CHAPTER XIII.
Rates and Fares—Division of Traffic—The Railway Clearing-House.
It is not the intention of the present writer to enter very deeply into the thorny and much debated question of railway rates, and the many controversial points arising out of them. The late Mr. Grierson, General Manager of the Great Western Railway Company, in the work published shortly before his lamented decease, and entitled, "Railway Rates, English and Foreign," has so completely exhausted this subject from almost every point of view, that, from the stand-point of the railway companies at least, there remains very little to be said. In a work of this character, it will be sufficient to give merely a brief account of the manner in which rates and fares are made, and the way in which the different railway companies share the receipts amongst themselves, where those receipts are derived from "through" traffic, i.e., traffic which has to be carried over more than one railway before its transit is completed.
The rates and fares to be charged upon a railway are, in a sense, regulated by Act of Parliament; that is to say, that, until recently, the Act which authorised the making of the railway fixed the maximum tolls, which were not to be exceeded for any traffic using the line.
