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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



been conveyed, is also omitted. Thus, the mere 

 mileage of trains is a figure without statistical 

 value, as long as it is unknown what the trains 

 in question weigh. 



If we refer to the accounts of the French rail- 

 ways which are given in the "Annuaire Officiel," 

 we shall be able to analyze the working expendi- 

 ture of the lines of the Est, the Midi, the Ouesl, 

 the Orleans, and the Lyons Railways. Each of 

 the last two lines consists of a double system ; so 

 that, in fact, we have seven independent subjects 

 for comparison. The mean cost of moving 100 

 tons of gross load on these seven lines, in 18*72, 

 was 25.4(i. In the passenger-trains 5.5 tons of 

 net, or paying load, was carried per 100 tons of 

 loaded train. On the average of goods and min- 

 eral trains, 38.5 tons of net, or paying load, was 

 carried for every 100 tons gross load of freight 

 and train. 



In the same way, we may take the results of 

 the working of the seven principal Indian rail- 

 ways. These are the East Indian, the Jubbul- 

 pore branch of the same line, the Great Indian 

 Peninsula, the Madras, the Bombay, Baroda, 

 Central India, the Punjaub & Delhi, and the East- 

 ern Bengal lines. On these railways the mean 

 cost of conveying 100 tons of gross load for a 

 mile, in 1875, was 26.6tZ. The net, or paying 

 weight, conveyed by the passenger-trains, aver- 

 aged 11.8 per cent, of the gross load, being more 

 than twice as much in proportion to the dead- 

 weight as on the French lines. For goods and 

 mineral traffic, 100 tons of loaded train contained 

 32.7 tons of freight. 



In America working costs are higher. There 

 has, indeed, been a reduction of as much as 32 

 per cent, in the cost of working on the Louisville 

 & Great Southern Railway since 1873. In that 

 year the cost of conveying 100 tons of gross load 

 for a mile, averaged over seven sections of line, 

 was 56. id., or more than double the Indian aver- 

 age. In India, it should be remarked, the cost 

 varied considerably on the different lines, being 

 as low as l7.2rf. per 100 ton-miles-gross on the 

 East Indian line, and amounting to 35(7. for the 

 same duty on the Madras Railway. On the 

 French lines the range is not so wide, the cheap- 

 est duty performed having been on the ancien 

 rcseau of the Chemin de Fer d'Orleans, where the 

 cost of moving 100 tons of gross load for a mile 

 was 20(/., and the highest being the figure of 

 37.5df. for the same duty, which was the cost on 

 the nouvcau reseau of the Chemin de Fer de 

 Lyons. 



If the proportions of dead-weight to paying 



load were the same on the French and the En<r- 

 lish, or on the Indian and the English, railways, 

 it would be a comparatively simple calculation to 

 arrive at the average price per ton-mile-gross of 

 the railway-duty of this country. But the pro- 

 portion actually existing is very hard to ascer- 

 tain. No information is published on the sub- 

 ject. In some special cases, where the traffic is 

 of an unusually regular character, as on the 

 Metropolitan and the Taff Vale Railways, it may 

 be possible to approach very closely to the truth 

 in this respect. But for general purposes we 

 must be content to assume a proportion equal to 

 that of the mean of the fourteen railways ana- 

 lyzed, subject to future verification or correction. 



The average charges per passenger and per 

 ton of goods are estimated by M. de Franqueville 

 at between 16 and 17 per cent, higher in England 

 than in France. The working expenses, expressed 

 in percentage of gross income, are 11 per cent, 

 higher in the former country than in the latter. 

 If the proportions of net and gross weight are the 

 same, the working cost in England, on these data, 

 will be 27.5 per cent, higher than in France — a 

 proportion which gives the cost of 32.4(7. per 100 

 ton-miles-gross as that of the English duty. 



If we make a similar comparison with the In- 

 dian lines, we find that the goods tariff is about 

 the same as that of the English railways, and that 

 the passenger fares on the Indian are about a 

 third of those on the English lines. The work- 

 ing costs on the seven lines analyzed, in 1875, 

 amounted to 49 per cent, of the gross revenue in 

 India, and to 54.4 per cent, of the gross revenue 

 in the United Kingdom. The gross receipts from 

 the Indian passenger traffic are 32.3 per cent, of 

 the total earnings. The corrections due to these 

 differences amount to an increase of the Indian 

 working cost per ton-mile by nearly 28 per cent, 

 for the English equivalent. This gives a working 

 cost for the latter of 33.9 per 100 ton-miles-gross 

 — a result within l.Sd. of that arrived at from 

 comparison of the French lines. It is impossible 

 to come closer to the mark without a correct 

 statement of the tare, or dead-weight, in each 

 case and in each description of traffic. The 

 smaller tare of the Indian lines in the passenger 

 traffic, while the goods tare is less than on the 

 French lines, goes far to account for the differ- 

 ence in the results above stated. 



The passenger traffic of the United Kingdom 

 for the year 18*75, allowing fifteen passengers to 

 the ton, involved the transport of 34.2 million 

 tons of net weight. We have before remarked 

 that the average length of a passenger journey is 



