CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
THE DIAMOND RING AND THE RAILWAY CLEARING-HOUSE.
Let us turn now, for a brief space, to Edwin Gurwood. He is seatedbefore a desk in one of the rooms of that large building in SeymourStreet, Euston Square, London, where a perfect army of clerks--about athousand--clear up many of the mysteries, and overcome a number of thedifficulties, incident to the railway traffic of the kingdom.
At the particular time we write of, Edwin was frowning very hard at abusiness-book and thinking of Emma Lee. The cause of his frown, nodoubt, was owing to the conflict between duty and inclination thathappened to rage in his bosom just then. His time belonged to therailways of the United Kingdom; to Emma belonged his heart. The latterwas absent without leave, and the mind, thus basely forsaken, becamedistracted, and refused to make good use of time.
That day Edwin met with a coincidence, he made what he believed to be adiscovery, and almost at the same moment received an inquiry as to thesubject of that discovery. While endeavouring, without much success, tofix his attention on a case of lost-luggage which it was his duty toinvestigate, and frowning as we have said, at the business-book, his eyewas suddenly arrested by the name of "Durby."
"Durby!" he muttered. "Surely that name is familiar? Durby! why, yes--that's the name of Tipps's old nurse."
Reading on, he found that the name of Durby was connected with a diamondring.
"Well, now, that _is_ strange!" he muttered to himself. "At the firstglance I thought that this must be the brown paper parcel that I madeinquiry about at the station of the Grand National Trunk Railway longago, but the diamond ring puts that out of the question. No nurse, inher senses, would travel with a diamond ring tied up in a brown paperparcel the size of her head."
We may remind the reader here that, when the brown paper parcel wasfound and carried to the lost-luggage office of one of our westernrailways, a note of its valuable contents was sent to the Clearing-Housein London. This was recorded in a book. As all inquiries after lostproperty, wheresoever made throughout the kingdom, are also forwarded tothe Clearing-House, it follows that the notes of losses and notes ofinquiries meet, and thus the lost and the losers are brought togetherand re-united with a facility that would be impracticable without such acentral agency. In the case of our diamond ring, however, no properinquiry had been made, consequently there was only the loss recorded onthe books of the Clearing-House.
While Edwin was pondering this matter, a note was put into his hands bya junior clerk. It contained an inquiry after a diamond ring which hadbeen wrapped up in a large brown paper parcel, with the name Durbywritten on it in pencil, and was lost many months before betweenClatterby and London. The note further set forth, that the ring was theproperty of Mrs Tipps of Eden Villa, and enclosed from that lady aminute description of the ring. It was signed James Noble, M.D.
"Wonderful!" exclaimed Edwin. "The most singular coincidence I everexperienced."
Having thus delivered himself, he took the necessary steps to have thering sent to London, and obtained leave (being an intimate friend of theTipps family) to run down by train and deliver it.
While he is away on this errand, we will take the opportunity ofmounting his stool and jotting down a few particulars about theClearing-House, which are worth knowing, for that establishment is notonly an invaluable means of effecting such happy re-unions of the lostand the losers, as we have referred to, but is, in many other ways, oneof the most important institutions in the kingdom.
The Railway Clearing-House is so named, we presume, because it clears uprailway accounts that would, but for its intervention, becomeinextricably confused, and because it enables all the different lines inthe country to interchange facilities for through-booking traffic, andclears up their respective accounts in reference to the same.
