mile broad. It is furnished with a loosely congregated jumble of sheds, which are dotted over it higgledypiggledy from one end to the other. It has no design, and it is too unwieldy and scattered to admit of the rapid intercommunication of parts, which is essential to a building designed for a place of exchange. It is devoid of any equipment other than a primitive crane. . . . In the matter of goods stations, the present generation of directors cannot be charged with having made any arrangements at all, excellent or otherwise. Such arrangements as there are were copied from the road carriers by a bygone generation of railway directors." 1

Again:

"This hand-truck journey of 1,200 feet average is no light matter at busy times, when the platform is densely crowded with goods and men. Imagine this platform at a busy hour of the late afternoon, when all the bottled-up goods from the traders are despatched to the goods stations. Pile this platform up with goods, crowd it with porters with hand-trucks, struggling from one end of it to the other-sometimes charging into each other in their haste. There is plenty of haste, but no speed. Then realise the roadway crowded with vans, horses, and carmen, each trying to arrive at some desired position-the whole place thick with horse-dung and oaths, and you will form some conception of the reality. Chaos is the only word to describe it. Under existing conditions it is sometimes necessary to unload a van on to a platform in order to get at its miscellaneous contents, although some of the goods are required on some other platform, and these have to be reloaded in a van kept for inter-platform work, and so taken to their proper platform, and unloaded again. Notwithstanding all this vast amount of labour, a despatching goods station

1 The World, March 30, 1909.

does not, and cannot, sort goods for delivery; that function is again laboriously carried out on arrival at the receiving station." 1

The multiplication of goods stations is no remedy. There is no reduction effected in the length of platforms by placing them under a number of roofs. There is no true way of evading the economic law which here governs the circumstances.

It is obvious, therefore, that the length of goods platforms is not diminished by placing them under a multiplicity of roofs. If you build so many more miles of goods platform, you have so many more miles of goods platform; and that is all.

Many more pairs of legs will be required, and what lies above these legs will require feeding, keeping, and reproducing, as will the legs themselves. The real remedy which it is proposed to put before the reader is subject to none of these objections, and none of these involved expenses, and, above all things, it will be shown that the greater the turnover of goods, the greater the efficiency of the suggested remedy. This is an exactly opposite effect to that produced by the enlargement of a goods station.

Here lies the fundamental difficulty of the orthodox goods station, a difficulty which can never be overcome to increase its size is to decrease its efficiency. This fact alone shows that it is basically and essentially uneconomic in design. This renders its disappearance in the near future inevitable.

But the multiplication of goods stations leads to a truly vast expense, which is in reality an enormous waste of public money. It leads to interterminal traffic. Of 1,028 goods trains passing over London metals during the twenty-four hours, 700 are interterminal trains, that is to say, trains conveying goods, already arrived at a centre, from one goods station to

1 Mr. Gattie, at the London Chamber of Commerce.

another within that centre, for the purpose of being sorted.

Increase in the number of goods stations must increase this quite unnecessary traffic; it increases it, however, in a very disproportionate manner. Facilis est descensus Averni.

The following diagrams will show what happens to interterminal traffic as goods stations are multiplied.

A

FIG 7.

It must be remembered that goods stations do not exist by or of themselves; they must be fed.

One

It will be seen that with one goods station all routes of traffic must be radiant, and therefore effective. central goods station as above would be an ideal condition of affairs. This is, supposing that the work of the seventy-four goods stations of London could be concentrated on to one spot.

They can be, but of this later.

Where there are two goods stations at a centre there is the following result:

A and B share equally the radiant routes previously shown in Fig. 7, but there have been added two interterminal routes, one rail and one road.

Now add another goods station, namely, add 50 per cent. to the accommodation, and it will be found that it is necessary to add 200 per cent. to the interterminal routes as below.

With the addition of station C it will be seen that 50 per cent. has been added to the capacity and 200 per cent. to the interterminal routes.

Again-for the reader must be left in no doubt of this matter-add another station, D.

Here we have an added 25 per cent. capacity and 100 per cent. increase in interterminal routes.

And so on. The mind reels at the prospect, but

F