Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the London, Worcester, and Wolverhampton, | Page 6

and proper management; and in respect of convenience and of economy, including the cost both of construction and working, the opinion of a great majority of the most eminent authorities is unfavourable to the wide gauge.
Without wishing to express any positive opinion ourselves upon the point, it is enough for us to say that we think there is nothing in the relative merits of the two gauges in themselves materially to affect the question between them, which turns upon commercial considerations.
In this point of view the question is, as we have already observed, whether the points of junction between the wide and narrow gauge should be at Rugby, Birmingham and Wolverhampton, or at Oxford and Bristol. In support of the first view, it is contended that the principle which should regulate the choice of the points of junction ought to be to fix them at great foci of traffic, and centres of converging Railways, where delay must take place and large establishments be maintained at any rate; while on the other hand it is contended that such points are the worst possible to select, and that the opposite principle should be adopted, of confining an inevitable inconvenience within the narrowest possible limits, by fixing the points of junction where there is least through-traffic.
The correctness of the latter proposition seems perfectly obvious upon general considerations; but the question is one of such great commercial importance, that we have thought it right to inquire fully and in detail into the practical effects that would result to the principal interests concerned from an interruption of the gauge, on the one hand, at Birmingham and Rugby, and on the other at Bristol and Oxford.
By either combination the traffic of places intermediate between Birmingham and Bristol with each other, and with London, would not be affected; uniformity of gauge being secured equally in the one case by the wide, in the other by the narrow gauge. By either combination the traffic between places north and east of the line of the London and Birmingham Railway and places south of the line of the Great Western Railway would not be affected, interruption of gauge having equally to be encountered in the one case at Bristol and Oxford, in the other at Birmingham and Rugby.
By the former or wide-gauge combination, the traffic between Devonshire, Cornwall and all places south of the line of the Great Western Railway, and Birmingham, and all places between Birmingham and Bristol, would gain, i.e. would escape an interruption of gauge; also such of the traffic of South Wales, to Birmingham, and places short of Birmingham, as in the event of the South Wales Railway being sanctioned, would take the circuitous route by that Railway to the north of Gloucester.
On the other hand by the narrow-gauge combination, a break is avoided in the whole of the traffic between Manchester, Liverpool, Hull, and the Northern, Eastern, and Midland portions of the kingdom, and Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester, and the whole district intermediate between the London and Birmingham and Great Western Railways.
The paramount importance of this consideration has been strongly urged upon us by parties practically acquainted with the traffic, and by the principal interests affected by the question.
In the memorial already referred to, signed by the representatives of 46 iron-works, 57 furnaces, and 98 collieries, in the Staffordshire mineral district, in favour of the London and Birmingham line, and narrow-gauge system, it is stated that, of the total export of the district, only eight per cent. is sent in the direction of Bristol, of which by far the greater quantity is shipped from that port, and would therefore be unaffected by a break of gauge there; while 37 per cent. is sent to Liverpool and the north and north-west of the kingdom, and 13 per cent. to Hull and the east, all of which would consequently suffer by a break at Birmingham.
The wool trade between Bristol, where wool fairs are held annually, and Leicester and the West Riding of Yorkshire, is very considerable, all of which would escape a break of gauge by the narrow-gauge combination.
The export of salt from Droitwich, both to Gloucester and Bristol, and to Hull and other parts of the kingdom, is already large, and likely to receive very great increase, if an unbroken Railway communication is afforded, which can only be done by the narrow-gauge combination.
The same combination affords the important advantage of an unbroken communication to the traffic of Manchester and Liverpool with Bristol, and indeed with the whole of the West of England, as a very inconsiderable proportion of the goods actually dispatched require to be carried in transit through Bristol. The same remark applies to the trade of the Potteries with the West of England; of Bristol and Gloucester with the Midland Counties, where the imports of