"LITIGANT RAILWAYS."
18th September 1856.
Sin—Having been a reader of your journal for the quarter of a century, I have misapprehended its spirit if you will not be glad to be corrected in matters of fact, and the more especially if they have led to erroneous general reaaoning. Without further preface, I proceed to point out some inaccu- racies in the article in your last number under the above head, and some of which may have arisen from imperfect information not patent in the pro- ceedings of the late North Staffordshire meeting. 1. The "Churnet line" was projected as a line from Manchester to Derby by Macclesfield. It failed for want of support until turned into a through line from Manchester to London, by a short branch, at the request of the London and Birmingham Company : it then became one of the moat favour- ite projects of that day. The London and Birmingham Company entered into a written agreement with the Churnet Committee, engaging to send all the traffic between Manchester and London by that route, and lb purchase or lease the property at the end of five years. When the Churnet and the Potteries line were merged, the benefits of that agreement survived to the united company ; and the agreement entered into between Mr. Glyn and Mr. Ricarde, (which you call an "understanding,") therefore did but re- cognize and keep alive an existing engagement.
2. So far from this arrangement being a departure from the business of the respective companies, and calculated to "drive the Manchester traffic off the best line," the route by the North Staffordshire line was and is at pre- sent the shortest line of railway communication between that place and Lon- don.
3. You speak of the North Staffordshire as " to this day paying no dividend." Ever since the full opening of that line dividends have been regularly paid ; lees certainly than its projectors expected ; but this result they inherit in common with all the railway undertakings of that fatal period. I hope you will admit this explanation into your next columns. lam, &c., A Nonni STAFFOP.D8HIRE Sasszsmerma.
[Another correspondent makes a similar explanation, with less concise clearness, except upon the point of the dividend, on which he is more ex- plicit. "The North Staffordshire has been, paying uninterruptedly for some years a half-yearly dividend, greater or less. During the first two years of the time, in which it has been entitled to a guaranteed dividend, under that award of Messrs. Hope, Scott, and It. Stephenson, which the Iondon and North-Western are now seeking to repudiate, it contributed towards that guaranteed dividend an average of 2i per cent per annum upon Its share capital, derived entirely from the traffic proper to its own line, and quite independent of any aid received from the London and North-Western. If it has hitherto made no dividend in respect of the past half-year, it is not that it has earned nothing, but that the hesitation of the London and North- Western to pay the amount due for the use of the North Staffordshire Rail- way has rendered it impossible hitherto to determine what is the aura which it has to divide."]
Previous page