Something of the use and value of the Clearing-House may be shown at aglance, by explaining that, before the great schemes of amalgamationwhich have now been carried out, each railway company booked passengersand goods only as far as its own rails went, and at this point freshtickets had to be taken out and carriages changed, with all thedisagreeable accompaniments and delays of shifting luggage, etcetera.Before through-booking was introduced, a traveller between London andInverness was compelled to renew his ticket and change luggage fourtimes; between Darlington and Cardiff six times. In some journeys nofewer than nine or ten changes were necessary! This, as trafficincreased, of course became intolerable, and it is quite certain thatthe present extent of passenger and goods traffic could never have beenattained if the old system had continued. It was felt to be absolutelynecessary that not only passengers, but carriages and goods, must bepassed over as many lines as possible, at straight "through" to theirdestinations, with no needless delays, and without "breaking bulk." Buthow was this to be accomplished? There were difficulties in the way ofthrough-booking which do not appear at first sight. When, for instance,a traveller goes from London to Edinburgh by the East Coast route, hepasses over three different railways of unequal length, or mileage. TheGreat Northern furnishes his ticket, and gives him station accommodationbesides providing his carriage, while the North-Eastern and NorthBritish permit him to run over their lines; and the latter alsofurnishes station accommodation, and collects his ticket. To ascertainprecisely how much of that traveller's fare is due to each companyinvolves a careful and nice calculation. Besides this, the _whole_ fareis paid to the Great Northern, and it would be unjust to expect thatthat company should be saddled with the trouble of making thecalculation, and the expense of remitting its share to each of the othercompanies. So, too, with goods--one company furnishing the waggon andtarpaulin, besides undertaking the trouble of loading and furnishingstation-accommodation and the use of its line, while, it may be, severalother companies give the use of their lines only, and that to a variableextent. In addition to all this, the company providing its carriages orwaggons is entitled to "demurrage" for every day beyond a certain timethat these are detained by the companies to which they do not belong.
Now, if all this be unavoidable even in the case of a single fare, or asmall parcel, it must be self-evident that in lines where theinterchange of through-traffic is great and constant, it would have beenall but impossible for the railway companies to manage their business,and the system would have given rise to endless disputes.
In order to settle accounts of this description, it was soon seen to beabsolutely necessary that some sort of arrangement must be come to, and,accordingly, the idea of a central office was conceived, and a systemestablished without delay, which, for minute detail and comprehensivegrasp, is unrivalled by any other institution. At first only a few ofthe railway companies united in establishing the Clearing-House in 1842,but by degrees, as its immense value became known, other companiesjoined, and it now embraces all the leading companies in the kingdom.It is said to be not inferior to the War Office, Colonial Office, andAdmiralty in regard to the amount of work it gets through in a year!Its accounts amount to some twelve millions sterling, yet they alwaysmust, and do, balance to a fraction of a farthing. There must never bea surplus, and never a deficiency, in its funds, for it can make noprofits, being simply a thoroughly honest and disinterested andperfectly correct go-between, which adjusts the mutual obligations ofrailways in a quick and economical manner. Its accounts are balancedevery month, and every pound, shilling, and penny can be accounted for.It annually receives and dispenses a revenue greater than that of manyEuropean kingdoms. In 1847 its gross receipts were only 793,701 pounds.In 1868 they had risen to above eleven millions.
Each line connected with the Clearing-House has a representative on thecommittee to look after its interests, and bears its proportion of theexpenses of the establishment.
Before showing the manner in which the work is performed for the railwaycompanies, it may be well to premise that one great good which theClearing-House system does to the public, is to enable them to traveleverywhere with as much facility as if there w
ere only one railway andone company in the kingdom.
To avoid going too much into detail, we may say, briefly, that in regardto goods, statements of through-traffic _despatched_ are sent daily fromthousands of stations to the Clearing-House, also separate statements ofthrough-traffic _received_. These are compared. Of those that arefound to agree, each company is debited or credited, as the case may be,with the proportion due to or by it. Where discrepancies occur,correspondence ensues until the thing is cleared up, and then thedistribution to the accounts of the several companies takes place. Asdiscrepancies are numerous and constant, correspondence is necessarilygreat. So minutely correct and particular are they at theClearing-House, that a shilling is sometimes divided between fourcompanies. Even a penny is deemed worthy of being debited to onecompany and credited to another!
