ail a novel
element for contention. Coaches cannot pass each other on the rail as on
the road; and, as the line was single, with four sidings in the mile,
when two coaches met, or two trains, or coach and train, the question
arose which of the drivers must go back? This was not always settled in
silence. As to trains, it came to be a sort of understanding that empty
should give way to loaded waggons; and as to trains and coaches, that the
passengers should have preference over coals; while coaches, when they
met, must quarrel it out. At length, midway between sidings, a post was
erected, and a rule was laid down that he who had passed the pillar must
go on, and the 'coming man' go back. At the Goose Pool and Early Nook,
it was common for these coaches to stop; and there, as Jonathan would
say, passengers and coachmen 'liquored.' One coach, introduced by an
innkeeper, was a compound of two mourning-coaches,--an approximation to
the real railway-coach, which still adheres, with multiplying exceptions,
to the stage-coach type. One Dixon, who drove the 'Experiment' between
Darlington and Shildon, is the inventor of carriage-lighting on the rail.
On a dark winter night, having compassion on his passengers, he would buy
a penny candle, and place it lighted amongst them on the table of the
'Experiment'--the first railway-coach (which, by the way, ended its days
at Shildon as a railway cabin), being also the first coach on the rail
(first, second, and third class jammed all into one) that indulged its
customers with light in darkness."

The traffic of all sorts increased so steadily and so rapidly that
considerable difficulty was experienced in working it satisfactorily. It
had been provided by the first Stockton and Darlington Act that the line
should be free to all parties who chose to use it at certain prescribed
rates, and that any person might put horses and waggons on the railway,
and carry for himself. But this arrangement led to increasing confusion
and difficulty, and could not continue in the face of a large and
rapidly-increasing traffic. The goods trains got so long that the
carriers found it necessary to call in the aid of the locomotive engine
to help them on their way. Then mixed trains of passengers and
merchandise began to run; and the result was that the railway company
found it necessary to take the entire charge and working of the traffic.
In course of time new coaches were specially built for the