Bletchley is also intricate, because it is here that the third line of railway, ordered by the London and North-Western Company in 1858, commences, and is continued except through the Watford Tunnel (at either end of which it is very ingeniously connected with the original up-line of railway) on to Camden Station. This third line is solely for up goods, cattle, and mineral traffic, and the relative speed of such trains and those for passengers can be seen and appreciated, as the latter pass alongside the former for a minute or two, and then leave them behind at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour—twenty _versus_ forty-five.
Time was when Wolverton was looked upon as the most dangerous part of the whole line between London and Liverpool. It was, therefore, a halting place not only for all passenger trains, but goods trains came to a stand there also. At Wolverton likewise were the main locomotive repairing shops of the original London and Birmingham Company; and when the company was amalgamated with the Grand Junction and other companies, the locomotive establishment became that for the southern division of the London and North-Western Company, the two northern points of which are, Birmingham, looking westward, and Stafford, looking slightly to the eastward. In process of time the repairing shops have been doubled, trebled, nearly quadrupled. In 1840 Wolverton had a population of 2,000, all of whom were company’s servants or their families. In 1849 it was double that number, and now, in 1867, it is 6,000. But of this number about 1,700 are on the wing with their families. These are the men who have hitherto been employed in the locomotive works, which (as stated at page 199) have just been transferred to Crewe. These men and their families, however, will not leave a void in the population, as their places will be supplied from the carriage portion of the Crewe establishment, and from the carriage works of the company, until now located at Saltley, near Birmingham.
The chief owners of land at Wolverton are the trustees of the Radcliffe Library Estate at Oxford; and, although they have erected upon the property a church, to which is attached a churchyard (already beginning to show a great many mounds), they have always been unwilling to dispose of land for building purposes to the extent required by the company. The consequence has been that part of the town or village of Wolverton has had to be built nearly a mile away from it!—at a place called Stantonbury, to the great inconvenience and discomfort of all the men who have to take up their quarters in that locality.