SECTION F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 
THE FUTURE OF RAIL TRANSPORT 
ADDRESS BY 
H. M. HALLSWORTH, C.B.E., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
One hundred years ago the ‘calamity of railways,’ as Sir James McAdam 
termed it, fell on the existing means of transport. ‘Though the Stockton 
and Darlington Railway had been opened for trafficin September 1825, and 
the locomotive had been known since 1804, it was still doubtful whether 
locomotives could be used on lines with heavy gradients. It was the 
success of Stephenson’s ‘ Rapid’ and Hawthorn’s “‘ Comet’ on a section 
of the Newcastle and Carlisle railway in March 1835 which set the seal 
on their success, and led railway promoters to think no longer of horses 
and stationary engines as the tractive power on the new roads. Three 
years later locomotives were working the whole length of the line from 
Newcastle to Carlisle, and an era of rapid railway development began. 
The effect of railway competition on the canal companies, the stage 
coaches, and the road carriers of that time is well known. At first slowly, 
yet in the end surely, and in spite of severe reductions in their tolls, the 
canals lost all but the slow and bulky traffic. ‘The effect on the turn-pike 
roads was no less severe. Horse-drawn traffic, it is true, not only survived 
the early days of railways, but actually increased, though long-distance 
journeys by road, whether of passengers or goods, practically ceased. 
As Prof. Clapham says, ‘ Carts and cabs increased, but coaches and 
posting-horses decayed. Journeys behind horses multiplied; but long 
journeys behind horses stopped. . . . The tragedy was repeated on each 
trunk route as the sleepers and metals were laid along it... . The effect 
in every case was instantaneous and inevitable.’ 
To-day it is the railways whose established position is assailed. Compe- 
tition by road has taken on a new form; coastwise traffic has increased ; 
the reliability and efficiency of the internal combustion engine has 
opened up the air for a third competitor. 
In view of these developments in transport, what is the future position 
of the railways likely to be? Are they to be displaced from their position 
as the chief mode of transport, to which the rest are supplementary, and 
to be relegated to a position of secondary importance in the transport 
system of the twentieth century ? It is a question of far-reaching import- 
ance. I agree with Sir Josiah Stamp that of the country’s domestic 
problems at the present time none presses more gravely on the nation 
than the position and future outlook of the railway system. The number 
of workpeople it employs, the amount of capital invested in it, the 
increasing difficulty of providing for and controlling the traffic on the 
roads, the vital importance of securing for the community the most 
