Here let us indicate a few facts illustrating the motive habits of the immense London population. In the twelve months ending the 30th of June, 1867, the number of passengers conveyed on the Metropolitan Railway—4½ miles in length—were 22,458,067, or 1,646,894 more than on the whole system of the London and North-Western Railway in 1866. In the same twelve months, the London General Omnibus Company, which owns about seven-eighths of those vehicles that ply in the metropolis, carried 42,995,910. These, independent of steam-boat passengers, the number of which we are not able to state, our application to the secretary of one of the companies for information not having been replied to; independent also of the persons who travelled in the 6,000 cabs that are licensed for London, and independent, finally, of the persons conveyed in the innumerable vehicles which are unceasingly circulating during about sixteen hours every day through every portion of the great metropolis.[10]
Mr. Watkin, M.P., the chairman of the South-Eastern Railway, gave, at the recent meeting of the shareholders of that company, a very striking illustration of the motive habits of the metropolitan population. During the half-year ending the 30th June, 1867, the total number of passengers conveyed on the South-Eastern Railway was 9,700,000, but of these 7,200,000 came into or went out of its three London stations (Charing Cross, Cannon Street, and London Bridge—the traffic of the last immensely diminished since the opening of the two first), yet the total length of the South-Eastern is 330 miles, and in the usual proportion of stations to mileage on English railways (one for each 3¼ miles) the number of stations is 101. Although we have not the exact figures before us, we believe the same proportions, as regards passenger traffic, holds good on the London, Brighton and South Coast, the South-Western and the Great Western Railways, and nearly so on the Great Eastern and the Great Northern.
The rolling stock of the South Austrian and Alta Italia consists of 963 locomotives, 2,663 passenger carriages, in which are included 11 for the exclusive use of royal personages, 19,182 waggons, in which are included 57 for the service of the Post. Its total mileage of train engines 10,451,870. The amount of rolling stock of the Paris, Lyons, and of the Orleans Companies is not stated in their reports, but the total engine mileage of the former company in 1866 was 17,271,502 miles, of which 9,656,690 were for passenger trains, and 7,614,812 were for goods, cattle, and coal trains; of the Orleans Company 10,715,458, of which 5,878,010 miles were for passenger trains, and 4,837,448 for goods, cattle, and coal trains.
We are not able to state the total mileage of the trains of French railways, but it will be seen by reference to the Annuaire des Postes de l’Empire Francais, published on the 1st of January, 1867, a work analagous in its character to the Annual Reports of the Postmaster-General of England, that the postal service of France upon railways was, in 1865, 27,730,000 kilometres, equal to 17,331,250 miles. The British Post Office does not avail itself of all the railways of the United Kingdom for the transmission of mails. Thus the total mileage of British railways on the 1st of January, 1866, was 13,289 miles, but the Post Office only sent mail bags over about 12,000 of them. The Post Office Railway Service is 60,000 miles a day, equal (deducting for Sundays) to 18,780,000 per annum, or about 1,450,000 per annum more than the postal mileage on French railways.
Before proceeding to describe the present position of the London and North-Western Company as regards locomotive and rolling stock, a short epitome of what it was twenty years ago, may not prove uninteresting.
On the 30th June, 1847, the total length of railway worked by the company was 670 miles. The number of its locomotive engines was 504, or an engine for about each three-quarters of a mile of railway. The engine mileage was—
| For passenger trains | 4,649,556 |
| For goods trains | 2,882,674 |
| ———— | |
| Total | 7,532,230 |
On the 30th of June, 1847, there were 1,018 passenger carriages, and so little encouragement was given by the company at that time to travellers of the humbler classes, that out of the 1,018 only 75 were third class. The Company had also 8 travelling post offices, and 13 post office tenders, 210 horse boxes, 183 guards’ break and parcels vans, 4,874 goods waggons, 612 cattle and sheep trucks, 653 coal and coke waggons. The total number of passengers conveyed in the year 1848, was 6,001,576. Tons of goods conveyed (estimated) 1,811,000. At that period the conveyance of coal by railway was in its infancy.
On the 31st December, 1866, the London and North-Western Company possessed 1,347 locomotive engines, which is rather more than an engine a mile, the average for the whole kingdom being just over one-half of one per mile. It had 2,237 passenger carriages, 46 travelling post offices and post office tenders, 408 horse boxes, 418 guards’ break and parcel vans, 22,483 goods waggons, 1,703 cattle and sheep trucks, 2,069 coal and coke waggons, and for shunting carriages and waggons, and other work at stations, no less than 619 horses, all of good breeds, well-fed, intelligent, and well-tutored.
Its engines ran, in 1866, 21,637,163 miles, of which 10,613,324 were for passenger trains, and 11,023,839 for goods and minerals: average mileage of each engine for the year, 16,063; per day, of 365 to the year, 44, but, as the average number of working days of an engine in a year is about 250, the average mileage of the year, so divided, is 64. This seems an extremely low average. Besides the passengers already referred to, the company conveyed 15,425,119 tons of goods and minerals. These exceed the amount carried on the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean by 1,803,405 tons, and they are very nearly three times as much as those conveyed by the Orleans Company (5,216,879 tons). Although the length of the London and North-Western system is not at present more than a tenth of the total mileage length of the United Kingdom, its receipts are a little more than a sixth of those earned by all British and Irish railways. Its income, in fact, is just three times what Lord Macaulay tells us, in the fourth volume of his History of England, was the total national revenue at the time that William III. ascended the English throne.