Treatment of Goods Traffic at Stations.
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Illustrating Some of the Difficulties by which Railway Carriers are Confronted.
By Fred W. West.*
The proper treatment of goods at a station as regards handling, trucking, craning, and loading is of the highest importance, because the success or otherwise of a railway company's competitive trade largely depends upon the quality of the performance. Damages to goods, ii they do not always result in claims, invariably cause annoyance to the owners of the articles, and although the aggrieved parties do not in many cases write letters of complaint to the responsible officers, they frequently divert the traffic to other routes in consequence, as canvassers and others who regularly visit the public to solicit business know only too well. Perfection in the work has never yet been attained, and, as nobody so far has been able to lay down any definite rules or directions to cover the reqoirements of the great variety of classes of merchandise to be catered for, there is here abundant scope for any aspirant to distinction who possesses a fertile and resourceful brain.
The principal point to be borne in mind is, of course, that what is right treatment for one kind of traffic is absolutely wrong for another. It is, for example, the correct and most economical method of dealing with a barrel of beer to roll it along the deck or stage, but to treat a cask of size or white lead in that way would be to court disaster, for the head of the cask would very probably DROP OUT DURING TIIE PROGESS,
and the contents in that case would, of course, follow suit. Again, an American or Dutch cheese may be loaded in a wagon with other goods in almost any position with comparative safety, but the home-made article must be placed on the top of the load and tucked up carefully with straw, or it will most likely get seriously damaged. Another and not less important consideration is that of economy, which must enter into all calculations respecting the handling of goods traffic, because the possibilities are so elastic that to obtain the maximum of efficiency one might easily swallow up the sum included in the carriage for the profit of the carriers. I would remark, to illustrate this, that one man can wheel upon an ordinary hand-truck from one place on the deck to another a crate of earthenware or glass weighing a quarter of a ton, and he would probably convey it safely; but another man, or, better still, two other men, to go with him to steady the package while being wheeled along, and to assist in unloading it from the hand-truck on to the deck or into the wagon, would practically obviate any risk of damage to the contents of the crate, and it is a matter for reflection, therefore, whether it is better to risk an occasional accident and consequential claim by doing the work single-handed at a minimum of expense by way of wagons, or to Kiwi& the maximum amount of labour at considerably increased cost.
The first essential to the proper treatment of traffic in every branch of a railway is adequate accommodation, but, as the business at many points fluctuates considerably, and at some rapidly develops from time to time, it is not an easy matter to provide it. In the goods department a large amount of capital may be expended one year in laying down sidings and in constructing a shed for the accommodation of the traffic of the day, but in a year or two, through some unlooked-for extension of trade in the district, such, for instance, as the opening of new works or mills, this accommodation may be absolutely inadequate for the traffic, and it may not be practicable, without entirety reconstructing the station at great expense, to provide the requisite additions. In any case, there might not be sufficient assurance of the continuity of the increased business to justify the expense that would be involved in making the necessary improvements, and, for one cause or another, therefore, it happens that at most stations serving large towns the accommodation is generally inadequate for perfect working. . Under these circumstances, I do not think it would be advisable for the present purpose to take any particular station as an example for the blustration of the best methods of dealing with goods traffic. I would rather construct one on the spot----a sort of a castle in the air— and call it "Ideal," such as may be a part of any railway in the future, although it does not yet find a place in the station handbook. The town of" Ideal "is sufficiently busy to require FIFTY HORSES AND LORRIES to cart its goods to and from the station, and these goods, with others carted by the owners, are sufficient to employ a hundred and fifty railway wagons a day to convey them in and out, and the question we want to consider, therefore, is what do we want by way of accommodation at the station to provide for the traffic? There are, of course, many different opinions on this point, but I have for long past held only one, and with increasing experience it has become more and more pronounced, untikit is now a settled conviction. It is that a goods shed large enough inside to hold at one time, in positioo, which are accessible for loading, as many wagons as are loaded outwards daily, with a few wagon-lengths to spare for emergencies or developments, and that it should be made of corrugated iron or timber, so as to permit, easily and cheaply, of expansion from time to time. I think, further, that it should be provided with sufficient cart dock-spate to enable the whole of the working teams to be backed up to the stage at one time.
