Page:The Reshaping of British Railways (Beeching Report).pdf/34

 revenue will fall. It does not follow, however, that the net revenue will also decrease, because there will be a higher proportion of bulk movement which is favourable to rail.

In 1961, the rail coal traffic which totalled 146 m. tons was spread over the main consumer groups as shown below:—

Consumer m. tons C.E.G.B. 30-7 Gas 11-0 Blast furnaces 18-0 Other industrial 22.3 Shipment 22.9 Domestic 27.6 Balance* 13-2 TOTAL 145.7
 * Balance mainly accounted for by coal to washeries, for stocking, and hauled by Coal Board locomotives over British Railways' system.

A high proportion of the coal for large consumers already moves by through-train operation and 57 m. tons, or 39 per cent. of the 1961 total was moved in that way, while the remainder moved by the wagon-load. Of the 89 m. tons which moved by the staging of wagons, 54 m. went to private sidings and 35 m. tons went to stations.

Movement of coal by through-train operation enables greater benefit to be derived from the potential advantages of rail transport than does single wagon movement. Even with this type of traffic, however, terminal conditions and established practices militate against really economic use of rail facilities. As a result, there has been some erosion of bulk flows of coal by road competitors, in spite of the very substantial cost advantage which rail is potentially able to give.

The main trouble arises at the collieries, for a combination of reasons which spring from the histories of the two industries. First, there, are few collieries which produce enough coal of any one type to supply a large consumer, so that the flow to, say, a large generating station has to be built up by drawing from a group of them. A second and even more serious difficulty is that none of the collieries has storage bunkers and facilities for rapid loading of trains, although quite a number of them are able to load road vehicles without delay, from elevated hoppers. Instead, the collieries use railway wagons as bunkers and need to have a large supply of them available for that purpose at all times. As a result, wagons spend an average of 2 days in colliery sidings, and, at present, the Coal Board pay practically nothing for their use during that time.