Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

It will thus be seen that ten of the Royal Commissioners—the members of the Commission who would not be likely to be influenced by what may be called a departmental view of the subject—whilst stating the case both for and against the railway companies, as well as for and against the Post Office, limit their recommendation to the passing of a general Act to define the points which have given rise to difficulties; to which, at page 59 of their report, they add that “in cases where the Postmaster-General fixes the time of starting or stopping, or requires an exclusive or limited train, the question of the proper remuneration for the service should still be left to arbitration.”

And the Commissioners, whilst very clearly denying the expediency of the Post Office becoming carriers of railway parcels, some of which “extend up to 112 lbs., and require therefore a different organisation for receipt, delivery, and forwarding,” confine themselves to recommending railways to “combine for devising some rapid and efficient system for the delivery of parcels.”

A correct view certainly. We are now desirous of offering some remarks upon the part of the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners which refers to a tariff being fixed by a general Act for the various classes of services required of railways by the Post Office. It would, we are convinced, be impossible to pass an Act of this class that would be of the slightest practical value, because the circumstances of every railway company, certainly of every district of country through which a railway passes, are of constant variance. We need not go farther for evidence of this fact, than in the successive annual reports of Postmasters-General. Until 1862 each of them contained statements of the railway, horse, and foot mileage employed by the Post Office, and each item was subdivided into maximum, average, and minimum, not only for the United Kingdom, but for each component part of it. As may be imagined, the difference between maximum price and minimum on railways, were not only very striking, but they are also equally striking for the two other means of locomotion, especially so for foot messengers; these last varied—no doubt still continue to vary—from a farthing a mile (not enough we should have thought to pay for sole, to say nothing of upper-shoe-leather) to sixpence a mile. To this let be added what any person who reads Post Office documents will see constantly quoted, that before the opening of the railway from Carlisle to Glasgow, the proprietors of the coach that carried the mail between these two places, paid £200 a year for the privilege. It was because there was then a violent, and as it turned out to be, destructive competition on the road, but at the time it lasted, the Post Office was paying as high as, if we recollect correctly, 1s. 3d. a double mile for mail coach conveyance in another part of the country.

The Commissioners recommend arbitration in case of difference, when the Post Office requires an exclusive or limited train, and it seems that the extension of the principle to all matters of negotiation, when the parties cannot agree, affords the best means of arriving at a just and equitable solution. Arbitration, however, with the railways has always been the bête noire of the department.

Mr. Frederick Hill, having informed the Commissioners that he anticipates (“anticipations” to which Sir Rowland Hill says, “I concur”) “greater securities against accidents, and also, against assaults and robberies on railways (query, in railway trains?), by the establishment of a uniform system of signals (!), and by clauses in the leases imposing penalties for unpunctuality and other irregularities (what?), and requiring that means should always be provided for enabling passengers to communicate readily with the guard,” winds up the list of “benefits” which the nation is to obtain from purchase as follows:—“Additional facilities for the conveyance of the mails, with a consequent increase in the number of posts, and in the celerity of communication, and the removal of the chief difficulty in the establishment of a parcels post.”

If the reader will please to refer ante to page 106, he will see the number of postal services there are daily only between London and other post towns. Their name is legion, and we are indebted for the information given upon this subject exclusively to Post Office documents. In Liverpool,[49] there are either six or seven collections a day for Manchester,[50] and a like, or very nearly a like number at Manchester for Liverpool and intermediate towns, so that, for postal purposes, Liverpool and Manchester are practically the same town. And so it is with the great net-work of towns in the north of England, as well as with towns in every other part of the country, north, south, east, or west. We confess to the weakness that if we are in a country town or village, we cannot pass the post office without having a look at the notice in the window, telling for what places and at what hours mails are made up and despatched, and from what places and at what hours mails arrive for delivery: we are therefore in the position of being able to state that despatches and deliveries are innumerable in the vicinity of railways; away from them, the collections and deliveries are at most twice a day, frequently not more than once.

“Celerity of communication.” If Mr. Hill will refer to page 58 of the Royal Commissioners’ Report, he will see that the average speed of the quickest trains in England (those by which the great mails are conveyed) is 36½ miles an hour; the average for similar trains in France is 31 miles, and in other states of Europe it varies from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of 30. The speed of our fastest trains is stated at page 109, et seq.

We must also request Mr. Hill to refer to the whole series of Postmaster-Generals’ Reports. Every one of them contains paragraphs under the heading “Accelerations,” but in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, there are no less than seven and a-half pages devoted exclusively to this one subject. In the Tenth Report (undated, but bearing internal evidence of its being intended for the year 1862), it is stated, “a statement of all the accelerations which have been effected within the last ten years, or even a list of all the places in the United Kingdom which have now an earlier arrival, or a later despatch of letters than were afforded to them in 1854, would show conclusively that the Post Office has, during that period, laboured strenuously and successfully to meet the demands of the public. But such statements would be confusing from the multiplicity of their details.” The Postmaster-General therefore confines himself to alluding “to the acceleration of the Scotch mails, which took place in 1859; to that of the Irish mails, which took place in 1860; and to that of the French mails which also took place in the year 1860.” These accelerations are so great, and bear so importantly upon the correspondence of the whole kingdom, not only inter se, but with the whole continent of Europe, that each is very completely and elaborately described. In the report for 1864, the Postmaster-General, in addition to mentioning several important accelerations, refers, in a triumphant tone, to the advantages which have been gained to the public by the adoption of railways for conveyance of mails in various districts both of Scotland and Ireland; and in the report for 1865, equal satisfaction is expressed, because most important accelerations were made in the speed of all the main postal trains throughout Ireland. This part of the report concludes as follows. “Contracts for the general use of all ordinary trains were entered into with the Great Southern and Western, the Dublin and Drogheda, and the Dublin and Belfast Railway Companies; and the contract with the Ulster Railway Company was extended. It was chiefly by means of these contracts that the improvements effected in the mail service in Ireland during 1865, were greater than they had been in any previous year for a considerable time past.”

The foregoing is the language used in the three latest annual reports of the department, the last of which was written about the time that Mr. Hill must have been submitting to the Royal Commissioners his reasons why the nation would benefit by the purchase of the railways. And here let us mention a belief which exists in the Office, that for several years previous to the present year, the Postmaster-General’s Reports have been drafted by Mr. Hill. This belief, however, cannot be correct, as it is not to be supposed that Mr. Hill would blow hot and cold, and write white and black at one and the same time.