Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/295

Rh class was abolished on the Midland Railway, and the fares were consequently reduced, as previously described, we find that, although the number of first class passengers conveyed by the London and North Western Company reached its maximum of 3,288,661, the net receipts were, owing to the reduction of the fares, only 1s. 6½d. per passenger, and 4d. per train mile, as against 2s. 3d. per passenger, and 5d. per train mile in 1873. The second class net receipts, from the same cause, were similarly affected.

From 1875 to 1881 the number of first and second class passengers and the receipts continued rapidly to decrease, and the third class to increase, in a remarkable degree. The net receipts from first class fell from is. 6½d. to 1S. 2d. per passenger, and from 4d. to 2d. per train mile, and in the second class, although the gross receipts per passenger were slightly increased, the net receipts were reduced from 5d. to 4d. per passenger, and from 2½d. to less than a penny per train mile.

The figures for the last period compared, from 1881 to 1884, continue to show the same tendency, but in an accelerated degree, the effect of the decrease, year by year, in the first and second class gross receipts, combined with the increase in the working expenses, being to still further diminish the slender profit upon these classes of traffic, until we find that in the year 1884 the net profit per first class passenger has come down to 5&middot;71d., as against 3s. 5d. in 1860, and from 11d. per train mile to &middot;68d. The net profit upon each second class passenger, which in 1860 was 1s. 2d., in 1884 has fallen to 2d., and the net profit per train mile has been reduced from nearly a shilling to less than a halfpenny.

It will be seen that the tendency of these figures,