Holidays Again
Each year daunting reports appear in the Press about the dis- comforts of holiday travelling, and each year the public is shocked as if it had quite forgotten what happened the previous summer. Seething stations and jammed holiday trains were even a pre-war phenomenon. The to per cent. cut in railway services has, of course, made the problem greater ; so, for the traveller of forethought, has the decision not to allow the booking of seats. But there is no reason to suppose that conditions over the Bank Holiday week-end will be much different from those of other years. People will stand in queues for a long time ; they will be uncomfortably crowded, but they will get to the places they want to get to. There is even an indication at some of the big London stations that travel is less than last year ; one station put it at 20 per cent. less. Nevertheless, the numbers remain formidable ; the figure of 125,000 travellers from Waterloo last Saturday gives some measure of the railways' problems. Numbers wishing to visit the Continent are also overwhelming the limited staffs available to deal with them. Complaints in the Press have been answered by the Southern Railway by an honest non possumus. "Delay of one kind and another is inevitable." The position is unsatisfactory—and has been for years—but no sudden improvement can be expected, whatever the advantages of nationalisa- tion. A slow easing of conditions as more rolling stock and staff become available is the most than can be expected. Meanwhile, as the railway companies have found, no discomfort will prevent the public from travelling if it wants to travel.
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