The steam engine familiarly explained and illustrated; with an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain maxims for railway speculators. By the Rev. Dionysius Lardner ... With additions and notes by James Renwick ...

PLAIN RULES FOR RAILWAY SPECULATORS. 311
The average number of passengers daily between Liverpool and Manchester, before the formation of the railway,
was about 450; the present average number is above 1300.
A short railroad of about five miles is constructed between
Dublin and Kingstown: on which the average number of
passengers daily between those places has increased in nearly
the same proportion.
II.
Passengers can be profitably transported by canal, at a
speed not exceeding nine miles an hour, exclusive of delays
at locks, at the rate of one penny per head per mile. The
average fares charged upon the Manchester railway are at
the rate of lT 4,d. per head per mile, the average speed being
twenty miles an hour.
To transport passengers at the rate of ten miles an hour
on a railway would cost very little less than the greater
speed of twenty miles an hour, so that a railroad could not
enter into competition on equal terms with a canal by equalising the speed.
The canal between Kendal and Preston measures 57
miles: passengers are transported upon it between these
places at the average speed of a mile in 6- minutes, or 9-,
miles an hour nearly, exclusive of delays at locks. The
fare charged is at the average rate of a penny a mile. There
are eight locks, rising 9 feet each, and a tunnel 400 yards
long, through which the boat is tracked by hand; the tunnel
requires 5 minutes, and the locks from 25 to 28 minutes, in
descending, and 45 to 48 minutes in ascending.
Similar boats are worked on the Forth and Clyde, and the
Union Canals in Scotland, and on the Paisley and Johnstone
canal, at nearly the same fares.