Railway Clearing House

Much of the failure of railway privatisation in Britain can be laid at the feet of the monetarist policy of the 1980s which refused to believe that companies could compete and co-operate at the same time. Competition had to be red in tooth and claw, and that was an end of it. So when the railways were privatised, there were no institutions put in place to see that co-operation took place where it was needed. Our ancestors knew better. When railways were private in the years before the First World War, and carried nearly all the goods and passengers of the nation, the industry rapidly realised that once there was a network, and a traveller or consignment would, of necessity, have to travel over the lines of more than one company to complete their journey, then it would be essential to provide an independent body which could work out exactly how much of any fare or charge should accrue to which company. Thus the railway industry itself created the Railway Clearing House. It calculated how much each company was due for every passenger and each ton of freight. (Which was why tickets used to be collected at the end of journeys, so they could be passed back to the RCH for this calculation to be made.) It also established common standards for freight transport, identifying companies and determining which companies should have 'running powers' over which lines. This book, showing the exact boundaries between one company and another at every junction in the country, was an essential part of that work, dating from a time when capitalism was tempered by pragmatism.… (mer)