For example, the London and North-Western railway sends its through passengers over the Caledonian line. The mileage charged for its “foreign” carriages is three farthings per mile. Small though that sum is, it amounts at the end of a month perhaps to 5000 pounds. This little bill is sent to the Clearing-House by the Caledonian against the London and North-Western. But during the same period the latter company has been running up a somewhat similar bill against the former company. Both accounts are sent in to the Clearing-House. They amount together to perhaps some fifteen or twenty thousand pounds, yet when one is set off against the other a ten or twenty pound note may be all that is required to change hands in order to balance the accounts.
The total mileage of lines under the jurisdiction of the Clearing-House, and over which it exercises complete surveillance on every train that passes up or down night or day, as far as regulating the various interests of the companies is concerned, amounts to more than 14,000. The Times, at the conclusion of a very interesting article on this subject, says,—“Our whole railway system would be as nothing without the Clearing-House, which affords another illustration of the great truth that the British railway public is the best served railway public in the world, and, on the whole, the least grateful.” We hope and incline to believe that in the latter remark, the great Thunderer is wrong, and that it is only a small, narrow-minded, and ignorant section of the public which is ungrateful.
Disputed claims between railways are referred to the arbitration of the committee of the Clearing-House, from whose decision there is no appeal.
The trouble taken in connexion with the lost-luggage department is very great; written communications being sent to almost innumerable stations on various lines of rails for every inquiry that is made to the House after lost-luggage.
It is a striking commentary at once on the vast extent of traffic in the kingdom, and the great value in one important direction of this establishment, the fact that, in one year, the number of articles accounted for to the Clearing-House by stations as left by passengers, either on the platforms or in carriages, amounted to 156,769 trunks, bags and parcels, and of these nearly ninety-five in every hundred were restored, through the Clearing-House, to their owners. It is probable that the property thus restored would amount to half a million of money.
This reminds us that we left Edwin Gurwood on his way to restore Mrs Tipps her lost ring, and that, therefore, it is our duty to resume the thread of our story, with, of course, a humble apology to the patient reader for having again given way to our irresistible tendency to digress!