Morning journal and courier., 1881-12-30
Friday Morning, Dec. 30, 1881.
BRITISH RAILRoADs.

ks1A1A4SA1 thA&AtkGOA41Ss@sss There are Is, ,o0o miles of railroad in Great Britain and &, ,0o0 miles in the United States.
 The capital invested in the former is $3,-
 539, 1000, 900 and in the latter 4 300, COG, 900. The cost per mile of the British system is SI96, 1000, and of the American $52, TOO. The net earnings of the American system are $255, 1000, GOO and of the British system $I56,- COG, 900. The most striking feature of the
 above figures is the remarkable discrepancy
 in tb- -yst for each mile of road in the two
 sV -ems. It is not likely that single line in
 the United States represents the expenditure
 of $196, 900 mile, which is the average cost
 of British railroads. The great cost of Brit
 ish railroads is caused by their fine road beds,
 costly stone bridges, long cuts, heavy fills and massive stations, and the large sums
 paid for right of way into large towns and
 through rural districts where ordinary lands
 are held sometimes as high as thousand dol
 lars an acre.
 The largest dividend paid by any British
 railroad last year was ten and one-half per cent, returned by the Maryport and Carlisle line, operated by the Great Western Compa- ny. It is a small road, only forty-one miles long and with 8 capital of about $3, 800, ,Oo0
 Of the great English lines the most prosper
 ous is the Northeastern, which last year paid
 eight and 8 quarter per cent. on almost
 $10o, ,O0e, 900 of ordinary stock, which now sells in the market at about $172 for each share of $1o0. Like the United States. Great
 Britain is now passing through an era of rail-
 road consolidation. Six corporations--the London and Northwestern, the Great West ern, the Great Northern, the Midland, the Northeastern and the Caledonian-controla al- ready 8,33S miles of single and double track and $1, $40. 900, 900 of invested capital. It may be roughly stated that half of the whole railroad system of Great Britain is under their management One of them alone-the London and Northwestern Company-con- trols an invested capital of $500, GOO, 900, and each of them has absorbed twenty or thirty subordinate lines, great and small. So far as can be judged, however, this swift and wide consolidation is neither alarming nor dis tasteful to the British public. The newspa- pers speak rather approvingly of it on the plea of improved service, and no cry of ''rno- nopoly" has been raised.
 A correspondent of the New York Eue'1ng Post, who gives in his letter these and other interesting facts concerning the British rail roads, attacks the idea prevalent in this country that trains on them run with much greater speed than is the case on the railroads of other countries. The famous 'sE1ying Dutchman'' on the Great Western railroad makes the run from London to Exc ter, 19f miles, in four hours and fourteen minutes. With four stops it attains speed of almost forty miles an hour. A train on the Great Northern road the Leeds ex- press" does better. It makes the distance from Lon>.on to Leeds, 187 miles. in four hours-almost forty-seven miles an hour, with four stops. The train carrying the Irish mail to Holyhead over the London and Northwestern line and dubbed years ago 'sThe Wild Trish4nala, ? has .aoB sunk into comparative obscurity with it's rate of little less than forty miles an hour. The competi- tion over several of the great lines to the populous Scotch cities leads to some fast schedules. The morning express on the Great Northern road makes only four stops along the line from London to Edinburgh, LuTO0 AuAuEOo cuA A4ACGy-1ifO A4AAOo, oAu flies over the whole distance in nine hours, with an average rate of almost forty-four miles an hour and on the Midland Line the night Scotch express runs the four hundred and twenty-five miles to Glasgow with speed of forty and one-half miles an hour. These are the four swiftest trains in Eng land, and, as will be seen, the Leeds express, with ifs rate of fortvsS9ken miles an hour is the heetest of them all. Three out of the four trains probably beat the running time for the same distance on any other roads in the world. They are all, however, far out stripped for shorter distance by the train on the Pennsylvania railroad which leaves Jersey City at 4:1O p. m.. and makes the run of about eighty-eight miles to Philadelphia in one hundred minutes with one stop, at Trenton. The ffty-two and eight-tenths miles an hour made by this American train is probably without parallel in the schedule time of any railroad company on the globe.