A PEACH OF A PAGEANT.
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By Dudley W. Walton, F.S.S.
rilHE railway companies' Press agent rang me up on the telephone and suggested that if I met him at 6.30 at (or, rather, inside) the " Hole-in-the-Wall " he would tell me all about the forthcoming pageant to celebrate the railway centenary.
With the punctuality of a railway traveller I arrived at the "Role-in-the--Wall" at 6.25 p.m.—the place was closed: Outside were four railway guards, three ticket inspectors, two porters, and one who may have been a signalman. They were all waiting for the opening, and just as the Press agent came in view and greeted me the swing doors swung wide.
An aroma of coffee and other liquors greeted Os. I was introduced to the assembled company, paid the usual courtesies, and the agent and I retired with appropriate impedimenta to a secluded corner.
He began telling me about the pageant. There was to be a great film prepared shoWieg the history and developinerit of British railways from anno Domini 1.
This film was to be shown in the -United States, and one of the companies was sending over Stephenson's original locomotive, "Puffing Billy," to illustrate the progress of British railway methods.
This was, perhaps, a pity, but then, he added, "There are plenty more old locomotives on our line to show the public." *
I am afraid I did not listen very intently. • In fact, Ywas affected by the tobacco fumes in the low-vaulted railway arch, but I woke up suddenly and took full notice when he began talking about what the railways arc doing to-day.
Why "Booking" Offices ?
"We still use the expression'booking office' because in 1825, when passengers paid their fares, they were actually entered in a book. We can't go back to those days, but in order to obviate the inconvenience of rush hours we have reduced the booking-office staffs so that the passenger is obliged to take more time in getting his ticket. Of course, if people queue up to buy their tickets an hour before the train starts they can often travel by the train before! This spreads the traffic out more evenly. In the same way we close our parcel offices earlier, and if you want to be quite sure that your parcel will be put on a train to-morrow you should hand it in yesterday. This is what we call ' motion
study.' Personally, and unofficially, I attribute our decreasing goods traffic to these new regulations, but then the less traffic there is to handle the easier we can handle what comes along.
The "Dear" Old Horses.
"We still cling to our dear aid horses. In fact, the railways employ 18,320 horses for road vehicles, and we actually have 8,456 more road vehicles than locomotives! The railway is the largest road transport organization, or, perhaps, disorganization, in the world, using a total, according to the latest report, of 32,639 road vehicles. I may mention here that our 24,184 locomotives are all subject to heavy depreciation; in fact, we have written off 10 per cent, for so many years that most of our engines are now quite valueless.
"Of course," he said, "we seldom buy new locomotives, except on paper. Just now we are repainting all our engines and renumbering them. We are starting the new numbers higher up. For instance, in the northern division, the numbers run from 14,000 to 17,999. When people see the new paint and the new numbers they think we are progressing, and when I release the news for publication the prices of our shares go up on the Stock Exchange. Realty, our locos, last longer than a lifetime. Aly grandfather drove the same engine that my grandson is driving to-day. -Yet our locomotives are very delicate. We need to take great care of them. On the 142-mile journey from London to Weymouth we change the engine three times, and that's more than you do with your wonderful road lorries. In other respects we are gradually getting back to pre-war or even to early Victorian standards of efficiency. We hope to get the speed of our 'slow goods' back to the figure of 1863, which was seven years after the Crimean. War. We shall show a slow-motion kinema picture of this.
Great Traditions.
"We have a great tradition to maintaiu upon our line,"
he said. We aim at doing a great many things to-day exactly as they were done a hundred years ago. For instance, we use exactly the same kind of steam, which, the ,. railway chemists tell us, is HO at 212 degs. Our board erf directors have always turned down the proposition that we should use steam at 100 degs. Centigrade, and we prefer to stick to the good old 212 degs. Fahrenheit, just as Stephenson used it. We do not believe in making improvements merely because other people make them, and, in fact, we do not believe that any of these new-fangled notions are improvements at all.
"We have not changed very much in the style of coach, as you will see from the old coach which is preserved upstairs. We found out long ago exactly how large, or, rather, how small, to make the passenger coaches to accommodate the maximum number of people. We do not go in for these so-called modern improvements ; we stick to the good old . methods with which, the railway started in 1825. If we make any improvement at all it will he to reduce the width of the seats. Our designers have been experimenting, and they find that, if they make the seats an inch less in width, another two people can stand in the carriage without making the coach any longer.Of course, as you know, the breadth of our carriages is exactly designed to seat five persons, but it is just possible to squeeze in six thin passengers. We shall illustrate all these methods of transporting passengers at the pageant, end we hope to get as many as 30 people into one of our carriages legally designed for ten.
The Same Old Time.
