Belgium was the first continental country to follow the railway example of England. Very soon after King Leopold was seated securely on his throne, he initiated measures for the construction of railways in Belgium; and a law was passed in 1834, sanctioning that compact system which, having Mechlin as a centre, branches out in four directions--to Liege, Antwerp, Brussels, and Ostend; and there were also lines sanctioned to the Prussian frontier, and the French frontier--the whole giving a length of about 247 English miles. Three years afterwards, a law was passed for the construction of 94 additional miles of railway--to Courtrai, Tournay, Namur, and other towns. In the western part of Belgium, the engineering difficulties were not of a formidable character; but towards the Prussian frontier, the bridges, cuttings, and embankments are so extensive, as to have rendered the works far more costly than in the average of continental railways. The Belgian Chambers provided the money, or rather authorised the government to borrow it, year after year. The first portion of railway was opened in 1835, and every year from thence till 1843, witnessed the opening of additional portions; until at length, in this last-named year, all the 341 miles mentioned above were opened for traffic. The cost varied from L.6140 per mile (near Courtrai), to L.38,700 per mile (near Liege); the entire cost of the whole, including working-plant, was within L.17,000 per average mile. While these railways were progressing, private companies were formed for the construction of other lines, to the extent of about 200 additional miles, most of which are now open--the Namur and Liege being opened in 1851. These various railways are said to have yielded, on an average, about 3-1/2 per cent. on the outlay.
It was of course impossible for France to see its little neighbour, Belgium, advancing in its railway course, without setting a similar movement on foot; but various circumstances have given a lingering character to French railway enterprise. It was in 1837 that the short railway from Paris through Versailles to St Germain--the first passenger line in France--was opened. In the next following year, two companies, aided by the government in certain ways, undertook the construction of the railways from Paris to Rouen, and from Paris to Orleans. The French government, having a strong taste for centralisation in national matters, formed in 1842 that plan which has since, with some modifications, been carried into execution. The plan consisted in causing the great lines of communication to be surveyed and marked out by government engineers, and then to be ceded to joint-stock companies, to be constructed on certain conditions. There were to be seven such lines radiating from Paris: to the Belgian frontier; to one or more ports on the Channel; to the Atlantic ports; to Bordeaux; to the Spanish frontier; to Marseille; and to Rhenish Prussia. The government has had to concede more favourable conditions to some of these companies than were at first intended, to get the lines constructed at all. The first and second of the above lines of communication are now almost fully opened; the third is finished to Chartres; the fourth, to Nantes and Poitiers; the fifth, to Chateauroux; the sixth, to Chalons, with another portion from Avignon to Marseille; while the seventh, or Paris and Strasbourg Railway, is that of which the final opening has been recently celebrated with so much firing of guns, drinking of healths, blessing of locomotives, and speechifyings of presidents. At the close of 1851, the length of French railway opened was about 1800 miles; while the portion since opened, or now in progress or projected, amounts to about as much more. In the president's speech to the National Assembly in 1851 (of course, _before_ the _coup d'état_), it was announced that the length of French railway to be finished and opened in 1851 would be 516 kilomètres (about 320 miles); and in 1852, about 330 kilomètres (205 miles.)
Prussia loves centralisation little less than France in other matters; but in railway enterprise she has allowed mercantile competition to have freer scope. Private companies have constructed nearly all the Prussian railways; but in cases where the traffic appeared likely to be small, the government has rendered aid in one of three or four modes. The government will not permit any parallel or competing lines; and it holds the power of purchasing the railways after a lapse of thirty years, on certain specified terms. On this principle have been constructed the railways which radiate from Berlin in five different directions--towards Hamburg, Hanover, Saxony, Silesia, and the Baltic; together with minor branches springing out of them, and also the railways which accommodate the rich Rhenish provinces belonging to Prussia. The Prussian railways open and at work at the close of 1851 appear to have been about 1800 miles in length.
In the heterogeneous mass of states which constitute Germany, the railways have for the most part been constructed by, and belong to, the respective governments. Such is the case in Baden, Hanover, Brunswick, Würtemberg, Bavaria, and many of the petty states; and such is also the case in the imperial dominions in Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Styria. There may be some among these lines of railway which belong to companies, but, as a general rule, they constitute government property. If we include Prussia and the Austrian dominions in the general name of Germany, we find the railways very unequally distributed. An oblong quadrangular district, measuring about 400 miles from east to west, and 200 from north to south, and lying eastward of the Netherlands, contains a net-work of railways which contrast remarkably with those of east, south, and central Germany; it includes Hamburg, Berlin, Leipsic, Dresden, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Hanover, Bremen, and a busy knot of other important towns. Although the various German railways twist about in more tortuous forms than those of England--for the engineers have studied economy by going round hills rather than through them--and although they are broken up into many different proprietorships by passing through so many petty states, yet there may be traced certain great lines of communication which run nearly or entirely across the whole of Germany. Starting from Cologne, we find one line running through Elberfeld, Minden, Hanover, Brunswick, Berlin, to Bromberg and Posen; another from Cologne--with a short break not yet completed in Westphalia--to Cassel, Gotha, Weimar, Leipsic, Dresden, Breslau, and Cracow; a third from Hamburg, through Magdeburg, Leipsic, Dresden, Prague, Presburg, and Pesth, into the heart of Hungary; a fourth from the Baltic at Stettin, through Berlin, Leipsic, Nürnberg, Augsburg, to the vicinity of the Lake of Constance; and a fifth from Warsaw, through Vienna, to the vicinity of the Adriatic. Dr Lardner has estimated, that if we include the Netherlands and the Austrian and Prussian dominions within the German group, the German railways at the beginning of 1851 were about 5100 miles in length, with 3000 miles more either in progress or decided on--making a total of between 8000 and 9000 miles. Many hundred miles of railway have been opened since the date to which this estimate refers.
Our Bradshaw leaves us little to notice on the continent beyond the groups of railways included under the above four systems. The Dutch have given a curious serpentine line of railway, about 150 miles in length, from Rotterdam through Schiedam, Delft, The Hague, Leyden, Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, to Arnhem--an economical mode of linking most of the chief towns together. Holstein, the recent field of struggle between the Danes and the Germans, has its humble quota of about 100 miles of railway, from Altona to Glückstadt, Rendsburg, and Kiel, connecting the German Ocean with the Baltic in a very convenient way. Russia has a railway in its Polish dominions from Warsaw to Cracow; a short bit from St Petersburg to Tsarkoé-soélo; portions of the projected great lines from St Petersburg to Moscow and to Warsaw, and a horse railway connecting the Don with the Volga. Italy has a few bits of railway--perhaps quite as much as we could yet expect in so strangely governed a country; one from Venice through Padua, Vicenza, and Verona, to Mantua; another from Treviglio to Milan, Monza, and Como; a Piedmontese line from Genoa to Alessandria and Turin; a Tuscan web which connects Florence, Sienna, Pistoja, Lucca, Pisa, and Leghorn, in a roundabout way; and a few miles of Neapolitan railway, to connect Naples with Pompeii, Portici, Castel-a-mare, and Capua. Rome, behindhand in most things, is behindhand in railways. Switzerland has its little railway of twenty-five miles, from Zurich to Baden. Spain has its two small lines, from Madrid to Aranjuez, and from Barcelona to Mataro. Turkey and Greece, in the south-east; Portugal, in the south-west; Sweden and Norway,[1] in the bleak north, have yet to become members of the great European railway system.