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Railway Internationalism

One of the features of railroading that helps the brotherhood of those engaged in the industry is its international character, which makes, as between the lines of any one country and those of another, for rivalry of the most friendly kind.

From the fact that the railway transport service of any country is something which cannot be exported, comes the position that in this industry, at least, there is no competition for markets in other parts of the world. All the railway transport “manufactured” is consumed at home, and the only international rivalry is to induce people from other parts of the world to come and share it.

This fortunate situation generates an attitude of helpfulness towards each other between the railways of all countries that has no counterpart in the intensely competitive fields of international commerce.

All information regarding methods of construction, procedure, experiments and so on, is freely handed on from one to another, and the two great long-established international railway journals, “The Railway Gazette” of London, and “The Railway Age” of New York, convey, week by week, news of railway developments in other parts of the world that stimulate the imagination and fortify the enterprise of railway executives in all countries. Incidentally, it may be noted that the stability of journals that deal with the “permanent way” appears to be as assured as that of the railways themselves. This is strikingly seen in the case of “The Railway Gazette” which, on the 29th October last completed a hundred years of weekly publication.

Recently, accompanying the London notes in this Magazine, we published a photograph of a new vehicle introduced on one of the British railways. Within a few weeks an American railway sent us an enquiry for further information. This we were able to supply through the courtesy of the British line concerned. An incident such as this is typical of what is going on behind the scenes between the railways of all countries, not only by correspondence, but by personal contact through interchanges of visits from time to time by technical and professional experts.

When the same commodity has to be handled in two countries, the identity of interest between the railways concerned is, of course, intensified. This was noted very aptly by the “London and North Eastern Railway Magazine” recently when describing “the quickest public run of the ‘West Riding Limited’ from King's Cross to Leeds that has so far been attempted.” Referring to the fact that one of the Coronation locomotives, “Dominion of New Zealand,” worked the train, it remarks: “What better choice could have been made … as so much of the great staple export of that Dominion finds its way to the West Riding?”

As the annual wool sales are now in progress in New Zealand, this reminder from the home of “Bradford tops” that in railways as well as in wool we have common interests is particularly timely. It is also pleasing to find that the railways there bring imagination to bear on an eminently practical outlook by linking the names of their locomotives with the countries from which their principal trade is derived —a happy association that serves as a visual indicator of the mutually beneficial two-way trade carried on between the West Riding of England and the Dominion of New Zealand.

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