What is Wrong with the Railways? 



GOODS WAGONS INSTEAD OF WAREHOUSES. 



AY by day the interest in the ques- 

 tion of our railways and why they 

 do not succeed better as commer- 

 cial undertakings and in their task 

 for the national welfare and de- 

 velopment is growing, and it will 

 be very remarkable if annual meetings of the 

 various railway companies do not become verit- 

 able purgatories for the numerous directors. 

 Shareholders, angry with reason and equipped 

 with argument, will no longer sadly acquiesce 

 in no dividends, but will demand explanations. 

 Judging from the utter lack of any serious at- 

 tempt to reply to the statements and figures put 

 forward in an article entitled " The Death- 

 Knell of British Railways " (September, 1912), 

 we should imagine that the directors will not be 

 able seriously to defend the present state of 

 affairs. There was no more striking fact or 

 diagram in the article in question than that re- 

 lating to the life of a goods wagon and the 

 incredibly short period in which it was in 

 motion. This question is so vital a one that we 

 think it well to devote some space in explaining 

 it, even although no railway authority has ven- 

 tured openly to touch it. 



How is it possible that a goods wagon can 

 only be in use for six months during its life of 

 17 years? 



The obvious reason must be that there are far 

 too many wagons and they cannot therefore be 

 kept employed. But to state this as a fact when 

 so many traders all over the country are com- 

 plaining of the great shortage of wagons would 

 seem to be most absurd ; nevertheless the state- 

 ment is true. 



Railway companies do not compete with each 

 other in rates of carriage, but they do so 

 furiously in facilities ; the chief facility in which 

 competition is so rampant is that of allowing 

 traders, and especially large tracers, to hold up 

 wagons under load, to stand for weeks, and even 

 months, without charge for demurrage. There 

 are many miles of wagons held up in this man- 

 ner now, if not at the receiving stations, then 

 at the junctions en route. Large traders such 

 as manufacturers, iron-works, breweries, etc., 

 will not themselves provide or arrange for stor- 

 age, warehouse, or siding accommodation for 

 their enormous requirements of raw material 

 whilst they can get all the accommodation they 



require from the railway companies free. 

 Buyers will order large quantities of material — 

 say, 500 or 1,000 tons — all of which may be 

 loaded up from the sending station in a few 

 days, but the buyer has made no provision for 

 relieving the wagons as rapidly as they have 

 been loaded ; that does not trouble him. He 

 perhaps can only release two or three wagons 

 a day, but he knows that the other wagons will 

 be held up at some junction on the way and 

 passed on to his station in numbers most con- 

 venient to him. In many cases the railway com- 

 panies have provided many miles of sidings at 

 the buyer's station simply for standing room 

 for wagons awaiting the convenience of the 

 buyer. All this enormous cost to railway com- 

 panies is brought about by insane competition. 

 Most stations are approached by routes belong- 

 ing to two or three competing railway com- 

 panies. If any company notifies the consignees 

 that they require their wagons unloading 

 quickly they are promptly told they will lose all 

 their traflfic in future. 



This holding up of wagons has most dire 

 results in other ways. The junctions arc so 

 terribly crowded that the sorting and marshalling 

 of ordinary traflfic is blocked, and goods 

 take three or four times as long on the road as 

 they should do ; further, there is an actual short- 

 age of wagon supplies to the general trader. 

 The shortage is perhaps felt most at the sea- 

 ports, which become frightfully congested. 

 Cargoes are arriving daily; warehouses, dock 

 quays, barges, etc., all become choked up with 

 goods; traders all clamouring for wagons, and 

 few obtainable. In many cases cargoes are 

 dumped one on the top of another in order to 

 prevent ship's demurrage claims. 



The congestion on the railways and at the 

 docks is practically all caused by reason of the 

 holding up of wagons. There will be no relief 

 until the railway companies come to their senses 

 and make a charge for demurrage on all wagons 

 delayed. The loss to railway companies must 

 run into many millions. The cost of the extra 

 wagons required and the sidings necessary for 

 them, without calculating .the interest on' this 

 outlay, must be enormous. The loss to traders 

 generally in the great delays in transport caused 

 by the congested state of railwavs must also be 

 very heavy. If demurrage was charged and 



