Earning £70,000,000 a Year.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 265, 14 November 1885, Page 5

Earning £70,000,000 a Year.

Thjs enormous sum of £70,000,000 per annum represents the gross annual earnings of the railways of the United Kingdom. An amount considerably moro than half the governmental revenue; an amouut which, in a baker's dozen of years, equals the national debt. There are eighty-nine railways in tha British Isles, varying in length from three and a half milee (Groendraeth Valley Railways) to 2,286 (Great Western Railway). There are eighteen lines whose total length is less than ten vnile3 each, and there are six which own more than 1,000 miles each. Next to the Groat Western, in length, comoa the London and North-Western, with 1,751f j theNorth-Eastern,Vithl,s3sj:theMidland, with 1.270A ; the North British, with 1,0391; and the Great Eastern, with 1,035 miles, With thope " common carriers" nothing is' too insignificant to carry, and very few things aro too large. They convey lUh, flesh, and fowl—alive or dead—minerals and general goods produced in all parts of the world. Tho sprat and the whale, the elephant and the Colorada bug, the lion and the cholera bacillus, the Queen and the convict — all go to swell the enormous Pftn earned yearly by tho great concern created by the genius of a Stophenon, If one could note, in a bird's eye view, tho working of this enormous system, one would see a network of lines, clustered moro thickly round the more populous towns than elsewhere ; a continual ebb and flow of trains to and from the Metropolis and great commercial centres, while along the 18.000 miles or so of metals are madly careering " Flying Scotchmen " and " Dutchmen," " Wild Irishmen," and other expresses, overtaking dower passenger trains, the latter, in their turn, passing fast merchandise trains; while the slow roadside or "pick-up" trains drag along their snail ways not faster than a man can walk,

How the Wheels Go Round.

The number of engines owned by the British railway is 14,300, which with a similar number of tenders, placed buffer to buffer, would strotch from London to Bath, and the passongor carriages would, in liko manner, extend from tho latter city to the Land's End. The merchandise waggons would occupy 1,300 miles, and the whole rolling stock would take more than twentyseven hours to run past a given point at the rate of sixty miles an hour. The actual train mileage run in a year is 270 millions, or about three times the distance between the earth and the sun ; while the total number of wheel revolutions amounts to more than 328,080,000,000.000,000.