reached they were so much waste paper. It was a situation where it was absolutely imperative that the line was completed as quickly as possible, and such minor difficulties as a war between Austria and Prussia simply had to be overcome.

  In 1866, Victor Ofenheim, Brassey’s agent in Austria, was faced with a dilemma. The navvies were toiling away at Lemberg, but the money to pay them was 500 miles away in Vienna, and in between them were the Austrian and Prussian armies, lined up on either side of the track. Ofenheim successfully carried the money as far as the edge of the war zone at Cracow. There he was told that there were no engines of any sort available. He nonetheless found an ageing relic in a shed. All he needed now was a driver. There was an understandable reluctance among engine drivers for this task, but Ofenheim succeeded by offering a huge fee for the dash and promising the driver that if he did chance to get killed, his family would be looked after for the rest of their lives. So off they set, regulator wide open, dashing between the enemy camps so fast that by the time the sentries had registered the fact that there was a train on the line, it was out of reach. The navvies were paid; if they had not had their money they would have simply gone home. Instead they worked on, and the line was opened.

  The difficulty involved in getting money to the men in Austria was something of a one-off problem: contractors were not often required to build their lines through war zones. On the Bilbao to Tudela line (described in more detail below), it was a perpetual problem. Although there was no actual war in progress to impede construction, the country was riven by dynastic quarrels. Queen Isabella was still in her teens, and the effective ruler was her mother, Maria Cristina. They were opposed by a very powerful Carlist faction, supporting the heirs of Charles II who were in control of many areas of public life. Brassey was not the only British railway builder who must have cursed the day he ever signed a contract in Spain. The Bilbao to Tudela railway was to cost far more than it was ever to deliver. For a start there was the problem of paying for the work in a country where paper money was almost unknown, and the rest was, to say the least, a trifle suspect. The secretary to the company gave a graphic account of what this meant in practice:

  The Bank was not in the habit of having large cheques drawn upon it to pay money; for nearly all the merchants kept their cash in safes in their offices, and it was a very debased kind of money, coins composed of half copper and half silver, and very much defaced. You had to take a good many of them on faith. 1 had to send down fifteen days before the pay day came round, to commence getting the money from the Bank, obtaining perhaps 2,0001. or 3,0001. a day. It was brought to the office, recounted and put into my safe. In that way I accumulated a ton or a ton and a half of money, every month during our busy season. When pay week came, I used to send a carriage or a large coach, drawn by four or six mules, with a couple of civil guards, one on each side, together with one of the clerks from the office, a man to drive, and another a sort of stable man, who went to help them out of their difficulty in case the mules gave any trouble up the hilly country. It was quite an operation to get this money out. I was at the office at six o’clock, and I was always in a state of anxiety until I knew that the money had arrived safely at the end of the journey. More than once the conveyance broke down in the mountains. On one occasion the axle of our carriage broke in half from the weight of the money, and I had to send off two omnibuses to relieve them.

  Gradually the locals were persuaded to accept paper money, but that was only one part of the problem solved. One of the sub-contractors on the line was a leader of a Carlist faction with immense local power. The local agent, Mr Tapp, went through the usual procedures of railway work. A contract had been agreed, and on the due date the completed work was measured and the sub-contractor would then be paid what he was due. In the case of a dispute, the matter was to be put to an independent arbitrator. This was not the Carlist way:

  He had over 100 men to pay, and Mr. Small offered him the money that was coming to him, according to the measurement, but he would not have it, nor would he let the agent pay the men. He said he would have the money he demanded; and he brought all his men into the town of Orduna, and the men regularly bivouacked round Mr. Small’s Office: – they slept in the streets, and stayed there all night, and would not let Mr. Small come out of the Office till he had paid them the money. He attempted to get on his horse to go out – his horses were kept in the house (that is the practice in the houses of Spain); but when he rode out, they pulled him off his horse and pushed him back, and said that he should not go until he had paid them the money. He passed the night in terror, with loaded pistols and guns, expecting that he and his family would be massacred every minute, but he contrived eventually to send his staff-holder to Bilbao on horseback. The man galloped all the way to Bilbao, a distance of twenty-five miles, and went to Mr. Bartlett in the middle of the night, and told him what had happened. Mr. Bartlett immediately got up and went to the military Governor of the town, who immediately sent a detachment up to the place to disperse the men. This Carlist threatened that if Mr. Small did not pay the money, he would kill every person in the house. When he was asked, ‘Would you kill a man for that?’, he replied, ‘Yes, like a fly,’ and this coming from such a man who, as I was told, had already killed fourteen men with his own hand, was rather alarming.

  Sharp Stewart 0-6-0T locomotive at work at a colliery in Spain

  An early British locomotive, the 1869 Dubs at a sulphur and copper mine in Spain

  When Brassey joined William Locke, Joseph Locke’s nephew, on the building of the Barcelona to Mataro line, they had more trouble with the Carlists. This time the latter demanded £1200 from the railway company for their funds, in what can best be described as a form of political protection racket. William ignored their threats, and a week later a bridge was burned down. When that produced no result, a band of around 200 partisans stopped a contractor’s train, hoping to discover Locke on board, but when he was not found they settled for ransacking the train instead. Having failed to kidnap Locke, they captured instead a guard, Alexander Flancourt. This time there was no option but to call in the military, who soon tracked the partisans down and the guard escaped in the confusion of the fight. Life for railway builders in Spain was not dull.

  A feature of works such as this is that whereas in the early days contractors such as Brassey relied mainly on their own navvy gangs, by the 1860s they were employing local labour. It was obviously a sensible course in many ways, though the hard-won reputation of the British navvy ensured that he kept his title ‘Prince of Workers’ against all comers. Brassey, who had more opportunities than most to gauge the value of workers from different countries, was able to compare their various qualities. The Italians were perhaps the most idiosyncratic. The Piedmontese came in for fulsome praise. One of Brassey’s agents wrote, ‘For cutting rock, the right man is a Piedmontese. He will do the work cheaper than an English miner. He is hardy, vigorous, and a stout mountaineer; he lives well, and his muscular development is good’ – and he was appreciated as a steady, sober workman. At the opposite end of the scale came the Neapolitans. They would arrive as an entire clan with their ‘chieftains’. Perhaps a thousand men and boys would turn up in one group. They built their own settlements of rough huts made of mud and branches and here the old men stayed to look after the cooking, while the rest went to the diggings. Women were left behind in the villages. Nothing would persuade the Neapolitans to take on the heaviest work. They did what they had to do, lived frugally, and after six months�
�� work packed up their pots and pans, gathered their savings together, and headed for home.

  The Germans had less endurance than the French, and the Belgians were generally regarded as better than both. The Scandinavians, perhaps unexpectedly, did not share characteristics. Danes, declared Rowan, the agent for Peto, Brassey and Betts, were very steady workers and the sub-contractors were a ‘very superior class of men’. Danish labourers worked in their own way, at their own rate: they started work at 4 o’clock in the morning during the summer and plodded on, not at any great rate, until 8 o’clock at night. During that time they knocked off for five breaks at least, each of which lasted half an hour. The Swedes were ‘troublesome’, or, to put it bluntly, they drank.

  The contractors were also in a good position to assess the quality of the engineers, and the Englishman, reared in the learn-as-you-go school of practical experience, took a dim view of the theorizing Continentals.

  The great fault of Danish technical education is the overdoing of it. The young men are kept in school till they are twenty-five. They come out highly educated; utterly ignorant of the world, but educated to a tremendous height …