Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/225

 documents, by which the goods were consigned to confederates in some other town. Under the present system, as the fraudulent note could not bear the weighbridge stamp, its character would at once be detected.

Large firms frequently enter a whole van load of goods for various addresses, on one consignment note, and therefore the first step is for all such notes, containing more than one entry, to be taken to an office called the "Shipping office," where a separate note is made out for each separate consignment, these manufactured notes being officially stamped to shew that they are "extracted" from an authentic note.

Meanwhile the vans, as they arrive, are placed in position for unloading on to the large stage or platform, previously described as running along the front of all the arches; the consignment notes relating to each load are handed by the unloading foreman to the various checkers who are in charge of the unloading gangs, and the goods are removed from the vans, checked against the entries on the consignment notes, and weighed on the weighing machines, which are stationed at regular intervals all along the stage. On the wall in each of the arches is painted a number, and the name of the place or district for which goods are loaded in that particular arch; for instance, one will be "Liverpool," another "Manchester," a third "North Staffordshire," and so on, and in each arch, also, there is displayed a copy of a table, corrected from time to time, and which shews in more detail the stations to which goods are loaded in each arch, and the times of departure of the trains made up and despatched each night to the various destinations. The experienced checker, however, has all this in his head, so that when a package is taken out