Page:The Reshaping of British Railways (Beeching Report).pdf/82

 Nature and Characteristics of Traffic Analysed

The tables on pages 82 to 89 together present a comprehensive picture of the wagon-load General Merchandise and Minerals traffic as a whole:―


 * Tables I, II and III, analyse the traffic in three alternative ways―by terminal conditions, by wagon loading and by transit distance—showing for each grouping the consignments, tonnage, wagons and containers used, direct costs and receipts.


 * Tables IV, V and VI, give a more detailed analysis of the tonnage and relative profitability of the traffics carried according to the different combinations of terminal conditions, wagon loading and distance.

Terminal Conditions

Table I is an analysis of traffic by various combinations of terminal conditions. The importance of any one of the individual terminal conditions is more strikingly illustrated if the figures are summarised in another way.

The following summary shows the volume of traffic affected by each of the different terminal conditions. Traffic for which the terminal conditions at the forwarding and receiving points are not identical appears under each of the two headings concerned:―

Tons Percentage of total traffic

Traffic dealt with by road at one or both ends of the transit 181,300  11

Traffic originating and/or terminating at station 324,000  19

Traffic originating and/or terminating at docks 316,700  19

Traffic originating and/or terminating at private sidings 1,560,400  92

The predominant influence of private sidings suggests that they are a prime factor in the retention to rail of wagon-load merchandise and minerals traffic; only 8 per cent. of the traffic which passed during the test week was not dealt with through a private siding at one end or the other.

Wagon Loading

Table II analyses wagon loading. Whilst 84 per cent. of the total tonnage passes in loads of over & tons, there is a substantial amount of traffic which has a very low loading. Some 33,700 consignments, or 41 per cent, of the total, and 50,700 of the wagons forwarded, or 28 per cent. of the total, had loadings of 4 tons or less.

Distance

Table III gives an analysis by distance, whilst an analysis of the average wagon loading according to terminal conditions and distance is shown in Table IV. The relationship between wagon loading and distance shows no