Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

By this law France was to possess seven main arterial lines of railway, all of which were to start from Paris as the concentric point. The first was to take the direction towards Belgium, so as to meet the railways then opened in that kingdom, approaching the French frontier. The second, part of which was to be in common with the first, was to proceed towards Calais or Dunkirk; Calais was selected as the most convenient for traffic with England, and the line to Dunkirk, twenty-five miles long, which branches off at Hazebrouck, was not constructed for several years after the main line had been completed. We remember Hazebrouck, a mere road-side stopping place, but it has of late become a first-class junction station, for in addition to the Dunkirk line diverging here, it is also the junction (bifurcation) at which the line leading to Lille, and to Brussels separates from those that run to Amiens, one viâ Douai (the old road), and the other, viâ Bethune, constructed to shorten the distance between Paris and Calais by twenty miles, and also to give railway access to the recently-opened collieries in the vicinity of Bethune, Nœux, Chocques, &c.

The third arterial line was to run towards the ports on the Bay of Biscay, from the Loire to the Gironde. The fourth was to extend to Bayonne and thence, eventually, to the Spanish frontier. The fifth was to be common to the fourth, and then to follow a course tending towards the Mediterranean, passing through Toulouse and finally arriving at Perpignan, close to the Spanish frontier, and at the foot of the Pyrenees, not much farther removed from the Mediterranean than Bayonne is from the Bay of Biscay. It is but within the last few months that this line has been completed in its entire extent; the line to Perpignan having only been opened for traffic in September last.

The sixth was the great and important arterial line from Paris through Dijon, Chalons, Macon, Lyons, and Avignon, to Marseilles. The seventh, or last, was the important strategic and commercial line that was to connect Paris with Strasburg and the Rhine.

Of course, since the first conception of these seven arterial lines, modifications in the exact direction of several of them have taken place, but in the main they follow the courses originally proposed and afterwards decided upon. It will be unnecessary to record the various difficulties, financial and administrative, which attended the construction of the first net-work of French railways. Suffice it, therefore, to say, that by the end of 1847, 1,750 miles had been completed, and that by 1853, the essential parts of the whole system were finished. These have been followed by the “new” net-work, and the total mileage of French railways at present is 14,382 kilometres, or, 8,989 English miles.

This digression finished, we proceed to state the cost at which each of the four European leviathans of the railway world have been constructed. The capital expenditure of the South Austrian and Alta Italia, up to the 31st December, 1866, was £41,763,301, or at the rate of £18,200 a mile. Capital expenditure on the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Company is nearly double that of the South Austrian and Alta Italia, being £80,922,000, which brings the cost per mile to £36,218. This expenditure is exclusive of £1,740,202, upon the Algerian lines, making the company’s total capital expenditure to the 31st December, 1866, £82,662,202.

As the total length of French railways was, on the 31st December, 1866, 14,382 kilometres, or 8,989 miles, and the total capital expenditure upon them to that date was £306,089,000, it follows that the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Company is one-fourth in length, all but twenty-eight miles, of the total railway mileage of France, but its gross cost has exceeded one-fourth of the total cost of French railways by £4,399,500, and its cost per mile, being £36,218, it has exceeded their average cost per mile (£34,051) by £2,167.

The capital expenditure of the Orleans Company has been £42,944,862, or at the rate of £20,928 a mile, which is £13,123 per mile below the average cost per mile of French railways. In addition, the company is proprietor of the coal and iron mines, and the Iron Works of Aubin, at a cost of £671,216. 194,694 tons of coal were raised there in 1866, of which 43,200 were used by the company’s locomotives, 16,000 were sold to the public, and the balance was consumed in the iron works, which manufactured 22,021 of rails during the year.

The total expenditure on capital account of all the railways of the United Kingdom up to the 1st January, 1866, was £455,478,143.

On the London and North-Western the expenditure on capital account has been £45,576,361, but a subdivision of this capital by the mileage worked by the company would not represent the cost per mile of the railway as the company is subscriber to the capital of other companies (some of which are worked by it and some are not) for £3,556,969, but this amount hardly represents a tenth of the capital expended by those companies. There is no doubt however that the cost per mile of those lines for which the capital was exclusively provided by the London and North-Western Company exceeds £50,000 a mile.

The gross receipts from traffic for the year were, South Austrian, £2,957,713, Alta Italia, £1,738,202, total of the Company, £4,695,915; average weekly receipts, £90,306; per mile per annum £1,932. Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean, total traffic £8,105,776; average weekly receipts, £155,691; per mile per annum, £3,640. As the total traffic receipts of French railways was, approximately (but the figures are very nearly exact) £24,140,000, it follows that the receipts of this company exceeded one-third of the total railway receipts of the empire by £101,110, and that its average weekly receipts per mile exceed the average weekly receipts per mile of all France (£2,865) by £955.