BRITISH RAILWAYS IN WARTIME

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 182, 28 April 1919, Page 7

BRITISH RAILWAYS IN WARTIME

STORY OF THEIR WORK 700 LOCOMOTIVES SENT ABROAD Some remarkable facts illustrating the enormous war work of our British railways were revealed in the evidence which Sir Herbert Walker, Acting-Chairman of the Railway Executive Committee and General' Manager of the London and South-Western. Railway, gave before the recent Select' Committee on Transport, the minutes" of which were published recently.. Incidentally Sir Herbert's evidence supplies an explanation of some of the difficulties under which the railways are labouring—and the public are suffering— at the moment. The mileage-of the railway undertak-ings-taken over by the Government, Sir Herbert said, is 21,331; the mileage of tke lines not taken over ; is only i 99. Last year about ,£35,000,000 worth of trafh'o was carried for the Government— about two.-thirds goods and one-third paesenger traffic. At~the en<i of" -1916, when the railway companies were called upon to send 300 locomotives to il-ance, passbnger services had to be drastically curtailed, and the surcharge of 50 per cent, was put on all ordinary fares with the object:of discouraging travel. This SO per cent, increase, Sir Herbert added, did have an. appreciable effect in 1917, especially in 'the early part of the year. "Unfortunately," he added, "owing, no doubt, to the high wages that are being earned throughout the country, we have had to. carry more passongers this year than ever before." The 'total of the ■passenger receipts on theL. and S.W.R. ■in August this year, for instance, were .£160,000 more than in tho previous August. .. ■ i . More than 30,000 railway-owned wagons and a large number of private wagons, were sent to various theatres of war. ■ . \ ■ ■ .

Engines for the Fronts. Altogether british railways sent no fewer ,than i7OO locomotives to France, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Salonika, and other parts of tho front from a total stock of 22,000 engines. Meanwhile they had difficulty in repairing their'locomotives and wagons at home owing to lack of labour and materials. At the present moment the railways are working their goods traffic with about 80,000 wagons fewer than in 1913. , - ' Sir Herbert said that in October the staff of the railways was about 17,000 less than in 1913, and yet accidents had decreased. Up to October the railways ' had released 180,796.0f theiv men for service ill the Forces, equal to about 30 per cent, of their employees. Special railway units, .dealing ,with military railway construction and operation, took 2i,17C of these men.

The railway workshops enrly in the war constructed 30,000 stretchers. very quickly at the request of the War Office,.and that brought very soon, a demand for 10,000 general service wagons. In the railway, workshops nearly ,£10,000,000 worth of munitions were turned out at cost price, with no profit whatever for the railway companies.

Lines Torn Up. ; When there was a shortage of rails in France, and an urgent demand arose for -200 rfliles of permanent way, the British railways closed down some of their branches, and turned some double lines .into single lines-with the lesult that they sent out to the front 72,000 tons of permanent way and 20.000 sleepers. The railways equipped Bomo of the locomotive shops fa, France for the repair, of locomotives, 1 with machinery and staff; and they designed and built 2500 twenty-ton wagons for the use of our armies in France. The British railways constructed 24 ambulance trains for use in this country. 30_ ambulance trains for the us? of the British Army in Prance, one for the use of the.British Army in Egypt, and .17 for the use of the American Armies in Prance. In October they had one train in hand for the British Army and 31' for the American Armies. Most of these, he explained, were not absolutely new construction, but were largely reconstruction, of existing modern stock. 'That is where a lot of.our good stock has gone," explained Sir Herbert. About .1000 railway, officers of various grades were working on the staff of Government Departments. About 100 of the railway companies' 164 steamers bad been handed over to the Admiralty for Admiralty use. Well might the ohairman of the committee, Mr. Wilson Fox, say to Sir Herbert that "it is a very fine record of performance." -