In his present contribution, covering recent railway developments in Britain and on the Continent, our special London Correspondent makes interesting reference to the summer holiday season in England, and tells what the railways, through the medium of attractive publicity, are doing to stimulate increased holiday travel by rail.

Holiday-time in Britain.

While New Zealanders are enjoying the indoor delights associated with cold weather, in England the immense annual exodus from the cities to the sea is in full swing. Although money is comparatively scarce at the present time, almost every city dweller seems to be making a special effort to raise funds for his summer holiday this year. This should spell not only better health all round, but also good business for the railways. To meet prospective heavy demands upon their service the four big group lines have made special plans for augmented travel facilities of every kind, with the added lure of really cheap fares to the leading coast resorts.

For some weeks now, there have been prominently displayed on the railway station bookstalls, in the publicity bureaux of the different lines, and in the various tourist offices scattered throughout Britain, holiday booklets galore, describing in attractive fashion the joys of this and that resort, and telling how to get to any particularly fancied corner of Holidayland, what to look for on arrival, and where to put up during the stay. The most ambitious booklets issued by the Home railways for the guidance of the holiday-maker are the hotels and apartments guides, brilliantly planned and beautifully produced volumes, running to as many as one thousand pages, and sold to the public at sixpence per copy. To take but one of these publications as an example—the “Holiday Haunts” annual of the Great Western Railway for 1931—this has a captivating coloured cover design introducing a sun-tanned “bathing belle” sporting on a west-country beach. The territory served by the line is dealt with in seven sections, and a beautiful series of some 400 photogravure illustrations shows what a wealth of scenie grandeur Britain holds for holiday-makers. Among other features, this thousand-page directory of Great Western resorts contains a coloured frontispiece depicting Plymouth as seen from historic Drake's Island. There is also a large folding map of the Great Western Railway, and seven sectional maps of the principal holiday areas. A large proportion of the volume is devoted to a very comprehensive list of holiday apartments and hotel accommodation. After twenty-five years of success, “Holiday Haunts” is this season an even more fascinating sixpennyworth than ever.

Prosperous Times Ahead.

Distinct signs of trade revival in Britain foreshadow the return of more prosperous days for the railways. During the past month page 46 or two, there has been convincing evidence of the country's emergence from the trough of industrial depression; optimism is the order of the day throughout the Home business world; and the railways, in common with other leading industries, now feel that brighter times undoubtedly lie ahead.

With increasing traffic the Home railways will feel justified in putting in hand many improvement works that have of necessity had to be pigeon-holed during the period of bad trade. Not the least important of these improvements are those associated with main-line electrification. During the past

For Main Line Passenger Haulage.
A new type of 2-6-0 express locomotive on the Southern Railway of England.

few years there has been steadily proceeding in Britain the building up of a comprehensive chain of interlinked electric power stations for the manufacture of current for industrial and railway use. This plan for bulk production of electric power has now reached the stage where practically unlimited supplies are available, and there is today no necessity for any Home railway to give thought as to how cheap power may be obtained for electrical operation. Big scale electrifications may shortly be put in hand, among these works being the conversion of the steam-operated London suburban tracks of the London, Midland and Scottish and London and North Eastern lines, and the west-going main-line of the Great Western Railway between Paddington Station, London, and Reading. Another stretch of steam-worked track which may shortly be converted to electric operation is the section of L.M. and S. main-line between Crewe and Carlisle, once the property of the historic London and North Western Railway, and now part of the Anglo-Scottish trunk route between Euston Station, London, and Glasgow.

Electrification Developments.

At present there are some 400 route miles of electric railway at Home, this representing only 2 per cent, of the total railway mileage of the country. Switzerland, of course, is the European leader in the electrification field. In this mountainous corner of the Continent 32 per cent, of the railways are electrified, and big financial savings have been achieved in this way.

