The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-02-06 00:00:00

RAILWAY AFFAIRS.

The Ormskirk Railway will be opened next month.
CHESTER AND HOLYHEAD RAlLWAY.—Traffic for the
week ended 27th January, 1849 :—Coaching traffic,
£758 17s. Bd. ; parcels, £25 16s. ld. ; goods and cattle,
£22445. 9d. ; steam boats, £B7 17s. : total, £1,096 15s. 6d.
PROGRESS OF RAILWAY LEGISLATION.—The sanction
of parliament was first given to railways at the commence-
ment of the present century ; and the progress of legis-
lative railway enactments has since been as follows :—ln
1801, 1 ; in 1811, 2 ; in 1821, 1; in 1831, 9; in 1841, 15;
in 1847, 296.
Mr. Andrews, Q.C., to whose arbitration the questions
of liability and amount of damage were referred, has
awarded £l4B to be paid to one farmer, and £145 to ano-
ther, for damage done to their buildings and corn stacks
adjoining the Eastern Counties Railway, at Needing-
worth, which were fired by the burning coke falling from
the funnel of the engine of the mail train.
In the Central Criminal Court. on Wednesday, Samuel
Healy, engine-driver, and William Watkins, porter, were
charged with the manslaughter of Richard Parry on the
South-Western Railway, through their carelessness.
The Jury acquitted the prisoners ; and though they cen-
sured their carelessness, refused to alter their verdict to
manslaughter.
ASSESSMENT OF RAILWAYS.—The 10 principal rail-
ways pay or the average the following sums per acre per
annum for parochial taxes :—London and North-Western,
£l3 6s. ; Great Western, £9 16s. ; Lancashire and York-
shire, £l4 10s. ; Midland, £7 6s. ; York and North Mid-
land, £5 14s. ; York, Newcastle, and Berwick, £4 ;
Eastern Counties, £4 12s. ; South-Western, £7 16s. ;
Brighton, £lO 14s. ; Dover, £l4 6s.
The amount of traffic for the last week, on 4,404 miles
of railway, was £172,992, thus accounted f0r:—£76,806
for the conveyance of passengers only, £50,235 for the
carriage of goods, and a remainder of £45,951 for passen-
gers and goods together, not respectively apportioned ;
being an increase of £27,015 over the corresponding week
of last year, when the mileage was 3,342. The average
earnings per mile were £39, whilst last year they were
£43.

At the half-yearly meeting of the North Staffordshire
Railway Company the chairman had apparently a pleasant
task in commenting on the report. According to that
document there will be upwards of a million surplus over
the original estimate for making the line—a rare instance
of economical management. The canal tonnage has not
fallen off, and the requirements of the mineral traffic for
the line are at present too numerous to attend to.
" Compared with the early prospects of even the London
and Birmingham, those of the North Staffordshire," said
the chairman, " were vastly superior."
FLUCTUATIONS OF RAILWAY SHARES AND DIVI-
DENDS.—In the appendix to Mr. Smiles's pamphlet on
" Railway Property," there is a list of railways—their
average cost per mile. From this list some interesting
facts may be gleaned. The lines are placed alphabetically,
and comparing the total receipts for the last half of 1848
with those of the corresponding period of 1847, we find
that in the Birkenhead, Lancashire, and Cheshire Rail-
way Company, the receipts in 1847 were £19,728 as
against £21,607 in 1841; in Dublin and Drogheda,
£22,928 against £19,693 ; Dublin and Kingstown, £26,859
and £25,449; Eastern Counties', £310,839 and £396,697;
East Lancashire, £25,918 and 38,261 ; Eastern Union,
£30,102 and £35,202; Edinburgh and Glasgow, £99,079
and £96,834 ; Glasgow and Ayr, £70,853 and £67,692;
Great Western, £522,728 and £528,980 ; Lancashire and
Yorkshire, £249,208 and £295,933: London and North
Western, £1,119,923 and £1,130,892 ; London and
Brighton, £254,801 and £252,946 ; London and South
Western, £242,753 and £265,300; Midland, £571,257
and £591,715; South Eastern, £260,190 and £250,650;
York and North Midland, £224,633 and £229,358 ; and
York and Newcastle, £345,230 and £360,892.
SOUTHPORT RAILWAY.—The half-yearly meeting of
the Liverpool, Crosby, and Southport Railway was held
on Tuesday, at the Clarendon-rooms ; W. Nicol, Esq.,
in the chair. The weekly wages, which were (exclusive
of the salary of the secretary) £66 10s., have been re-
duced to £26 Ils. The greatest number of passengers
conveyed in one week has been 5,242. The weekly ave-
rage in the month of December was 952. The receipts
from traffic have been £3,604 7s. 9d., and the expenses
£1,879 ss. 6d.' leaving a surplus income of £1,725 2s. 3d.
from the 24th July to the 31st December. As the line
had not been open for six months, the directors did not
recommend any dividend. In consequence of the Lan-
cashire and Yorkshire holding 2,000 shares in the com-
pany, Mr. Crosthwaite and Mr. Stuart, directors of the
former company, were elected to this board in the place
of two of the present directors, who retired. The direc-
tors expressed themselves anxious to complete the line
from Waterloo to its junction with the Lancashire and
Yorkshire line, but they wished to avoid all additional
works until their present engagements were liquidated.
The entire expenditure in capital and revenue was £84,444,
and the total receipts were £86,652, leaving in the bank-
ers' hands a balance of £2,208.
EAST LANCASHIRE RAILWAY.—The connecting link
of this line, between Colne and Burnley, was opened on
Thursday. By this line a direct railway communication
is opened from Leeds to Blackburn, and all parts to the
west and north of England and Scotland.—The half-
yearly meeting of the shareholders was held on Wednes-
day, at Bury—John Grundy, Esq., in the chair. The
report, which was lengthy, entered into various details,
and stated there was no doubt that the Liverpool, Orm-
skirk, and Preston line would be finished in the month of
March next. The balance of profit for the year, viz.,
£19,985, 7s. 7d., will, after deducting the amount re-
quired for the dividend on preference shares, say £7,537,
be carried, as heretofore, to the reserved fund, which will
then amount, as appears from the general revenue ac-
counts, to the sum of £46,465 13s. 2d. As the line will
be substantially completed in the course of this half year,
the directors propose to discontinue the payment of inte-
rest on calls from the 30th of June next. The report
further stated that it was intended to apply to parliament
for a bill for various purposes—one being to raise an addi-
tional share capital of £304,000. The report was adopted.
On the motion of the chairman, a dividend at the rate of
five per cent. per annum was declared on the quarter
shares, and a dividend of eight par cent. upon the prefe-
rence quarter shares.