As it is with goods, so is it with passengers. Through-tickets are sentfrom all the stations to the Clearing-House, where they are examined andcompared with the returns of the tickets issued, and then sent back totheir respective companies. As these tickets amount to many thousands aday, some idea may be formed of the amount of labour bestowed on theexamination of them. The proportions of each ticket due to each companyare then credited, and statements of the same made out and forwarded tothe several companies daily. From the two sets of returns forwarded tothe Clearing-House, statements of the debit and credit balances are madeout weekly.
Parcels are treated much in the same way as the goods.
"Mileage" is a branch of the service which requires a separate staff ofmen. There are hundreds of thousands of waggons, loaded and empty,constantly running to and fro, day and night, on various lines, to whichthey do not belong. Each individual waggon must be traced and accountedfor to the Clearing-House, from its start to its arrival and back again;and not only waggons, but even the individual tarpaulins that cover themare watched and noted in this way, in order that the various companiesover whose lines they pass may get their due, and that the companiesowning them may get their demurrage if they be improperly detained onthe way. For this purpose, at every point where separate railways join,there are stationed men in the pay of the Clearing-House, whose duty itis to take the numbers of all passenger carriages and goods, waggons andtarpaulins, and make a _daily_ statement of the same to theClearing-House.
As daily returns of all "foreign" carriages arriving and departing fromall Clearing-House stations are forwarded to the same office, they arethus in a position to check the traffic, detect discrepancies, andfinally make the proper entries as to mileage and demurrage in theaccounts of the respective companies. Frequently the charge ofone-tenth of a penny per mile for a tarpaulin is divided among severalcompanies in various proportions. For a waggon or carriage fromEdinburgh to London, mileage and demurrage accounts are sent out by theClearing-House to four companies. Formerly, before demurrage wasintroduced, carriages were frequently detained on lines to which theydid not belong, for weeks, and even months, until sometimes they werelost sight of altogether!
Once a month the balances are struck, and the various railways, insteadof having to pay enormous sums to each other, obtain settlement by meansof comparatively small balances.
For example, the London and North-Western railway sends its throughpassengers over the Caledonian line. The mileage charged for its"foreign" carriages is three farthings per mile. Small though that sumis, it amounts at the end of a month perhaps to 5000 pounds. Thislittle bill is sent to the Clearing-House by the Caledonian against theLondon and North-Western. But during the same period the latter companyhas been running up a somewhat similar bill against the former company.Both accounts are sent in to the Clearing-House. They amount togetherto perhaps some fifteen or twenty thousand pounds, yet when one is setoff against the other a ten or twenty pound note may be all that isrequired to change hands in order to balance the accounts.
The total mileage of lines under the jurisdiction of the Clearing-House,and over which it exercises complete surveillance on every train thatpasses up or down night or day, as far as regulating the variousinterests of the companies is concerned, amounts to more than 14,000.The _Times_, at the conclusion of a very interesting article on thissubject, says,--"Our whole railway system would be as nothing withoutthe Clearing-House, which affords another illustration of the greattruth that the British railway public is the best served railway publicin the world, and, on the whole, the least grateful." We hope andincline to believe that in the latter remark, the great Thunderer iswrong, and that it is only a small, narrow-minded, and ignorant sectionof the public which is ungrateful.
Disputed claims between railways are referred to the arbitration of thecommittee of the Clearing-House, from whose decision there is no appeal.
The trouble taken in connexion with the lost-luggage department is verygreat; written communications being sent to almost innumerable stationson various lines of rails for every inquiry that is made to the Houseafter lost-luggage.
It is a striking commentary at once on the vast extent of traffic in thekingdom, and the great value in one important direction of thisestablishment, the fact that, in one year, the number of articlesaccounted for to the Clearing-House by stations as left by passengers,either on the platforms or in carriages, amounted to 156,769 trunks,bags and parcels, and of these nearly ninety-five in every hundred wererestored, through the Clearing-House, to their owners. It is probablethat the property thus restored would amount to half a million of money.
This reminds us that we left Edwin Gurwood on his way to restore MrsTipps her lost ring, and that, therefore, it is our duty to resume thethread of our story, with, of course, a humble apology to the patientreader for having again given way to our irresistible tendency todigress!