With regard to the deck-room, it is customary to provide platforms measuring anything from zoft. to soft. wide, but in the " Ideal " shed these will not be requisite, because, as will be seen later on, they will be used only for wheeling hand-trucks along and not for storing s upon; therefore, with the exception of " receiving" and" delivering " decks, they need not be more than izft. wide. Coming next to the appliances, we shall, of course, require mechanical power for the movement of the wagons and the working of the cranes. Finally, we get to the staff, and we have to consider what is the, best formation of gangs for what I may call the productive labour. It is pretty generally admitted that three men—namely, a checker, a caller-off, and a loader, is the right number for a loading gang, but there is a considerable diversity of opinion as to whether four, five, six, or seven men is the better combination for unloading, because this operation includes hand-trucking the goods to the points where they have to be loaded or stored. Personally, after having made practical experiments with each number, also with eight and nine men. I find seven-handed gangs to be the better balanced; that is, three to perform the unloading and checking and four to do the trucking, as by this division of the work the four can keep the three going, and vice versa, and thus avoid waste of time through one having to wait for the other.
In every town where " Ideal " railway arrangements exist I think there should be a fixed time for ceasing to collect or receive goods from the public. Perhaps this needs no argument, but among several reasons for it is the important one that as the times for the departure of the trains are necessarily fixed, it is requisite that all the goods for them should be got into the station early enough to permit those brought from the most distant parts of the district to be despatched, if necessary, by the first train to leave the station during the evening : that such an arrangement is as much to the interest of the public as it is of the carriers will be obvious to everybody. Assuming, therefore, it is decided that the time for ceasing to collect goods by the carriers' vans or lorries is 6 o'clock, and for receiving goods at the station from the public's own teams is half an hour later, we may take it that by 6.30 p.m. the bulk of the day's goods for despatch will be at the station waiting to be taken off the teams. Now, at places where the cart dock accommodation is not sufficient to receive all the vehicles, two SERIOUS EVILS AT ONCE COMMENCE.
The first is that some of the horsed lorries, all of which must usually go to the dock for discharge in their order of arrival at the station, contain goods which ought to be despatched by the earlier trains, but, through their being in the background, they cannot be got at in time, and are thus delayed, to the annoyance of the owners and the prejudice of the carriers. The second evil is that, while waiting their turn to get to the dock, the carters are idling their time, the horses are suffering by standing, and the loaders of the wagons inside the shed are wasting certain amount of wagon-space for the want of the goals intended for the early trains. All these things in the aggregate amount to a serious and unnecessary expense. At our " Ideal " station, however, we avoid all that sort of thing in this way. As there is a dock for every team, when a team arrives it is at once backed up, the carter hands in his consignment notes to the checker, takes out the shaft horse, and off he goes to the stables. The checker looks through the notes, advises the foreman where the goods on the vehicle are for, and the latter then arranges for the discharge of the vehicles in turn—not in the order in which they came into the station, but in the order of the importance or urgency of the goods-with satisfaction and economical re
suits all round. The public carters do not, of course, take their horses out of the shafts. They wait until the goods are checked off The vehicles and signed for, but they naturally receive special attention from the staff, to avoid complaint from the proprietors, and consequently the goods are dealt with in due course. The foregoing will amply illustrate the necessity for adequate accommodation at the "front door "of the station, and I strongly commend the points to all who are interested in the designing or construction of goods sheds.
