1. Return from Euston booking-office, as also from all clearing-house passenger stations, stating the number of passengers of each class booked for all clearing stations, the portions of fares paid by each passenger and due to “foreign” companies.
2. From this account the London clearing-house prepares and forwards daily to each company a return, showing the portion of the fares received at Euston due to each respectively. The above returns are despatched on the evening of the second day.
3. The London clearing-house receives daily from every clearing station a similar return.
4. From these two sets of returns the debtor and creditor account of each company is made up, and kept separate in a book, from which a statement of balances is prepared and forwarded weekly to each company, showing the amount received on its account by the other companies, as also on account of the other companies by it, the balances due to it or by it, and the weekly balance due to or by the clearing-house on behalf of the companies. We may here observe that by the foregoing arrangements, without which the through passenger traffic could not possibly be practically carried out, 2,700,000 persons are annually saved the inconvenience of changing their carriage during their journey.
5. The same minute process is pursued with horses, carriages, and dogs, the tickets for which are numbered consecutively, and checked as for passengers. In this duty thirteen clerks are employed.
Parcels.—The daily returns of the number of parcels despatched and received are checked, and the balance of receipts divided, precisely as the goods, with this addition, that a “waybill” is sent by each train with the parcels for each station, showing the number of the parcel, the weight, address, and charge; similar bills being also sent from the receiving station to the clearing-house, thus constituting an additional check. For small parcels carried by the passenger-trains from London to Edinburgh the gross charge of 4s. is divided among four companies; small charges are often divided among seven companies; and in some cases a charge of 6d. is divided among two companies. In this duty eight clerks are employed.
At the end of the London Clearing-House three clerks are employed for the live-stock traffic, principally composed of lean stock going to be fattened, of fat cattle, pigs, sheep, and calves going to market. The rates for live stock, like those for goods, are agreed on by all the joint companies, and the returns are sent weekly to the clearing-house. The gross receipts, after deducting a small sum, per waggon, for terminal expenses, are divided, by mileage, among the companies (frequently six in number) concerned.
We have now to endeavour to explain a new branch of the department, termed “Mileage Branch.”
In 1848 no less than 443,604 loaded waggons were by various companies (averaging three in number) sent “through” besides 267,228 sent back empty. The course of each of these waggons the clearing-house had to trace, in order to ascertain the exact time each was detained on each railway.
The number of miles for which the companies received, through the London clearing-house, payment from each other, amounted to 45,580,384.