At Camden will be found a large yard for the reception of the Midland Counties’ coal, the introduction of which has had a considerable effect in bringing down the price of sea-borne coal.

The cattle pens have lately been altered and enlarged.  Just before Christmas this place is almost as amusing and exciting as a Spanish bull-fight; although, as a general rule, the silence of a place where, during every quarter of an hour, of day and night, so enormous a business is being carried on, is very surprising.

Twenty-four steam waggon horses, or engines, for heavy loads are kept in a circular engine-house, or stable, 160 feet in diameter, with an iron roof.  This form renders every engine accessible at a moment’s notice.  The steam race-horses for the passenger work are kept in an oblong building opposite the carters.  The demand being more regular, there is no need for the expensive circular arrangement of stables for this class of engines.  In a large boiler-house, boiling water and red-hot coke are kept ready night and day, so that on the occasion of any sudden demand no time need be lost in getting up steam.  There is besides a waggon-building department, a shop for executing such trifling repairs in the locomotives as need no reference to the great workshop at Wolverton.  The passenger carriages are most of them built at Euston station, by Mr. Wright.

The carrying department is very conveniently situated close to the Regent’s Canal, so as to have easy communication with inland as well as sea navigation.  A series of sheds occupy an area of 135,000 superficial feet, and the platforms to receive goods from railway trucks on one side and from waggons on the other, occupy 30,000 feet.  These platforms and sheds are provided with 110 cranes, for loading and unloading, with a power varying from one ton and a half to twenty tons.  By these appliances, work of the most miscellaneous character goes on all day, and part of the night.

The railway trucks and waggons are moved about by horses:  it is amusing to see the activity with which the heavy brutes often bring a waggon up at a trot, jump out of the way just at the right moment, and allow the waggon to roll up to the right spot by its own momentum.

The horses are lodged in stables in the underground vaults, which we cannot commend, as they are dark, damp, full of draughts, and yet ill ventilated; but it was necessary to use these vaults, and difficult to find stabling for such a number of horses close at hand.

The carrying department at Camden is very miscellaneous, and moves everything, from the contents of a nursery ground to a full grown locomotive, but they do not impress a stranger so much as the arrangements at Manchester and Liverpool.  The annual consumption of gas at Camden exceeds six million cubic feet.