which originally appeared in the Leisure Hour. They contain a
vast
variety of useful and curious informatiom. We hear, for instance, that at Euston each booking-clerk takes on an average 450,000 in the year, and that the London and North-Western Company uses fifty tons weight of tickets in the year. Each collector, again, on an average, has to know the faces of 650 season-ticket holders. Hence the unreasonableness of a holder objecting to show. Still, the collectors often want manners. They ought to peas an examina- tion in them before they are appointed. A. soft voice is an "excellent thing" in them, as in a woman. A strange Fact is told us about the coal traffic. At first it was considered discreditable ! At Weedon there was a screen "behind which coal was furtively transferred from the canal barges" to the waggons. Now it is the most profitable of all goods. Milk is a comparatively recent addition to the list of articles oarried. It comes from Swindon at the rate of a penny a gallon, or about threepence per ton per mile. Engines afford some remarkable details of information. One engine, the 'Lightning,' on the Great Western Railway, ran 818,600 miles before she was re- built; curiously enough, another, constructed at the same time and on the same model, ran rather less than half. Platforms are another interesting subject. We are told that the present South-Eastern system, with its Charing Cross and Cannon Street Stations, is "an old South-Western project." If so, the South-Western was lucky in not getting its way. Never was there a more useless expenditure of money than on the two South-Eastern stations with their costly bridges. It takes twenty minutes to get out of London ; the fares are extravagantly high ; and the rolling-stock kept down, because interest has to be paid on the millions which these follies cost. We have given a few samples of a most readable book.
Previous page