The advantages of electrification in the main lie in lessened operating costs, better running schedules, improvement of terminals, betterment of employees' working conditions, and cleaner and more attractive service generally. Against these advantages have to be placed high initial expenses in the provision of track equipment, sub-stations, transmission lines, locomotives, motor and trailer cars, and so on. In Europe electrification has been found a decidedly paying proposition, from the economic viewpoint it having given complete satisfaction in Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Holland and Italy. In Britain, on the the Southern Railway, there has been built up the world's biggest suburban electrification system, page 47 which is also a decided financial success and a big asset in meeting the competition of the road carrier. A good deal of doubt still, unfortunately, exists as to the ideal system of electrification. Direct current has been adopted as standard in Britain, and is also employed extensively in the United States, France, Italy and Holland, at voltages varying from 600 to 3,000. Elsewhere, three-phase and single-phase current is favoured, at varying periodicities. There seems a great need for the technical experts to get their

Feeders Of The Railway Train.
A fleet of L. and N.E.R. motors operating in Durham.

heads together on the standardisation question, and the establishment of definite standards would probably do more than anything else to speed up railway electrification throughout the world.

High-power Steam Locomotives in Britain.

Electrification developments may everywhere confidently be looked for in the next few years, but there will, admittedly, for a decade or two continue to be a demand for steam locomotives of high power for drawing long-distance passenger and freight trains. In Britain many new high-power steam locomotives have been introduced recently, and in a paper read the other day by Mr. H. N. Gresley, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the L. and N.E. Railway, before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, progress in high-pressure locomotive design was very ably reviewed.

Pointing out that the purpose of the novel forms of locomotive recently introduced was to effect economy, principally in fuel, Mr. Gresley dwelt upon the importance of keeping maintenance costs down, the expense incurred in maintaining locomotives being equal to the cost of the great quantity of coal consumed. There was an immense field for economy if both cost of fuel and maintenance could be reduced. While high steam pressure gave greater fuel economy, it demanded complication in design, and care had to be taken that the economies in fuel were not absorbed in the increased cost of maintenance of the boiler and the machine as a whole. Simplicity of design was an important factor: simplicity usually spelt accessibility. In all the latest high-pressure locomotives reciprocating pistons had been adopted, this form of conversion of energy appearing the most advantageous for meeting all conditions which a locomotive had to fulfil. Owing to the high range of temperature and the consequent losses by condensation in a simple engine, the use of a compound, or “Uniflow” system, was essential. It was interesting to note that in the high-pressure locomotives produced at Home within the page 48 past five years, two, three and four-cylinder compounds had all been adopted.

The Railways and the Road Carriers.

With a view to consolidating their position, and ensuring effective co-ordination between rail and road, the Home railways are steadily proceeding with the acquisition of financial interests in the leading road carrying concerns. Existing road carriers of repute are being induced to combine with the railways on a fifty-fifty basis, this being the most satisfactory mode of tackling the problem in view of the impossibility of taking off any established road services directly in competition with the railways. The position, of course, is that if by agreement with the co-ordinated road carriers one of these competitive road services was taken off with the idea of forcing the passengers back to the rail route, some other road carrying company or private individual would at once commence a road service to cover the route vacated, and the consequences would be worse than ever from the railway viewpoint. Wherever there is a public demand for road services, this demand has to be met, and the railways might just as well profit from this demand.

It is clear that railways all over the world have definitely lost for good much of their short-distance business, both passenger and freight, the only exception to this being in cases where intensified electric services are run. This is serious, but the situation is one that railways, with their characteristic adaptability and enterprise should overcome successfully. Short-hauls are not particularly profitable at the best of times, and when the handling of short-haul business entails expensive new works in congested city areas all the gilt is taken off the ginger-bread. One feature of Home railway enterprise that is to be commended is the effort that is being exerted to make every railway depot the traffic centre of the city, all connecting bus services being as far as possible run to and from this point and the railway waiting-room, thus serving a dual need. Thus, the idea that railways are not merely “railways.” but rather “transport-ways” in the fullest sense of the term, is being developed, and the public mind prepared for the new era when the “Iron Way” will really be a comprehensive carrying undertaking, covering movement of all kinds by rail, road, sea and air.

Holiday Traffic In The Homeland.
A summer scene at the L.M.S. Central Station, Glasgow, Scotland.