Railway Rates: English and Foreign

by James Grierson

The equitable mature of the claim of the railway companies to make terminal charges has been admitted on several occasions by some, if not by all, of the railway commissioners. Their refusal to consider terminal charges as legally justifiable has arisen only from the doubt which existed in their minds as to the strict construction of the words of the clauses; and that question has now been decided by the Queen’s Bench Division in “Hall v. The London Brighton and South Coast Railway Company.” Some portions of the judgment of the Court in that case deal only with the construction of the sections of the particular Private Acts of the defendant company; but the remarks of the Judges upon the general principles which govern the railway companies, claim to make terminal charges, explain so clearly their natural equity as well as their legality, that they may not improperly be quoted:—

“This notion of the railway being a highway for the common use of the public, in the same sense that an ordinary highway is so, was the starting point of English railway legislation. It is deeply engrained in it. In the early days of railways it was acted upon at least occasionally, and in respect of goods traffic, and although it enters but slightly into modern railway practice, no proper understanding of a good deal of our railway legislation, and pre-eminently of clauses relating to tolls or charges, can be arrived at, unless it is firmly grasped and steadily kept in view. Those states of things were from this point of view to be expected and to be provided for by legislation. The company might be merely the owners of a highway and toll takers for the use of it by other people with their own carriages and locomotives. That state of things would be worked out by the railway company possessing the mere line of railway from end to end, and by the persons making use of it, buying or renting contiguous land whereon to keep their rolling stock, and have their offices, availing themselves of the powers of Section 76 of the Act of 1845, and getting on to the railway by means of sidings connected with the railway.

“A second state of things, as we know from the evidence in this case to which by the consent of the parties we are at liberty to refer, prevailed extensively for many years after the railway system was in full operation, and for some years at least after the passing of the Act of 1845. The railway company provided the line and provided the engines and trucks, but they were not carriers. The large warehouses and sheds wherein goods were received, sorted, loaded, covered, checked, weighed and labelled, and trucks or carriages marshalled and prepared for convenient removal to their various places of destination—a corresponding work was done in respect of goods arriving from a distance—the staff of clerks, book-keepers, porters, workmen, and horses necessary for these operations were all provided and maintained at the expense of the carrier, and no portion of them fell upon the company. The company, on the other hand, as owners of the rolling stock, for the use of which, as well as of their railways, they received payment, provided whatever accommodation they needed in order to keep in convenient proximity to the places where the carrier had his depôts the necessary supply of rolling stock.

“The third state of things which might exist simultaneously with the second, or might be the one prevailing exclusively on a particular line, existed when the company were themselves the carriers of the goods, and when as carriers they provided the accommodation and performed the services above described.

“The company might thus be: 1, toll-takers and neither conveyers nor carriers; 2, conveyers but not carriers; 3, carriers. It would naturally be expected that in the first case they would have powers to take tolls, and tolls only, and that in the second, they would have power to make charges, which should include tolls and charges for the use of rolling stock, and it would seem reasonable enough that (inasmuch as they would probably have much greater facilities for keeping and using their rolling stock to advantage and with economy than any other person could have) where they provided both trucks and locomotives as well as took tolls, the maximum charge should be lower than the aggregate of the three separate charges which they might make for, 1, use of railways; 2, use of carriages; 3, locomotive power.

“It would seem natural also to expect that where the company were carriers, inasmuch as they performed the identical services which they perform under the second head, and others besides, they should be allowed to charge the same sums as they might charge when falling under the second category, plus those which are appropriate to the extra services and liabilities which fall upon them when they undertake the duties and business of a carrier.

“The contention of the applicants appears to us singularly unreasonable. It was proved before the Railway Commissioners, and is not disputed, that the actual cost to the company of the accommodation and services, which, for many years after the railway system was very largely developed, and all the principal lines in the kingdom were at work, were on some of the most important railways in England provided by independent carriers, and did not fall upon the railway company, amounted to 1s. 5d. per ton; and it is admitted that, even with the help of the six-mile clause, the company, if the contention of the applicants is correct, would, in the case of traffic carried not more than six miles, have to carry goods coming under class 5, at a dead loss, which may be approximately stated as 8d. per ton for station services alone, besides getting nothing for the use of railway and trucks and for providing power.

“The charges of and incidental to ‘conveyance,’ as we have explained that phrase, are properly measured by the mile of distance travelled over. The terminal services of station accommodation, loading, watching, checking, and the like, have no common measure with the distance run, and are the same, whether that distance be two or two hundred miles....

“Our answer, therefore, is that the providing of station accommodation, and work of the general nature indicated to us by the Railway Commissioners, appear to us to be capable of falling under the definition of ‘services incidental to the duty or business of a carrier,’ and prima facie to do so. Whether in any particular case they do so, or to what extent they do so, must be a question of fact for the Commissioners, the line we should draw being, that whatever is necessary for ‘conveyance’ in the sense in which we have defined it—being all capable of being measured by reference to the distance travelled—is covered by the mileage rate. Whatever is properly incidental, not to conveyance, but to the performance of the duty and business of a carrier ... that is to say, is actually performed and is done at a terminal station, may be made the subject of a separate reasonable charge.

“How could the Legislature ever provide for every single station on this line, for every terminal station, what was a proper charge? It could only be done by limiting it, as it has done, by ‘a reasonable sum,’ and it is for the Railway Commissioners to say what is a reasonable sum, under the circumstances at each terminal station. ‘No station is to be considered as a terminal station in regard to any goods conveyed on the railways of the company unless such goods have been received thereat direct from the consignor of such traffic, or are directed to be delivered thereat.’ Therefore terminal stations are recognised, and terminal charges are recognised distinctly.”