Rail Travel Comfort at Home

The comfort of railway travel at Home is well-known It is not, however, so generally recognised that the improved equipment that has contributed to this comfort has increased the weight of trains from 450lb. to 1350lb. per passenger. Thus, while the average British steam inner-suburban train of ten carriages seats about 800 passengers on a tare weight of, say, 300 tons, an outer-suburban train set of the same tonnage only seats about 600 passengers, on account of the wider seats and other comforts provided. In the case of a main-line train of ten carriages, only about 360 passengers can be accommodated by reason of the attention devoted by carriage designers to passenger comfort and convenience.

Almost all Home railway passenger carriages are of bogie design, but on the mainland of Europe four and six-wheeled carriages are still being built for local service. Four-wheeled carriages, 40ft. in length, were not long ago introduced on the Northern Railway of France, while until a year or two ago the German railways built four-wheeled carriages exclusively for branch-line working. Since the close of last century, practically no new four or six-wheeled carriages have been constructed at Home.—From Our London Correspondent.

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