VEGETABLE TRAINS 121 



The broccoli, potato, and cabbage traffic (according 

 to season) is carried in special vegetable trains, which 

 start from the Ponsandane siding (one mile east of 

 Penzance, and the same distance west of Marazion), 

 and pick up at Marazion or other stations as required. 

 At the Ponsandane siding there is accommodation for 

 loading forty trucks at one and the same time. Taking 

 the whole of West Cornwall, as many as 938 trucks 

 were loaded up and sent away during a single week 

 namely, the week ending April 8 in the season of 1905, 

 the totals for the weeks immediately succeeding, as the 

 quantities declined, being 878, 657, 429, 245, and so on. 

 It frequently happens that as many as ten special 

 vegetable trains, carrying broccoli principally, will be 

 sent off in a single day ; though it should be added that, 

 owing to the heavy gradients, not more than twenty-five 

 waggons would be hauled in one train by one locomo- 

 tive. The average loading of broccoli per waggon 

 (owing to the lightness of the commodities) does not 

 exceed about 2j tons. The consignments go in 

 large quantities, not alone to London, but, by transfer 

 to the lines of other companies, to practically all im- 

 portant towns in the Midlands and in the North as 

 far as Dundee. The Manchester Corporation markets 

 alone have received their 200 tons of broccoli from 

 West Cornwall on a single day. 



We have here, therefore, an industry that well deserves 

 to be taken into account among the agricultural enter- 

 prises of the country. The question as to the precise 

 extent to which it ' pays ' seems to be a matter chiefly 

 of men and markets. There are growers who get into 

 debt at the beginning of the season, and do not get out 

 of it at the end. They sell their crop to some local 

 middleman, who naturally gives them a lower price 

 than the larger growers obtain by consigning direct 



