handle must be predominantly of the very poor road/road, road/station or station/station types. Moreover, since so little siding/station traffic flows to such stations, closure of them will have very little effect on good customers who are rail connected.
This brings us to question (c) on page 37 'To what extent could expenses be saved if some or all of the traffic were not carried?'.
The main elements in direct expenses, which vary in relative importance according to the circumstances of particular traffics, are:—
- Road collection and delivery.
- Terminal expenses.
- Trip working.
- Marshalling.
- Trunk haulage.
- Provision of wagons.
- Documentation.
It is fairly obvious that most of these expense items could be reduced if the traffic which gives rise to them were discontinued. Nevertheless, it is also clear that the extent of the reductions which could be made would depend upon the degree to which facilities used are shared with other traffics, because big savings are often possible only where facilities can be removed altogether.
This is particularly true of costs of small terminals and of the road operations, the rail pick-up services, and the documentation work associated with them. In large terminals, services and staff can normally be scaled down to match the traffic, so that only certain overhead charges remain unchanged, but such scaling down is not possible with smaller terminals, where the time of individual members of the staff is spread over various forms of traffic, where the number of road vehicles cannot be reduced in proportion to the traffic, and where the frequency of trip working cannot be reduced just because the number of wagons to be handled comes down.
The foregoing considerations suggest that station based traffic as a whole should be treated in the same way as the whole railway problem, and that potentially good parts should be improved and developed while basically bad parts should be rejected. With this in mind, the conclusion has been reached that, although a great deal of the traffic which flows to stations from private sidings may be made profitable, and will be developed, very little of it goes to the enormous number of small stations throughout the country, and, therefore, very little of it will be affected if they are closed. It has also been concluded that most of the traffic which does pass through small stations is of the worst kind, which cannot be made to pay at all, and which the railways would do well to lose. Further, it has been concluded that, if the traffic is got rid of, the expenses associated with the traffic will not be saved effectively unless the stations themselves are closed, and where possible, the route as well. It would, serve little purpose to thin out the traffic without closing the stations.
So far, attention has been paid only to existing rail traffic of the mineral and general merchandise types, but studies were also made of the traffic not on rail. Before passing on to consideration of potential traffic, however, let us sum up what is proposed for existing traffic.
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