Page:The Reshaping of British Railways (Beeching Report).pdf/42

 These questions cannot easily be dealt with separately, and what follows has some bearing upon each of them.

It is noteworthy that of the 25·4 m. tons of traffic which the traffic test showed to pass through stations each year, 12·8 m. tons moved siding/station, and a further 5·8 m. tons moved siding/road. This is traffic which it is particularly necessary to consider in relation to (a) and (b) above.

The first of these groups of traffic only just about paid its direct costs in 1961, and, as will be seen later, it should be possible to move much of it in ways which will make it remunerative traffic. It will be noticed from Table V of Appendix I, that a very high proportion of it gives good wagon loading, and it will also be found, later, that most of it moves between a relatively small number of large centres.

The smaller group of traffics which moves siding/road does not load so well, but about 70 per cent. makes wagon loads over 6 tons. It does, therefore, include a substantial proportion of potentially good traffic which, in common with that mentioned in the previous paragraph, will be referred to again in the section dealing with Liner Trains.

As might be expected, most of this siding/station traffic, whether it includes road movement or not, is a flow outwards from sidings to stations. This is confirmed by the marked disparity between the total of traffic received by stations during the test week and that forwarded, as shown by Tables Nos. 11 and 12 of Appendix 1. Traffic received exceeded forwardings by an annual rate of 9.3 m. tons which shows how preponderantly the flow of siding/station traffic must have been a flow out from sidings.

It has already been pointed out that a preponderance of the siding traffic passes through a relatively small proportion of the total number of private sidings which exist, and Table 18, which shows how traffic is spread over sidings grouped under parent stations, also makes it evident that sidings handling most of the traffic are concentrated in a few areas of high industrial or population density. It is equally evident from Tables 11 and 12, that most of the station traffic passes through a small proportion of the total number of stations, and that the siding/station traffic is mostly received by the large ones. The following figures illustrate this point:—

Stations forwarding or receiving less than 100 tons/week

Stations forwarding or receiving more than 100 tons/week

Total received

Total forwarded

Difference

Total received

Total forwarded

Difference 54.2 '000 tons/week 41-1 13-1 315.7 149-1 166.6 These points are of interest and importance in connection with the closure of small stations, since it appears that not only do such stations handle very little of the total volume of merchandise freight but, also, that what they do
 * 000 tons/week