The process of unloading the goods from the lorries is simple and needs no comment, because it is a purely mechanical operation, which requires only a little supervision from the foreman to ensure comparative efficiency, but immediately the goods are unloaded the science of proper hand_ lin”. begins. The general .practice is to send the goods by hand-truck, as they are checked off the lorries, to the loading berths, which consist of allotments of the deck corresponding with the stations to which wagon-loads are made, and there they are placed by the truckers to remain until the loading gangs load them in the wagons. If there is plenty of deck-room to hold them all without one article being placed upon another, and without its being necessary to lean a heavy package against a fragile one, there is, nothing wrong about this per se, but it will be found that at the majority of large stations there is not sufficient space to allow the goods to be so stored, with the result that the articles are necessarily heaped more or less upon or against one another, thus producing friction, strain, or pressure which the weaker packages cannot stand. Moreover, they are exposed to damage by passing trucks, colliding with them, and this is undoubtedly a fruitful source of those
DAMAGES IN TRANSIT, which give rise to so much irritation and so many claims. At our " Ideal " station the case is very different, because we have our loading berths in the wagons, instead of hay. ing our loading berths on the decks, and the truckers place the goods there, or deliver them into the hands of the loaders at the wagon side, which not only obviates the risk of damage from the causes mentioned, but greatly econo
mises the labour, seeing that the trucker in the ordinary operation of discharging his load at the same time becomes an assistant loader, and thus practically renders the third man in the loading gang unnecessary. Another very common cause of damage and delay to goods arises from the delivery of articles by truckers at the wrong loading berths, through the arrangement of these in geographical order for the convenience of working the wagons on to the trains, as they are required to be marshalled. The effect of this is that a man cannot readily find the particular berth he seeks unless he has an intimate knowledge of the station, and often dumps down his load in some other convenient berth which the foreman's eye does not cover at the moment. Truckers in general are merely unskilled labourers, who are an ever-changing quantity, and, as there are no records kept as to which particular man in a gang trucks a specific package to assist in bringing the wrong-doers to book, the trouble must be considered part of the system. The damage and delay in such cases occurs through the wronglyberthed package being frequently
TURNED OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
by the loaders who do not want it, and who yet will not go to the trouble of taking it to the correct berth, for it must be confessed that in practical life the average working man will not voluntarily do anything which he considers he is not directly paid for. To get over the difficulties of wrong trucking, I propose to number all the wagon-berths consecutively, like houses in a street, or rather in a series of streets, as the several sidings in the shed may be termed, and to arrange for the checkers who receive the goods at the " front door " to show on each article, by chalk or pencil mark, the number of the wagon-berth for which it is intended. This system will not only reduce wrong trucking to a minimum, but, by making the direction the trucker is to take with his load obvious and simple, it will have the economical effect of avoiding the waste of time which is inseparable from what I may call the geographical system through men having to find their way without guide pasts.
The question of addressing or labelling all packages sent by goods train is one I should like, at this point, to make sonic comment upon. It is, of course, very well known that many firms are fearful that competitors in trade may learn the names of their customers from addresses upon the packages; they accordingly decline to put any direction at all upon them, and simply brand them with a mark and a number, such as —V 27—. They expect the carriers, none the less, to convey them to the consignees by the aid of the consignment note, which alone reveals the dread secret ! I very much doubt the efficacy of such a precaution, seeing that at every point where the package is handled the consignment note, invoice, or delivery sheet, all of which show who it is for, must necessarily accompany it, but it is certain that the non-addressing of goods leads to at least one-half of the losses, delays, and difficulties that occur in connection with the carriage of the goods traffic. What I suggest for our " Ideal" station is, therefore, that every checker at the "front door" shall be furnished with a supply of three kinds of labels : one to be of card pattern, suitable for nailing on to a box or barrel; the second to be of paper, for gumming securely to ironwork, cheese, etc.; and the third to be of medium strength, fitted with wires at each end, for making fast to packages covered by canvas or other articles to which neither of the first two could be securely attached. By these means, an address would be put upon every article received at the station without one. It will take a little more time to deal with the goods at the "front door" under this system, but it will be amply compensated for at the wagon side, and at the delivering station, whilst irregularities will be reduced to a minimum. Should any firm object to the labels appearing upon the goods at the time of delivery to the consignees, a note might be put upon the invoice to the terminal station, requesting that they be removed from the articles at the time the latter are loaded on the vans for delivery.