Excerpt from Should Our Railways Be Nationalised?

Business, he would not do any more with me. He said I had sent on the invoice a week before the goods, he had to go and pay retail price for them to keep his word. It asserted that the goods were given to the Railways the day the invoice was dated, but he said he could not believe the Railways would take eleven days to carry a parcel 400 miles. I protested my innocence, but to no purpose. This part of the drama annoyed and irritated me. Not only had I lost the customer, but in his estimation any virtue I might have for telling the truth. This incident having been so strongly impressed upon my memory, I retailed it over in the Commercial Rooms and to my customers here and there, till I found that I was not by any means the only one that had had goods lost, stolen, or strayed on our railways. SO I made up my mind that I would try to probe the cause of these delays a little further. Tvhen I got home I went to our Dunfermline goods agent and asked him if he would try to find out the reason or cause of the delay. He said he would try. Some two months after, he came to our warehouse and made a statement something like this -oh the first day the Cardiff truss got to Leith' Walk transferring station the second day it was put into a Carlisle wagon, and got into Carlisle on the third day the Midland on the fourth day could not load a wagon for' Gloucester, and kept it over till the fifth that day they put it in a wagon for Derby. A day again was lost here, and on the seventh day it was sent on to Gloucester, got there on the ninth, and was Offered to my customer on the eleventh, and rejected. This story excited my curiosity more than ever. Why was it the Midland did not send on the cwt. Truss at once to Gloucester Because they had not enough goods to load a wagon to the West of England. Next day they were in the same position, but they put it into a wagon that was loaded for Derby, and so on. On thinking the matter over, it seemed clear to me that the trouble lay in the fact that we had three trunk lines contending for the Scotch trade to the W'est O£ England, and, the trade from Scotland not being very big or heavy, all the three systems were not able to load a wagon each every twenty-four hours, the result being that small parcels of no. 2, 3, 4, and 5 class goods had to be laid aside, or sent from point to point and transferred from one wagon to the other, till six, eleven, and sometimes fifteen days are taken to deliver a truss or box not 200 miles from where it started. It struck me then, and I am of the same Opinion still, that if our railways were all in one pool or belonged to the State, the above classes of goods travelling say one to 400 miles would be all sent to.

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