"We still use the same time that we did 100 years ago60 seconds ea the minute and 60 minutes to the hour. You can't beat Greenwich time. Attempts to make the railways go faster, are quite useless, and, of course, we can't possibly go any slower. For instance, take the journey, from Stornoway to London. Before the war we did it in 24 hours; new it takes 30 hours, and the passenger sleeps comfortably for the night at the Kyle of Lochalsh. We have reduced the average speed to 32 miles per hour. That's a run for your money!. There are some mad motorists who do a little better, but .then the distance by road is shorter than by rail, as it is between most points. I suppose that's why so many people send their goods by road nowadays.
"Talking about Stornoway," the railway Press agent continued, " reminds me that in 1914 we charged only one penny for the transport of a box of kippers from Stornoway to Kyle, but the charge is now 3d. The rate for sugar from Glasgow to Darras is now 2s., against 9d.; and for paraffin from Lochboisdale to Glasgow is now 10s. 6d., as compared with Bs. before the war. Figures like these mean prosperity not only for us, but for the people able to pay these higher rates. It used to cost 5s. to take a cow from Lochaleh Oben ; now it is 18s. But think how much more valuable cows are nowadays, when the price of milk has doubled! Besides, not one cow in a million goes by rail to Obart to-day. I hear that farmers now use road meters, so you must blame road transport for the high prices of foodstuffs. When everything is twice the price it's splendid to reflect that railway transport is only half as cheap as it was.
Slow and Sure.
"We shall have charts at the pageant showing some ether statistics. For instance, there is the mileage of our trainS per train-mile, which is 13.87 miles per hour. This is 1-50th of a mile better than in 1922, so you see we are improving a bit. The corresponding figure for our goods trains is 8.49 miles per hour, and this has been going down steadily since 1921. Our wagtns, in fact, stand still for a much longer time than they move, and our average load per wagon is only 51 tons. That's a safe figure and does not overstrain the axles. This is one of the reasons why we want Parliamentary powers to run road transport, when we could increase both the load and the speed. I'm told of road wagons which carry six to ten tons and can go twice as fast. But all this means that our goods trains travel more carefully and do less damage to the goods they convey. So eve shall go very slowly with our new 20-ton trucks. It's use
less for our engineers to make the trucks larger while the loads are getting smaller. In fact, you may have noticed that our tonnage in March last, which was a 31-day month, went down by 7 per cent.
Rate Fixing.
"The pageant is to include a processional train of 89 wagons illustrating the slow and steady work of the ratefixing department and its multitudinous ramifications. You road-transport people have no idea how hard it is to fix rates to please all parties. If we charge too little for, say, a jar of potted shrimps, all the tea-rooms at Pegwell Bay declare that we are spoiling their trade in the unpotted article, while, if we put up the rate, the Amalgamated Union of Shrimp-net Workers complain that we are ruining a key industry.
"Another exhibit will illustrate the wonderful progress of our complaints department. In 1924, for example, we dealt with 12,234 more claims for damage to goods thin in the previous year, and in 1924 we killed 20 per cent. more passengers than in 1923. If you apply these figures to a place like Wembley it means that out of every million people who visited Wembley yesterday pnly nine will be killed on the railway before the end of the year. In fact, our safety factor is becoming infinitesimal.
"Amalgamation means standardization. We shall be quite content, after 100 years' experience, to standardize present conditions. We did all our progressing years ago. We want to be guaranteed against loss in any ease, and then we shan't mind how many cases we lose. Properly pro
tccted by Parliament, we can run the railways regardless of tonnage or passengers or road competition. Per instance, we could stop entirely in a fog. We don't really mind the traffic being diverted on to the roads as long as our dividends are secure. You can safely leave it to competition to safeguard the interests of the road user. • "There are many other railway traditions. There are the sandwiches, for example, which are served in our waitingrooms. We still stick to the old pattern, 1i ins. square and * in. thick. And, talking about refreshments, you would be surprised if you saw the figures relating to our refreshment rooms. We know, the exact amount of wine and spirits consumed. Their value in 1923 amounted to less than id. per passenger, or, to be exact, .49682d., which is correct to five places of decimals. You know how careful railway statisticians always are. I think it is unreasonable for any passenger to complain about our refreshments when the average quantity is so small and the value so slight."
"Thank you, sir, I don't mind if I do."
I do not remember what I had said or done to occasion this last remark, but I complied with the demands of etiquette at five ,prinutes to closing time, while my informant concluded :— "Running a railway isn't an easy matter. As Sir William Ackworth says Railway undertakings to-day are organized on so vast a scale that their management is beyond the grasp of practical men.' That is quite true, I can assure you. I'm a practical man myself, and even I could not run a railway on either ancient or modern lines. To tell the honest truth I'd sooner go on the road."