To get this information, a very massive enquiry was made during 1961. The way in which it was carried out is described in Appendix 1, which also gives a summary of the results which it produced.
The enquiry covered 305 m. tons of freight other than coal, of which the railways carried 82 m., and it is estimated that this was over 80 per cent. of the total freight movement in the country, apart from local delivery services by light vehicles.
All of the flows making up the total 223 m. tons of non-railborne traffic were examined to determine their potential suitability for rail haulage. As a result, 130 m. tons had to be judged unsuitable on first inspection, mainly because the length of haul was too small, but also because of terminal considerations, irregularity of flow, requirements for special vehicles, etc. Table 23 of Appendix 1 shows that 62 m. tons of the total travels less than 25 miles, and a further 54 m. tons travels less than 50 miles. Such short distance traffic is unlikely to be attracted to rail unless it can be moved in bulk, directly between rail connected terminals. A very high proportion of this short distance traffic is made up of road stone or building materials moving to contractors' sites, petrol being delivered to service stations, farm produce moving to markets, or fertilizer moving to farms, and other flows to places where no rail terminal could be expected to exist.
The 93 m. tons of traffic which was left after this first sieving was judged potentially suitable for rail haulage by virtue of its physical characteristics and the distance over which it moved. It represents a very large part of the total longer distance road freight of the country, and the way in which it flows is illustrated diagrammatically in Map No. 5.
Features which are strikingly illustrated by the map, although not in themselves surprising, are the concentration of flows between areas of high industrial and population density, paralleling the better used rail routes, and the sparsity of traffic in the green-field areas where rail traffic is also very light. This holds promise for the future profitability of the main rail network, because of the prospect of loading routes more nearly to capacity, but provides no support for continued operation of lightly loaded parts of the system.
After the map had been prepared, the flows composing the 93 m. tons of longer distance traffic was screened again in more detail. By then, progress with other studies had made it clear that traffic could not truly be regarded as potentially good rail traffic for the future unless it could be made to pass as siding traffic, or else could be carried over distances of not less than 70 to 100 miles by Liner Trains. The second examination was, therefore, made with these two possibilities in mind. This showed that there are flows amounting to 13 m. tons which could pass siding to siding, in consignments of substantial size, of which 8 m. tons is suitable for through train movement. It also showed streams of traffic, amounting to a total of 16 m. tons, which were judged to be good Liner Train traffics.
Efforts are already being made to attract to rail the potential siding/siding traffic revealed by the survey, particularly that which can be moved by block trains. Nevertheless, much more vigorous selling is called for, and it will be more soundly based as movement by wagon forwarding is subjugated to through train traffic.
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