Low]; LUGGAGE OFFICE AT THE EUSTON STATION.—
It would be infinitely easier to say what there is not than
what there is in the forty compartments, like great wine-
bins, in which all this lost property is arranged. One is
choke-full of men's hats ; another of parasols, umbrellas,
and sticks of every possible description. One would think
that all the ladies' reticules on earth are deposited in a
third. How many little smelling bottles—how many
little embroidered pocket handkerchiefs—how many little
musty eatables and comfortable drinkables—how many
little bills, important little notes, and other very small
secrets each may have contained, we felt that we would
not for the world have ascertained ; but when we gazed
at the enormous quantity of red cloaks, red shawls, red
tartan plaids, and red scarfs piled up in one corner, it
was, we own, impossible to help reflecting that surely
English ladies of all ages, who wear red cloaks, &c., must
in some mysterious way or other be powerfully affected
by the whine of compressed air, by the sudden ringing of
a bell, by the sight of their friends—in short, by the
various conflicting emotions thrt disturb the human
heart on arriving at the up terminus of the Euston sta-
tion ; for else, how, we gravely asked ourselves, could
we possibly account for the extraordinary red heap before
us ? Of course, in this Rolando-looking cave, there were
plenty of carpet bags, gun-cases, portmanteaus, writing-
desks, books, bibles, cigar-cases, &c. ; but there were a
few articles that certainly we were not prepared to meet
with, and which but too clearly proved that the extraor-
dinary terminus excitement, which had suddenly caused
so many virtuous ladies to elope from their red shawls—
in short, to be all of a sudden not only in a " bustle"
behind but all over—had equally affected men of all sorts
and conditions. One gentleman had left behind him a
pair of leathern hunting-breeches—another his bootjack.
A soldier of the 22nd Regiment had left his knapsack,
containing his kit. Another soldier of the 10th, poor
fellow, had left his scarlet regimental coat. Some crjpre,
probably overjoyed at the sight of his family,-had eft,
behind him his crutches. But what astonished 1130pite
all was that some honest Scotchman, probably, in the
ecstacy of suddenly seeing amongr the crowd 'the face of
his faithful Jeannie, had actually "left b,ehind'him the 'est
. .
portion of his bagpipes.. §oule,little time ,ago the sn er-
intpudent, on breaking, iippil,i'keyiou.6 t0n044 le;
i
a locked leather hat-box, wluch,bati. lgirin•t4S 4301 oa
tlio 51eiri,.found in. it, -Under, ithe-hat,.,£65 :in Mau g'
Eilthaidoilotes, with (lila* / twtopiiwate' lettei iclij
enabled him to restate tili 4aiOnik.td the'bwnOil will it
turned out, had been so positive that he had left his I;at-
.

box in an hotel at Birmingham, that he had made no in-
quiry for it at the railway-ofce.— Quarterly Review.