HINT TO RAILWAY SPECULATORS.
Tun railway traffic of the country is in such a state, growing so rapidly, and shaping itself so differently from every calculation, as to baffle guessing. A witness before one of the Parliamentary Committees• lately was called upon to verify certain estimates which he-had advanced last year. _He dechned : he begged to be excused from justifying- any. past estimates, or from making any for the future; as the year's experience had convinced him thit such anticipative calculations are nugatory and fallacious : the estimate of traffic which he had hazarded had been exceeded in the actual results sixfold. In such a state of change all posi- tive estimates must be delusive..
.The brief and stirring history of the railway system has uni- formly inculcated the same lesson to those who would read it aright. Many years ago, an engineer wrote a pamphlet to dis- prove the possibility of attaining high speed with railway en- gines,—" though,' he remarked, sarcastically, "they may go at the rate of nine miles an hour." At first, all expectations of profit were based on goods-traffic ; and when the prospectus of the Man- chester and Liverpool Railway was issued, the probable transit of a few passengers was thrown in merely to acceunt for an odd two thousand pounds whichwas needed to make up around sum of expected revenue ; the great receipts being anticipated from the transit of goods. That source signally failed ; while the bulk of the immense revenues has been derived from passengers' fares. No sooner was this fact noted, than cunning folks began to laugh at the miscalculators ; and it was set down as an ascer- tained fact, that railway revenues were derivable almost exclu- sively from passengers, and not from goods. Wrong again : there is reason to suppose that the conveyance of goods is only in its infancy, and that what we have yet seen of it is but a small fraction of the atupendaus traffic to which it will grow. Already it tasks the resources of some great railways to meet its exigencies. A paragraph running the round of the press last week described the managers of the London and Birmingham Railway as being at their wits-end to supply the constant demands for carriage. One well-known source of difficulty, is the total want of adequate means to make the requisite number of engines for the use of the railways ; and there is no proof that the increasing demand for more engines will not progressively exceed the.increasing supply. But there is another probable source of future difficulty : will any one of the existing railways suffice to give free passage for the traffic which is likely to crowd into each channel ? The more the facility of conveyance is attained, the more Will the traffic in- crease, until perchance the existing channels may be quite choked. Who can settle that question with any confidence, after the re- bukes which experience has given to rash conclusions The ad- vocates of the two different gauges will put in their .claims to answer : the Broad-gaugers will -cry, that their railway affords larger means for carrying bulky cargoes ; while the Narrow- gaugers will reply, that theirs facilitates the ready and frequent despatch of smaller trains. Undoubtedly, readiness and frequency are of immense importance ; but so is power. Neither side can fulfil all the requisite conditions of the vast traffic that is in pro- spect. A suggestion thrown out by the promoters of the Direct Northern, (r& believe, but no matter who the first auggester may have been,) stems more nearly to meet the case,—that there should be three distinct lines, one exclusively devoted to the slower transit of heavy goods to London, the empty carriages from London returning along with the swifter trams. It is indeed very uncertain whether, independently of new and distinct railways, and independently of extension by branches, it may not ultimately be necessary to devise a new kind of extension— the reduplication or triplication of existing lines. Some old streets in London are not broad enough to admit more than one carriage, though they once sufficed for their traffic ; Cheap- side and Fleet Street are now too narrow for the triple or quad- ruple line of coaches and carts : so the time may come when the single down-line and single up-line to Birmingham and the further districts may be far too narrow ; nay, the time seems to have arrived.
This speculation, which some may regard as dreamy, is- without a grave and immediate practical importance. We ave just seen an inordinate mania for investing money in the con- struction of railways subside and almost turn to panic; but now again the hopes of the capitalist-gamblers seem to revive, and in- stead of using the opportunity afforded by the Itailivily Compa- nies Dissolution Bill, most of the shareholding incorporations have resolved to go on. Their courage is not yet daunted ; it will need a little more difficulty quite to sober some of the more sanguine. They go on with all their railways, promiscuously, not duly con- sidering which are likely to be profitable at first, which unprofit- able. Indeed, there are no precise data for such an estimate. But further, they do not really know what kind of railway investment would be the most advantageous,—in new lines, in extensions, or i that which now suggests itself n reduplications. It should be remembered, that however successful many railways may ulti- mately be, they may at first fail to pay ; and that the question of immediate profit—of any profit, to many of the present 'share- holders—must depend upon the proper order of construction in point of time. Several great changes seem to be pending : the plans of the present moment may be quite thrown out by the in- ventions and experiences of the next year or two ; and the specu- lator who is in too great a hurry to forestall the market _may waste his capital on projects that will be out of date before his profit can accrue. On the other hand, there is no fear of loss from a discreet patience. An ample field of future profit in rail- way construction lies before the speculative public ; but every consideration shows that some prudential delay is desirable to find out what are really the best directions for investment, what is the best order of time for making the several investments.
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