TRAFFIC BY RAIL 139 



stantial quantities. Of plums thousands of tons go 

 to the jam factories. Of strawberries a single train may 

 take up to 20 tons. In October the fruits will have 

 fallen off, but sprouts will have begun, and cauliflowers 

 are carried in bulk, so that the truck-loads still number 

 200 a day; in November a heavy business in sprouts 

 and savoys keeps the total up to 120, and throughout 

 December the consignments still require an average 

 of 100 trucks a day. The loading of the waggons 

 ranges from 23 cwt. to 4 or 5 tons, according to the 

 commodities carried. 



It is quite a common occurrence in the height of the 

 season for a single railway company to send off six 

 special vegetable trains a day from Evesham. But, 

 although the quantities handled are so substantial in 

 the aggregate, the general average of the weight per 

 consignment is comparatively small, as may well be 

 the case considering that there are about 200 ' small ' 

 senders in the district, in addition to the ' large ' ones, 

 and that the produce is sent off to so many different 

 consignees in so very many different towns throughout 

 the United Kingdom. Then, again, a single consign- 

 ment, forwarded by one trader to one customer, has 

 been known to consist of twenty-three different kinds 

 of vegetables. In this way if the number of consign- 

 ments handled by a single company on an ordinary 

 busy day were put at 500, the number of packages 

 comprised therein might be anything up to 10,000. 

 As these would nearly all be delivered at the station 

 between 4.30 and 6 p.m., the reader may, perhaps, 

 form some idea of the ' rush ' which takes place in 

 dealing with the traffic. A * census ' of the vehicles 

 entering the Great Western goods-yard at Evesham 

 during the course of a day in July showed a total 

 of 717. 



