TONS OF SEPARATE PACKAGES 45 



Chester, Glasgow, Leeds, Bradford, Newcastle, Shef- 

 field, Birmingham, Gloucester, Cardiff, etc. 



One important feature of the traffic is that, although 

 the total quantities handled by the railways are so great, 

 they are consigned by hundreds of individual senders 

 (the majority of whom are of the * small ' type), and 

 consist of many thousands of separate packages, for- 

 warded to a great variety of salesmen or others, and 

 each requiring separate handling, with clerical work in 

 addition. It has been regarded as impracticable to 

 effect any combination among the growers with a view 

 to bulking their lots (the reason given being the perish- 

 able nature of the commodity), so that each consigner 

 acts independently of his neighbour, while even a 

 single consignment may be represented by 300 separate 

 baskets (' chips '), containing each only a few pounds of 

 fruit. 



The result of these conditions is that a total of 

 53 tons 15 cwt. of fruit taken from Wisbech by the 

 Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, per 

 passenger train, in the course of one day's operations, 

 was represented by 17,289 separate packages, principally 

 ' chips.' Even this figure has been surpassed in the 

 experience of the Great Eastern Company, which once 

 dealt, at Wisbech, with 25,122 packages of fruit in one 

 day, sent by passenger train, irrespective of consign- 

 ments by goods trains, one reason for this great number 

 being, perhaps, that the Great Eastern station is situate 

 in a part of the district where there is a larger proportion 

 of small growers. 



It follows, therefore, that whatever the traders may 

 think of the rates that are charged for transit, the 

 railway companies have to do a good deal of work in 

 return for their money, apart from the cost of running 

 special trains. In fact, to handle the traffic at all with 



