Deterrents to Travel Two letters about the racket in reserved
seats to which I referred last week appear in the correspondence columns. While we are on the subject of British Railways, it seems worth recording the experiences of a man I know who has just taken his car over to Ireland and back. Passing ovet such minor vexations of the outward journey as the fact that, in order to ship a car on a boat which leaves Liverpool at 8 p.m. on a Saturday, you have to get the car there at 10 a.m., we come to• the return journey from Dublin to Holy head. Cars and passengers travel on different boats, the former being loaded in Dublin Harbour, the latter then taking a train to embark at Kingstown. Bills of lading for the cat have to be made out on a wharf-side crowded with cattle and loud with the hoofs of dray-horses; they are as elaborate as though the car was a consignment of some rare merchandise being shipped to a distant destination and involve visits to three different British Railways offices. Next morning all the cars, numbering about a dozen, were put ashore at Holyhead in higgledy-piggledy order on a quay so narrovi that there was no room to manoeuvre them—a step rendered in any case impossible by British Railways, who had taken the ignition-keys away. These were tardily produced and—still more belatedly, explaining that be had not expected the ship to be on time—there appeared a single Customs official; with the help of an AA man, who opened the bonnet.; and read them out, he checked the engine numbers against those on the manifests, to make sure that nobody, by buying a nest' engine in Ireland, had rendered themselves liable to duty. It was an hour after the passengers had disembarked before the first car was driven off. My friend, a mild and reasonable man, does not intend to ship a car to Ireland again.
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