Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/280

242 per mile were charged for third class passengers conveyed by a few fast trains of a secondary character, to which third class carriages were beginning to be attached. At this time the third class carriages, although they were covered in as a protection from the weather, were not upholstered in any way, and contained nothing more than plain wooden seats.

Taking a period of thirteen years, from i860 to 1872, during which the traffic was conducted under these conditions, a table which has been prepared showing the gross receipts of the London and North Western Railway from each class of traffic, and from the three classes combined, per passenger, and per passenger train mile run, from year to year, gives the following averages for the whole period:—

Space would not admit of the details of this table being given, but an examination of it shows that from about the year 1869 third class traffic began to assume greater importance, and that the receipts per train mile