The Select Committees of 1858 and 1863 sat on the subject of the great length of time and the immense cost which railway promotion in those days entailed, when Bills were fiercely contested, and protracted struggles before Parliamentary Committees took place. Two Acts resulted from their deliberations: the Railway Companies’ Powers Act, 1864, and the Railway Construction Facilities Act of the same year. These Acts empowered railway companies to enter into agreements with each other in regard to maintenance, management, running over or use of each others lines or property and for joint ownership of stations. They also enabled powers to be obtained from the Board of Trade to construct a railway without a special Act of Parliament, subject to the conditions that all the landowners concerned agreed to part with the requisite land, and that no objection was raised by any other railway or canal company. Little use has ever been made of this well-intentioned enactment. Landowners have rarely been disposed to accept terms which the companies thought fair; and rival railways, in the days gone by, dearly loved a fight.

By the Companies Clauses Consolidation Act of 1845 railway companies were required to keep full and true accounts of receipts and expenditure, but it was not until the year 1868 that Parliament placed upon the companies an obligation to keep their accounts in a prescribed form. This form was scheduled to the Regulation of Railways Act, 1868. It provides for half-yearly accounts, and is the form which has been familiar to shareholders for many years. This Act (1868) also ordained that smoking compartments be provided on all trains, for all classes, on all railways, except on the railway of the Metropolitan Company. Up to then the railway smoker had to obtain the consent of his fellow passengers in the same compartment before he could light up, or brave their displeasure; and many were the altercations that ensued. The Act also imposed penalties on railways who provided

trains for attending prize fights, which was hard on companies of sporting instincts. A clause provided for means of communication between passengers and the servants of the company in charge of trains running twenty miles without stopping; and another clause gave the companies power to cut down trees adjoining their line which might be dangerous. Prior to 1868, although railways had then existed for three and forty years, the accounts of one company could not usefully be compared with those of another, for scarcely any two companies made up their accounts in the same way. Variety may be charming, but uniformity has its advantages.

The Board of Trade, in 1871, was endowed with further powers. By the Regulation of Railways Act of that year, they were given additional rights of inspection; authority to enquire into accidents, and further powers in regard to the opening of additional lines of railway, stations or junctions. And by this statute the companies were required to furnish the Board of Trade with elaborate statistical documents, annually, in a form prescribed in a schedule to the Act.

The only other important Act down to the year 1875 is the Regulation of Railways Act of 1873. This Act was passed for the purpose of making “better provision for carrying into effect the Railway and Canal Traffic Act of 1854, and for other purposes connected therewith.” In 1872 a Joint Committee of both Houses sat and, following upon their report, this Act was passed. It established a new tribunal, to be called the Railway and Canal Commission, to consist of three Commissioners, of whom—one was to be experienced in the law, one in railway business, and it also authorised the appointment of not more than two assistant Commissioners. As to the third Commissioner, no mention was made of qualifications. This tribunal, though styled a Commission, conducted its work as if it were a court; and a regularly constituted court in time it became. By the Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1888, the section in the Act of 1873 appointing the Commission was repealed and a new Commission established consisting of two appointed and three ex officio Commissioners, such Commission to be “a Court of Record, and have an official seal, which shall be judicially noticed.” One of the Commissioners must be experienced in railway business; and of the three ex officio Commissioners, one was to be nominated for England, one for

Scotland and one for Ireland, and in each case such Commissioner was to be a Judge of the High Court of the land. Under the Act of 1873, the chief functions of the Commissioners were: To hear and decide upon complaints from the public in regard to undue preference, or to refusal of facilities; to hear and determine questions of through rates; and to settle differences between two railway companies or between a railway company and a canal company, upon the application of either party to the difference. The Act of 1888 continued these and included some further powers.

In my humble opinion the Railway Commissioners have done much useful work and done it well. For more than forty years I have read most if not all the cases they have dealt with. On several occasions I have been engaged in proceedings before them, and not always on the winning side.

CHAPTER X.
A GENERAL MANAGER AND HIS OFFICE

January, 1875, was a momentous time for me. In the second week of that month I commenced my new duties at Glasgow and bade farewell for ever to the tall stool and “the dry drudgery of the desk’s dead wood.” Before me opened a pleasing prospect of attractive and interesting work, brightened by the beams of youthful hope and awakened ambition. I was now chief clerk to a general manager. Was it to be wondered at that I felt proud and elated if also a little scared as to how I should get on.

Mr. Wainwright assumed the office of general manager on the first day of the year. I say office, but in fact a general manager’s office scarcely existed. His predecessor, Mr. Johnstone, a capable but in some respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan Swift’s. A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no hobby, did not long survive his retirement from active business life.