Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/124

 big railway undertaking in 1890. Take the London & North Western, then undoubtedly the biggest of them all, and the greatest Corporation in the world. A hundred millions of money had been spent in buying and building its 1,850 miles of line, its railway carriages, engines, and waggons. It had 45,000 employees, and its expenses were six millions per annum, with gross earnings of eleven millions. The population of Crewe and a few other places practically turned upon the L. & N.W. It had a staff of 7,000 men to build and repair its five million pounds worth of locomotives, and the Crewe workshops turned out every requisite for a railway, from a coal-scuttle to bridges and rails. It had 1,400 signal boxes, from which 16,000 signals were worked. These signals required wires enough to stretch from Liverpool to New York. The annual printing bill was £60,000, and the annual tailor's bill was £25,000. For the 55 million miles run by engines, coal was used at an average rate of 40 pounds per mile, and oil and tallow cost £70,000 a year. Its 5,000 passenger coaches would seat 164,000 passengers, and there were eleven times as many trucks as coaches to build and keep in order at the waggon works, which covered 35 acres at Earlstown, and at the carriage factory at Wolverton, covering 50 acres. To such vast dimensions had a single railway company developed by 1890.

The Society had established its benevolent fund at the Triennial Conference held at Leeds in 1889, and had appointed Mr. Shuttleworth as assistant to the secretary. Efforts were authorised to secure the amalgamation of the Locomotive Steam Engineers & Firemen's Sick Society, and similar societies at Nottingham. Burton, and Derby. At the 1886 Conference