The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

RAILWAY SYSTEM AND ITS RESULTS. 459
the annual traffic has not been of continuous growth. Some remark-
able facts illustrate this truth. At one period the Midland Railway
had the monopoly of the whole traffic to the North ; that line being
" the route " to the North of England and to Scotland. When the
Caledonian was opened, some years ago, the Northwestern Railway,
working in conjunction with it, was able to abstract the bulk of the
Scotch traffic from the Midland line. Nevertheless, the Midland
traffic continued to increase. At a later period the Great Northern
was opened, affijrding almost a direct route to Nottingham, to Leeds,
to York, and to Edinburgh. The Scotch traffic of the Midland was
thereby annihilated, and its trade to the large towns named almost
entirely abstracted ;
yet, with all this, the Midland receipts continued
to increase largely, chiefly in consequence of its local growth and the
development of its mineral traffic.
This is one only of the many illustrations that might be offered of
the rapid progress of a system which is now producing a gross annual
revenue exceeding Twenty Millions Steeling.
Looking at all the circumstances of a Railway, the nature of its
component parts, and the enormous amount of traffic over it, the
constant depreciation necessarily becomes a source of serious con-
sideration.
A permanent way may be said to consist of sleepers, chairs, and
rails. The rails, it has been already stated, are 30,000 miles in length ;
which, at a reasonable average weight, will give about 2,225,000 tons
of iron laid down in rails alone ;
resting upon not less than 60,000,000
iron chairs, weighing nearly 750,000 tons. So that you have, in the
whole, not less than 3,000,000 tons of iron on the permanent ways of
the United Kingdom.
Estimating the waste of iron, from wear and tear, oxidation, and loss
in remanufacture at (say) half a pound per yard annually, there cannot
be less than 20,000 tons of iron to be every year replaced, and
200,000 tons of rails to be rerolled. The sleepers, of which there are
not less than 26,000,000 on our lines of railway, perish still more rap-
idly. What with decay from wet and other causes, the sleepers disap-
pear at the rate of 2,000,000 per annum, at the least, and require to
be wholly replaced every twelve or fourteen years. It is curious to
consider the effect of this annual demand for sleepers. To provide
2,000,000 of new sleepers, 300,000 trees must every year be felled,
supposing that each tree will yield as many as six good sleepers. Now
300,000 trees can scarcely attain growth and maturity on less than
5,000 acres of forest. Consequently, 5,000 acres of forest must be
annually cleared of timber to provide sleepers for our lines of rail-
way.