JAWS OF RAILWAY PUNCTUALITY.
"NOBODY expects impossibilities," says the Times, "nor would it be reasonable to exact that a journey of two hundred and fifty miles should be performed without the error of a minute" : a remark which is true in the letter, but which implies too great a concession. The Times itself immediately supplies one qualifica-
tion of the allowance-
" When a train is advertised to arrive from London at York or Exeter by a certain hour of the day, a fair allowance will always be made for the nature and liabilities of the undertaking. The companies, as some of them state on their time-bills, do not profess to keep exact time at the stations, but every effort will be used to maintain punctuality.' This is all very well, but what we denounce is the deliberate adoption of such arrangements as puts their performance of the contract entirely out of the question, and wilfully con- templates a breach of faith for their own private advantage. If a company receives a sovereign for a specified piece of work, having previously so regu- lated its engagements that the execution of this work is impossible, we do not see what this can be termed but a commercial fraud, nor how such fraud, which in the case of individual delinquents would be severely visited, can claim impunity when practised by a powerful association. It is time that railway directors should be made to recognize the responsibility of a bargain. As things stand, they hold themselves privileged to break all their stipula- tions at will. They promise to arrive at a certain station by mid-day, and they arrive there, if it so pleases them, by midnight. They profess to start at BM o'clock, and they start at nine ; they advertise to travel thirty miles an hour, and they travel eighteen. For the accidents of a large establish- ment, and a vast extent of mileage, we would make, as we have said, every reasonable allowance • but this allowance cannot be claimed when the bar- gain has been deliberately broken for purposes of greater gain. In ordinary cases, damages would be recoverable from any coach or job master who could be proved to have so treated a customer; nor do we see why railway direc- tors should be exempted from a like accountability."
The want of punctuality, with its fatal consequences and exces- sive inconvenience, has not been limited to this summer, but has only been aggravated by the excursion-train system. There are sources of unpunctuality, therefore, which are inherent in the methodisof the companies : and two of them are very obvious.
One is, simply a lax disregard to punctuality. The first be- ginning is some slight indulgence at the departure of a train, to take in a late passenger or stow away a tardy box. Half .a minute, it was thought, could not much matter ; but the half- minute grew to be a minute or two; . a minute or two was wanted at several stations, perhaps for several .purposes; and at last the rule was so deliberately disregarded, that, as the Times says, some companies advertise the fact that they cannot undertake to be punctual. Thus they positively offer to passengers and to their own officers a suggestion that punctuality is not essentially neces- sary; and the time-table is a mere standard for a system of attenzpts at punctuality, abortive or otherwise. The error lay in the first yielding : a great check upon unpunctuality in a railway system, as in the Army or Navy, would be rigid exactness in the commands of the superior officers and in the movements of trains. Let a train depart at the hour named, without ?lefty for the dilatoey passenger, for the porter who has put off his duty, or even for the servant -Who is unabk to do his work in a given time. Be rigid ; then the delay of the 'few would not be visited on the many, and the public would be taught the regularity which is so essential to its own safety. It is as easy to maintain punctuality in a journey of two hun- dred and fifty miles as it is in a journeyof twenty-Ave or two-and- a-half : the longer journey in 'the railway system is but the re- duplication of several shorter jourmes ; the chance of error is the same at each stage, and may be corrected in detail, without being suffered to accumulate into one gross error. The correction, in- deed, demands a discontinuance of the second source of unpunctu- ality to which we have referred— and that is, the allowance of too short a time for the whole journey. In reducing journies by rail- way to a very short time, some benefit has been conferred on our highly locomotive and commercial population ; but when you have brought the journey within the compass of a few hours, the at- tempt to save an additional hour or so is not worth the excess of effort. Still less when the success is precarious and the attempt for the most part self-defeating. If you are told that you shall be six hours in going from London to Lincoln, you make your appoint. ments accordingly, and you admit that the time is not inordinate ; but if you are told that you shall be five hours, and you are seven, your whole plans are deranged—it is quite possible that the loss of two hours may be equivalent to the loss of ten, or of a whole day. An obvious cause of unpunctuality is the neglect to allow a suf- ficient margin for the error to which the Times refers, and for the work to be performed at each station. Admitted that in each stage of the journey error may occur : an allowance of time for that error should always be added to the time necessary for tran- sit from one station to another ; and in like manner, ample time should be given for each necessary stoppage, so as to allow for a slight error in the performance of station-work. With such allow- ances, although it would remain impossible to effect every arrival with literal exactness, it would be most easy to effect every de- parture at the exact moment of time set down for it. In all cases of combined movement, this allowance of time is absolutely necessary to punctuality, and even to expedition in the aggregate. A child might suppose that a body of soldiers could be marched out of Hyde Park with greater speed if each man were to make the best use of his legs ; but the rawest recruit knows, that to get them out in the shortest possible time, it is necessary that they should move with measured tread at measured distances, and that to secure perfect order and regularity it is necessary to throw in a spare quarter of an hour before starting, besides a full allowance of time for each evolution. Railway companies cannot be superior to the laws of combined movements : it is the disregard of those laws which stamps their management with marked inferiority, and makes them responsible for so much annoyance and suffering.
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