The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1875-09-17
BRITISH RAILROADS.
The Capital. Mileage and Businessof En-
glish Railroads.

The Capital, Mileage ana busihessof III
glish Railroads.
The Blue Book of the British Board
of Trade, recently issued, shows that mt
the close of 1874 there were in England,
Scotland and Ireland is, 449 miles OF
railway. OF these England had z, 193
miles of double track and 4, 429 miles of
single track: Scotland had /, 04S miles of
double and 1852 miles of single track,
and Ireland had sos miles of double and
1,619 miles of single track. Twenty
years ago there were i'll the United
Kingdom only S,053 miles of railway,
of which 6, 103 miles were double and
1850 single lines. The increase of sim
gle lines of rail in Scotland and Ireland
is good illustration of the wise adapta-
ton of means to ends-the thinly popu-
lated regions OF these countries have
been furnished with such railways as
they absolutely needed, and with no
more. The gross capital invested in
railways in the United Kingdom Mt pres
ent is 5000, 1876, 931, or 5000, 479, $50.
VI this immense sum, exceeding the
debt of the United States by nearly a
billion of dollars, England has the lions
share, f50S, 726, 428; Scotland has f71,-
1927, 40; while poor Ireland follows far
in the rear with only 500, S42, 1868. About
40 per cent. of the whole, or f24S, $685.
naming f361, 1867, 691 is represented by
various forms of Indebtedness. The
capital has increased in twenty years by
.f222, 657, 634, and thus has nearly
doubled. The number of passengers
conveyed by all the railways in 1874 was
AT, $40, All, an increase of $3.50, $50, 246
i'll twenty years.
The total receipts for passengers in
1874 were 600, Ola ,313, which is an av-
erage of only about II pence per pas
! senger. This somewhat startling fact
gives apparent strength TO the opinion
that If all the railways of the kingdom
were taken over by the government it
would be possible without loss to carry
passengers as letters are now carried
that is, at a very low and uniform rate
for any distance. If every passenger
who travelled on the British railways in
1874 he'd paid one shilling for each Jour
ney, the income from this source would
have been f23, 1892, 900, or f1,877, 702
more than the amount actually received.
The vast number of people, however,
who travelled upon the Underground and
other metropolitan lines of London for
short distances, at rates ranging from
Id to Sd per journey, must be taken
into account in this calculation, as well
as the fact that in all the densely popu-
lated districts in England the people
avail themselves of those facilities Tor
| travelling short distances which are, as q
rule, unknown III ireland and Scotland.
Still, while the payment received from
each passenger i'll England in 1874 av-
eraged only 10 65d, or about u cents,
it did not exceed II I'D in Scotland nor
IL al In Ireland. The vast impetus which
would be given to travel if one could 90
from London to Edinburgh or Dublin
for sixpence, or perhaps for three pence,
cannot be safely calculated.
The total receipts of all the British
railways i'll 1874 were t59, 255, 715, an
increase of f39, 039, 961 as compared with
the receipts of twenty years ago. OF
these receipts 42.01 per cent. came from
passengers. The government paid
1868, 1913 for the transmission of its
mails the remaining receipts came from
the transportation of goods. The whole
working cost of the roads was $50, 612,-
7l2, and the net receipts were .e26, 643,-
DAB. The railway companies paid e356,-
$40 as compensation for personal in
juries, .f251 1866 for damages to goods,
and f315, 0l3 for law and Parliamentary
expenses. They had IL, 235 locomotives
and 379, 1893 carriages. If all these loco
motives and carriages were made into
one train it would be 1856 miles long
and it would carry, without crowding,
about 10000 600 of people.