s Knight thus describes this old line:--"The earliest railway for
public traffic in England was one passing from Merstham to Wandsworth,
through Croydon; a small, single line, on which a miserable team of
donkeys, some thirty years ago, might be seen crawling at the rate of
four miles an hour, with several trucks of stone and lime behind them.
It was commenced in 1801, opened in 1803; and the men of science of that
day--we cannot say that the respectable name of Stephenson was not among
them, (Stephenson was then a brakesman at Killingworth)--tested its
capabilities and found that one horse could draw some thirty-five tons at
six miles an hour, and then, with prophetic wisdom, declared that
railways could never be worked profitably. The old Croydon railway is no
longer used. The genius loci must look with wonder on the gigantic
offspring of the little railway, which has swallowed up its own sire.
Lean mules no longer crawl leisurely along the little rails with trucks
of stone through Croydon, once perchance during the day, but the whistle
and the rush of the locomotive are now heard all day long. Not a few
loads of lime, but all London and its contents, by comparison--men,
women, children, horses, dogs, oxen, sheep, pigs, carriages, merchandise,
food,--would seem to be now-a-days passing through Croydon; for day after
day, more than 100 journeys are made by the great railroads which pass
the place."

RAILWAY ANNOUNCEMENT.

The following announcement was published in a London periodical, dated
August 1, 1802:--"The Surrey Iron Railway is now completed over the high
road through Wandsworth town. On Wednesday, June 8, several carriages of
all descriptions passed over the iron rails without meeting with the
least obstacle. Among these, the Portsmouth wagon, drawn by eight horses
and weighing from eight to ten tons, passed over the rails, and did not
appear to make the slightest impression upon them."

MERTHYR TYDVIL RAILWAY.

An Act of Parliament was granted for a railway to Merthyr Tydvil in 1803,
and the following year the first locomotive which ran on a railway is
described in a racy manner by the _Western Mail_, as follows:--"Quaint,
rattling, puffing, asthmatic, and wheezy, the pioneer of ten thousand
gilding creations of beauty and strength made its way between the
white-washed houses of the old tramway at Merthyr. It has a dwarf body
placed on a high framework, constructed by the hedge carpen