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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 4 (July 1, 1939)

The Rail and the Road

The Rail and the Road.

“The glories of the road are lost in a complete and eternal eclipse,” says the opening sentence of the Editorial. Then follows a picture of times long past, when Watling Street—much of which is believed to be pre-Roman—was the only highway in England. Commencing at Dover it passed through Canterbury and Rochester to London; thence onward to Chester, and farther.

In the course of time new roads were formed, but Watling Street remained the favourite haunt of desperadoes and outlaws, who, pouncing suddenly on the traveller, despoiled him of everything, and then fled to the forest.

In the 16th century the roads became the subject of legislative enactments, yet so slow was communication between the distant provinces that the abdication of James II was not known in the Orkneys until three months after his flight.

Members of the New Zealand Railways staff at Frankton Junction over forty years ago.

Members of the New Zealand Railways staff at Frankton Junction over forty years ago.

Edinburgh was still thirteen days from London, as late as 1712; and not until 1763 were turnpike gates established all over England. A few years later a coach began to run, three times a week, from Manchester and Liverpool to London. Nominally, three days were occupied on the journey, but bad weather sometimes delayed the traveller for ten days, or even a fortnight.

Toward the close of the 18th century, Macadam by his invention revolutionised road making, and early in 1800 the coaching system reached its zenith; but still, it was a very slow and laborious way of travelling.

Even as late as about 1850, the stage coach from York to London—a distance of barely 200 miles—took ten days in summer and twelve in winter. The writer goes on to speak of George Stephenson and his invention, and at this point his imagination runs rather wild, as he pictures a traveller from New Zealand page 18 page 19 standing on a broken arch of London Bridge, at a time so distant that the name of Stephenson will be “a myth and a mystery, his origin lost in the uncertain past.”