The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-01 00:00:00

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

SOUTH-EASTERN.
The half-yearly general meeting of this company
vas held yesterday at the Bridge-house Hotel, Lon-
don-bridge ; Mr. E. W. Watkin, M.P., in the chair.
,Mr. T. A. Chubb, the secretary, having read the
notice convening the meeting, the report, an abstract
of which has appeared in The Sun, was taken as
read.

The CHAIRMAN, in moving the adoption of the
report and statement of accounts, said it would be
his duty to make some observations in elucidation
of and in addithn to the half-yearly report. The
last six. months was a period of great trouble and
difficulty, and it was not easy to pass through it
successfully. He had endeavoured to give them a
calculation at the August meeting by which each of
them could form an opinion as to the dividend they
would be likely to have at this time. He told them
that it would require an addition of £713 a week to
the traffic to pay the same dividend as compared
with the corresponding period of 1865. He told
them that if the weather should not be favourable,
and if they found the cholera to prevail, they could
not expect the receipts to keep up, and the prospects
of the dividend would be varied to that extent. The
result was that they now recommended a dividend
at the rate of 3 per cent. per annum. Instead of
having an increase in the receipts of £713 a week,
or £20,000 for the half-year, they had had a de-
crease of £lO,OOO and an increase in the expenses of
£16,000, which was comprised under three heads,
£7,000 in rates and taxes, which arise from the dis-
tress prevailing within a distance of 20 or 30 miles
from London, and the very unjust system of rating
companies had increased the amount. The remain-
ing £9,000 arose from extra expenses incurred in
consequence of snowstorms in January, the in-
creased mileage of trains, and the placing of the
working stock in thorough efficient order for the
French Exhibition, which latter absorbed £4,500,
and was not badly employed with a view to en-
able them to do more business. Those causes
had reduced the dividend for the past half-
year, giving them one of 3 per cent. • instead of
41 per cent. at the corresponding period. They
had charged £44,000 against revenue for in-
terest on unproductive capital, which was certainly
a full amount. The Cannon-street station was opened
before it was fit to open for general traffic, and the
consequence was that great delay and confusion
arose before it could be brought into proper working
order. During the first month the Cannon-street
station was open 46,000 passengers used it, but in
the month of January last the number was 160,000
passengers. It took some time to develope new sta-
tions and new lines, so that the interest on the capi-
tal expended on theist would be a heavy cLarge on
the revenue for twc or three years after the opening,
and consequently would have the effect of reducing
the dividend during that operation. If the railway
was his own private property, he would not carry
forward one shilling for interest on unproductive
capital, but would charge the whole of the interest
to revenue. If railway companies would make that
sacrifice in the first instance by charging against re-
venue the whole of the interest on unproductive
capital expended on new lines, there would not be
so many extension lines made, and they would pro-
bably be constructed more economically. But in a
company they had to consider those who had invested
their money for an income, and therefore it would
be very hard for such persons to suffer a diminution
of dividend while the unproductive works were being
constructed, and until they were brought into pro-
fitable operation. There were shareholders such as
Mr. J. Bibby, of Liverpool, and Mr. J. Stuart, of
Manchester, on the board, who held a very large
amount of stock in the company, and who could
easily wait until the new lines became profitable, but
there was a large number of proprietors who could
not wait for the result, but depended on their divi-
dends for income. One cause of the falling off of the
traffic receipts was the great commercial depression
which had affected all passenger lines within a circle
of 10 miles of that city. Of course when travelling
people suffered losses the railway companies also suf-
fered in their receipts. The South-Eastern line was
pre-eminently a passenger line, and was more sensi-
tive in its receipts than goods or mineral lines, serv-
ing as a kind of thermometer to indicate the state of
trade in the country. The prevalence of cholera and the
war iu Germany had had a considerable effect in
diminishing the company's Continental traffic. The
tourists would go out in the first half and return in
the second half of the year. In the month of January
the traffic had suffered front low states of the ther-
mometer, a fact that he had witnessed in North
America—the engines and trains being snowed up
on the line, and all sorts of damage and expense
would arise from the delay. They had had two
North American winters of ten days each in the
past few months. In January the decrease in pas-
senger traffic was £6,895, instead of an increase of
£2,000 ; then there were heavy additional expenses
in clearing the line of snow, and in working, so that
in one way or another they had lost £20,000 in that
month. The war and the cholera had caused a
falling off, as compared with the corresponding half
of £865, in the number of passengers to the Conti-
nent of 26,669, and in the receipts of £16,000. In
1854, owing to the prevalence of cholera, the re-
ceipts for passengers had fallen off to the extent of
£49,327, which showed how sensitive the passenger
trallic on their line was. Mr. Ehorall, their general
manager, had prepared some statements showing
that the London and North-Western Railway Com-
pany, having 1,319 miles open, carried 20,000,000
passengers a year, while the South-Eastern on 330
miles carried 17,000,000 passengers,the Brighton on
300 miles carried 16,700,000, the Great Northern
on 400 miles carried 5,500,000, the Great Eastern
on 700 miles carried 13,400,000 passengers, and the
South-Western on 503 miles carried 10,000,000
passengers. It showed that the South-Eastern had
a much greater number of passengers to satisfy and
accommodate on a given length of line than the
London and North-Western. On Feb. 18 last they
had sent out of their three stations—Charing-cross,
Cannon-street, and London-bridge-31,345 passen-
gers, and about as manycamein,makingabout62,69o
to accommodate in one day. Ile suggested that the
Cannon-street station when first opened should only
have the local passengers between the station and
Charing-cross to begin with, and when the station
was finished and the scaffold poles, &c., entirely re-
moved out of the way, they should commence the
traffic to and from places on the main line; but the
public, it appeared, would not be satisfied with that
arrangement, and consequently the confusion of
crowding all the traffic at once ensued. That diffi-
culty had been got over by great exertions, and they
would endeavour to increase and improve the service
to and from those stations. The number of trains
running into Cannon-street every day was 264, and
departing 261, making together 525 trains, of which
251 were running between Cannon-street and Char-
ing-cross. As to the effect of these very convenient
stations on the long traffic, he mentioned that before
the Cannon-street station was opened in the second
half of 1864, the number of passengers to Hastings
from London-bridge was 14,075, but for the corre-
sponding half in 1866 the number was 17,475, show-
ing an increase of 6,000 passengers a year to
Hastings, and there could be no doubt that the
accommodation of those stations would have effect
over the whole of the company's lines. In regard to
the French Exhibition, he thought they might fairly
expect a large accession of traffic over their line.
During the year of the first Great Exhibition in Lon-
don, in 1851, the increase of traffic on their line
amounted to 110,950 ;
in 1855, the Paris Exhibi-
tion (save them £126,009 ; and in 1862, the year of
the second Exhibition in London, they had £71,000
from that source, but they then had the competition
of the London, Chatham, and Dover Company.
He had no doubt from the efforts made that the
ensuing Exhibition would give them far better
results. In connexion with this matter they had
made arrangements with their allies the Northern
• of France Railway Company for carrying on a com-
plete and rapid service between London and Paris
in 10k- hours—the ordinary service and the new
tidal service. The South-Eastern Company had
also made traffic arrangements for carrying
passengers to and from Paris with the London
and North-Western, the Great Western, the Great
Northern, the„MAneheeter and Sheffield, and other