Motors and Railways. 



423 



THE EDITOR OF "THE AUTOCAR." 



Naturally, our bias is in favour of the motor 

 car, but we desire to be fair. There is no ques- 

 tion whatever that the railway services are 

 capable of vast improvement, and it is equally 

 certain that not only can they be fed by motor 

 wagons and vans with the greatest advantage, 

 but that in many cases it Is far more expeditious 

 and cheaper to send the goods by road rather 

 than by rail. On the other hand, we have to 

 bear in mind that the post office contractors, 

 who probably know their business as well as 

 most people, do not find that it pays them to 

 carry mails or parcels by road for distances 

 much in excess of a hundred miles. While it is 

 true they have taken from the railways the more 

 profitable short-distance work, they have taken 

 very good care to leave them the long-distance 

 transport. It appears to us that too much is 

 made of the concentration of the railways upon 

 London. While this concentration is an ad- 

 mitted fact, it should be borne in mind that there 

 is a similar concentration on all the great 

 centres of population which is at least propor- 

 tionate to their demands. While it is not for 

 us to hold a brief for the railway companies, as 

 those responsible for their working are quite 

 capable of defending their own methods, we do 

 not think that they have been quite fairly treated 

 by the critic in the Review of Reviews. There 

 is great need for more expeditious service on the 

 railways, just as there is great need for a much 

 larger number of motor delivery vans and 

 lorries for short-distance work all over the 

 country and particularly for feeding the smaller 

 centres of population with the produce of the 

 surrounding country. Much more could be done 

 in this way if the farmers of the various districts 

 would work together instead of, in the main, 

 working in opposition, but this is a matter which 

 is altogether outside our province. . . . 



As to the charges made by the railway com- 

 panies, they are often very difficult to follow, 

 and, apparently, too frequently without rhyme 

 or reason, hut here again it must be borne in 

 mind that almost every yard of a railway has 

 been purchased at a ruinous price ; in other 



words, the nation is reaping that which it has 

 sown. Our forbears made it impossible for the 

 railway companies to acquire land except on 

 unreasonable terms, and this increased the 

 capital charges so greatly that the generations 

 after have had to pay far higher rates than if the 

 railway companies had been able to purchase 

 their land at a reasonable cost and without ex- 

 cessive legal expenses. 



While the motor car is undoubtedly a rival of 

 the railway, we still think that the best results 

 to the country at large would be obtained by a 

 well-devised system of co-operation between the 

 two. After all, competition is a good spur, and 

 just as the railway companies have been spurred 

 by the competition of the electric railways and 

 trams in connection with suburban services, so 

 will they be spurred by the competition of the 

 motor vehicle, which will, unquestionably, be- 

 come keener and keener. But the motor vehicle 

 is not going to sound the death knell of the rail- 

 ways, though quite likely it may not only revo- 

 lutionise their methods of handling traffic, but 

 also their means of propulsion. 



It is, perhaps, hardly the time or the place to 

 take up the question of the internal combustion 

 locomotive, but we already have it in a small 

 form for branch line w-ork in the motor coaches, 

 and it is likely to develop on the railways just as 

 it is developing on the seas. Neither main line 

 locomotives nor great liners have yet availed 

 themselves of the internal combustion engine, 

 but unquestionably they will do so. . . . 



Instead of the heavy and comparatively infre- 

 quent steam trains we want faster, lighter, and 

 much more frequent trains, and to this sort of 

 work the internal combustion engine specially 

 lends itself. Compare the motor car to convey 

 four people, which is a locomotive and carriage 

 combined and which weighs, say, thirty hun- 

 dredweight, with the weight of the railway 

 carriage and railway engine which are necessary 

 to carry the same number from place to place, 

 and ir will be found that practically where the 

 motor requires a hundredweight the railway 

 requires a ton. 



LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU, Editor of The Car. 



The article in the Review of Reviews called studied the growth of automobilism can have 

 The Death Knell of British Railways " has a any doubt that the majority of traffic in the 



great deal of truth in it. For many years I 

 have been pf)inting out in the pages of the Car, 

 and elsewhere, that under present conditions 

 British railways have lillle or nothing to look 

 forward to, excepting a gradual reduction in 

 their net profits. In addition, no one who has 



future will be road borne and not railway 

 borne. 



I'Vom investigations which I have made at 

 various times I am convinced that there is 

 hardly any kind of freighl which could not be 

 conveyed more cheaply from the producer to the 



