The passenger carriages afford eleven miles of seat room, and would accommodate 40,196 individuals, or the whole population of two such towns as Northampton.
The loading surface of the goods equals eleven acres, and would convey 40,000 tons.
If the tires of all the company’s wheels were welded into one ring, they would form a circle of seventy-two miles.
To keep this rolling stock up in number and efficiency, there are two establishments, one at Camden Town, and one at Wolverton.
Camden Town is the great coach house of the line, where goods waggons are built and repaired in one division, where sound locomotives, carriages and trucks are kept ready for use in another.
The waggon building department of Camden is worth visiting, especially by railway shareholders.
Every one is interested in railways being worked economically, for economy gives low rates and increased profits, which both increase trade and multiply railways. Hitherto the details of carrying, especially as to the construction of waggons and trucks, have been much neglected.
On one line running north, it is said that the loss in cheese stolen by the railway servants, amounts to as much as the whole sum paid for carrying agricultural produce, and on the line on which we are travelling, breakages have sometimes amounted to £1,200 a-month.
The fact is, that railway carriers have been content to use rude square boxes on wheels, covered when loaded, if covered at all, with a tarpaulin, without any precautions for draining off the wet, to which it was constantly exposed when out of use,—without “buffers” or other protecting springs, so that the wear and tear of the waggon and its load, from inevitable shocks, was very great.
The imperfect protection of a tarpaulin was, and is, a great temptation to pilferage. These sources of expense, in wear and tear of conveyances, loss of tarpaulin coverings, each worth £6 6s., breakage, pilferage of goods, combine to sum up a formidable discount from the profits of railway carrying, and, in the case of certain goods, lead the owners to prefer the slower transit of a canal boat. Even iron suffers in market value from exposure to the weather; porcelain and glass are liable to perpetual smashes, on waggons without buffers, in spite of the most careful packing; while tea, sugar, cheese, and all untraceable eatables are pilfered to an enormous extent, besides more valuable goods.