million dollars. Salamanca’s interest was piqued. But, instead of lending the Spaniard a million, Train walked out with Salamanca’s signature on notes for a million. With this money pledged, Train wangled $2,200,000 worth of credit from manufacturers of iron in Wales. With the financing completed, Train permitted the Queen’s representative in London, James McHenry, who had made a fortune exporting dairy products from America, to take over and push the project to completion.
Train collected $100,000 in commissions. The four hundred miles of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad were built across three states, including the Queen’s acres. The railroad proved a terrible failure. It went into receivership three times in thirteen years before it finally became a success as part of the Erie Railroad. In the end, the Queen saw no profits. And the invincible Don Jose de Salamanca had nothing to show for his gamble beyond a sea of red ink and a town named Salamanca in New York.
Train, however, was heady with his coup and certain that he could make more money by concentrating on transportation. Impressed by horse-drawn streetcars in Philadelphia and New York, he decided to promote them, with a few innovations of his own, in Europe. England, especially, seemed a likely place. Train had long been appalled by the snail’s pace of its carriage traffic. Further, he felt that English labor sorely needed a cheap means of public transportation.
He took his radical ideas to Liverpool. They were promptly rejected by the authorities, who felt that his trams would clutter the thoroughfares and provide unfair competition for the omnibuses. He moved on to neighboring Birkenhead, and there found that an old shipbuilding friend was chairman of the city commissioners. By promising many concessions among them that he would rip up his tracks and repair the streets at his own expense if the system proved a nuisance Train was given permission to proceed with a “horse tramway.” He laid four miles of tracks, provided spacious streetcars, each drawn by horses, and inaugurated the line on August 30, 1860. The tramway was an immediate sensation.
Certain that he had overcome all opposition, Train stormed into London. But there he ran into a stone wall. The omnibus people, fearing competition, and the gentry, objecting to overcrowded passages, vigorously opposed him. Train fought the harder, and finally by his eloquence gained permission for an experimental two-mile track from Hyde Park to Bayswater.
Though the omnibus drivers tried to sabotage him by wrecking his rails with their vehicles, and though the gentry had him jailed once for creating a nuisance, Train might have succeeded but for an unfortunate accident. One day a small boy was run down by a tram. The uproar was tremendous. Train was arrested for manslaughter. Though he was acquitted, the bill authorizing extension of his streetcar lines was voted down in Parliament.
Undeterred, Train continued to promote his street railways. Glasgow and Birmingham rejected them; Staffordshire allowed him to construct seven miles of track. Gradually, Train broke down resistance, and eventually, he saw his streetcars spread throughout Great Britain and then to Copenhagen, Geneva, and Bombay.
Train’s battle for cheap transportation in England was a minor skirmish compared with another battle he fought, against the British upper classes on behalf of the Union cause in the Civil War. It was the eve of Fort Sumter. English nobility, distrusting the North’s radical democracy, feeling kinship for the South’s culture, allied itself with English industrialists, who needed Southern cotton, in backing the Confederacy. Only the inarticulate British masses, who sensed that Lincoln’s ideals were their own, sided with the Union.
If the British people were inarticulate, George Francis Train was not. He appointed himself their spokesman. He took to the public platform, wrote pamphlets, and published a
Train collected $100,000 in commissions. The four hundred miles of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad were built across three states, including the Queen’s acres. The railroad proved a terrible failure. It went into receivership three times in thirteen years before it finally became a success as part of the Erie Railroad. In the end, the Queen saw no profits. And the invincible Don Jose de Salamanca had nothing to show for his gamble beyond a sea of red ink and a town named Salamanca in New York.
Train, however, was heady with his coup and certain that he could make more money by concentrating on transportation. Impressed by horse-drawn streetcars in Philadelphia and New York, he decided to promote them, with a few innovations of his own, in Europe. England, especially, seemed a likely place. Train had long been appalled by the snail’s pace of its carriage traffic. Further, he felt that English labor sorely needed a cheap means of public transportation.
He took his radical ideas to Liverpool. They were promptly rejected by the authorities, who felt that his trams would clutter the thoroughfares and provide unfair competition for the omnibuses. He moved on to neighboring Birkenhead, and there found that an old shipbuilding friend was chairman of the city commissioners. By promising many concessions among them that he would rip up his tracks and repair the streets at his own expense if the system proved a nuisance Train was given permission to proceed with a “horse tramway.” He laid four miles of tracks, provided spacious streetcars, each drawn by horses, and inaugurated the line on August 30, 1860. The tramway was an immediate sensation.
Certain that he had overcome all opposition, Train stormed into London. But there he ran into a stone wall. The omnibus people, fearing competition, and the gentry, objecting to overcrowded passages, vigorously opposed him. Train fought the harder, and finally by his eloquence gained permission for an experimental two-mile track from Hyde Park to Bayswater.
Though the omnibus drivers tried to sabotage him by wrecking his rails with their vehicles, and though the gentry had him jailed once for creating a nuisance, Train might have succeeded but for an unfortunate accident. One day a small boy was run down by a tram. The uproar was tremendous. Train was arrested for manslaughter. Though he was acquitted, the bill authorizing extension of his streetcar lines was voted down in Parliament.
Undeterred, Train continued to promote his street railways. Glasgow and Birmingham rejected them; Staffordshire allowed him to construct seven miles of track. Gradually, Train broke down resistance, and eventually, he saw his streetcars spread throughout Great Britain and then to Copenhagen, Geneva, and Bombay.
Train’s battle for cheap transportation in England was a minor skirmish compared with another battle he fought, against the British upper classes on behalf of the Union cause in the Civil War. It was the eve of Fort Sumter. English nobility, distrusting the North’s radical democracy, feeling kinship for the South’s culture, allied itself with English industrialists, who needed Southern cotton, in backing the Confederacy. Only the inarticulate British masses, who sensed that Lincoln’s ideals were their own, sided with the Union.
If the British people were inarticulate, George Francis Train was not. He appointed himself their spokesman. He took to the public platform, wrote pamphlets, and published a
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