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Under this heading is considered mineral and general merchandise traffic, other than general merchandise sundries. The description 'wagon-load" is not used here to distinguish between the through train and wagon forwarding modes of movement, but only to exclude consignments of less than a wagon load.

In 1961, this group of traffics as a whole, amounting to 89 m. tons, produced receipts of £109·3 m., but failed to cover its direct costs by £24·2 m. and fell short of covering its total costs by £57·5 m. It is, however, a very mixed class of traffic which not only includes a wide variety of commodities but which also covers a very wide range of all the other variables which determine the suitability of traffic for rail transport, such as terminal conditions, consignment size, loadability, length of haul, etc. It is, therefore, particularly necessary to analyse this group of traffics in detail to determine how much of it can be regarded as good rail traffic.

The commodity composition of the 89 m. tons of this traffic carried in 1961 is as follows:—

Mineral Traffic Million Tons

Bricks, clay, common 1.1 Bricks, refractory 0.5 1- Clay, common or fire.. 0.4 Fertilisers and manure 2.0 Iron and steel, bars, billets, etc. 4.4 Iron and steel scrap 6.1 Iron ore 16.6 Iron, pig 2.6 Lime and limestone 7.4 O.T.W. Bitumen, creosote, etc. 0.9 Roadstone 0.2 Sand, common 1.6 Slag, cinders and ashes 1.0 1 " Sugar beet 1.0 Other ++ 8.6

34 (of which 23-2 m. 54-4 tons, or 43 per cent. moved in full train loads)