to be able to
travel all the way third-class, would find at some stage of the route
that he had arrived, only a few minutes perhaps, after the departure of
the cheap train to his destination, with no alternative but to wait for
hours or proceed by the express and pay accordingly. Moreover, the
third-class carriages were provided with the very minimum of comfort. It
was not seen by the railway executive of that time that the policy
adopted was actually prejudicial to their own interests.

_Our Railways_, by Joseph Parsloe.

IMPROVEMENT IN THIRD-CLASS TRAVELLING.

The Rev. F. S. Williams, in an article in the _Contemporary Review_,
entitled "Railway Revolutions," remarks:--"We need not go back so far as
the time when third-class passengers had to stand in a sort of cattle-pen
placed on wheels; it is only a few years since the Parliamentary trains
were run in bare fulfilment of the obligations of Parliament, and when a
journey by one of them could never be looked upon as anything better than
a necessary evil. To start in the darkness of a winter's morning to
catch the only third-class train that ran; to sit, after a slender
breakfast, in a vehicle the windows of which were compounded of the
largest amount of wood and the smallest amount of glass, and which were
carefully adjusted to exactly those positions in which the fewest
travellers could see out of them; to stop at every roadside station,
however insignificant; and to accomplish a journey of 200 miles in about
ten hours--such were the ordinary conditions which Parliament in its
bounty provided for the people. Occasionally, moreover, the monotony of
progress was interrupted by the shunting of the train into a siding,
where it might wait for more respectable passenger trains and fast goods
to pass."

"We remember," says a writer, "once standing on the platform at
Darlington when the Parliamentary train arrived. It was detained for a
considerable time to allow a more favoured train to pass, and, on the
remonstrance of several of the passengers at the unexpected detention,
they were coolly informed, "Ye mun bide till yer betters gaw past, ye are
only the nigger train."

"If there is one part of my public life," recently said Mr. Allport
(Midland Railway) to the writer, "in which I look back with more
satisfaction than anything else, it is with reference to the boon we
conferred on third-class passengers. When the