The GLIO Site

LONDON AND BRIGHTON RAILWAY COMPANY.

     The ordinary half-yearly meeting of this company was held yesterday, at the Bridge-house Hotel, for the general purposes of the undertaking, and the election of three directors. Mr. Leo Schuster (Chairman of the Board Directors) presided.

     The SECRETARY (Mr. Swift) having read the advertisement convening the meeting, the report of the directors was taken as read.

     The CHAIRMAN said that he would endeavour to be as brief as possible in the remarks which, with the permission of the proprietors, he had to make, and at the same time give a full account of the stewardship of the directors. By the report they would see that their capital was well-nigh exhausted, and that a suspense account had been opened for the expenditure of some money upon works which could no longer be delayed. He could only assure them that the directors would use the greatest possible economy in the further expenditure of capital; but at the same time the meeting would see the necessity of maintaining their system of lines and their railway plant in an efficient state, and also of remedying anything that might be defective in the original construction of their works. For instance, during the last half-year, there had been a considerable outlay upon the Lewes station. But with the increasing traffic on the line it had been found absolutely necessary to rebuild that station, at which trains daily arrived from London, Brighton, Horsham, Newhaven, Hastings, and of course daily departed for the same places, in addition to which the trains to and from Cuckfield would shortly stop at that station. It was originally the most incomplete, inconvenient, and injudiciously planned station ever erected. The whole of the traffic had to turned into a siding and to be brought out the main line again, both up and down. This defect had lieen successfully remedied, and they had now provided not only accommodation for all present, but for all future wants that spot. Still keeping to the capital account, the next point to which he had to call attention was of a more agreeable nature. They had gone carefully over the state of their debenture debt, and he had to congratulate the meeting upon the fact, that although the country had gone through one of the worst crises that had ever occurred in this country, the average per cent, of that debt would not exceed 4l. 3s.—(hear, hear) —being in fact only 1s. in excess of what it was twelve months ago; and the directors fully anticipated the debenture stock would not in any case exceed 4½ per cent., at which price it would be readily taken up, not only by new parties but by the present holders of the debenture bonds. The directors, indeed, had it in contemplation to create perpetual annuity bonds at that rate, and to offer them to the present holders of debenture bonds in lieu of the securities they now held. He (the chairman) looked upon this as a most advantageous measure, not only to the holders those bonds, but also as one in no small degree advantageous to the company.—(Hear, hear.) Though they had been successful in getting through the last troublous times, he held it advisable for a large company like their own, founded upon a permanent basis, to have permanent mortgage bonds instead of a floating renewable debt—(hear, hear) —and then they would have done away with all trouble on that account for ever.— (Hear, hear.) He would next call attention to the revenue account for the year, and he did so in preference to taking the account for the half-year, as it gave a clearer view of their financial position, and enabled them to contrast it with that of preceding years. The revenue account thus contrasted did not show the usual increase, but the directors had the satisfaction of stating that this did not arise from any falling off or standing still in the ordinary traffic, but arose entirely from a cessation of the extraordinary traffic that they had to carry during the Crimean war, in the shape of the army departing for and returning from that war, and also military stores. On looking into the accounts he found that the Portsmouth traffic in what was termed the ‟coaching department” had been actually decreased by this means upwards 12,000l. for passengers, besides between 2,000l. and 3,000l. for military stores. Of course, when the war ceased, it caused a deficiency to that extent, but they knew that the ordinary traffic to Portsmouth had not decreased, but increased during the last half-year, and they were entitled to come to the conclusion, that instead of the increase being 6,000l. on the half-year, they had really had an increase of 20,000l. on the ordinary traffic. The goods traffic showed a deficiency, but on looking into the accounts closely, that appeared to be owing to some small alterations, by which, what was formerly charged on carriage was now charged for wharfage. There was in fact no deficiency, but there was no increase. It must be remembered that they had no manufactures in their district, and that with the diminution of building, they must expect a corresponding diminution under this head. What they had to depend upon was supplying the domestic wants of the population residing in the districts, and also with building materials, as they were required. As regarded expenditure, he had the satisfaction of saying it had not increased, though they had run a larger number of miles, and more frequent trains, and had besides given increased accommodation to the public reducing the fares, and extending the time for which return tickets were available. These arrangements had produced a very satisfactory result. The only increase which had arisen under this head was in taxation.—(Hear, hear.) They would be surprised when he told them that while there was 160,000l. available for a dividend among the proprietors, there had been paid in rates, in income tax, and in stamps on transfers, no less than 78,000l.—(Loud cries of Hear, hear.”) That was a subject to be well pondered, and also what measures could be devised to reduce that enormous burden.—(Hear, hear.) The report stated that one item of increase during the half-year had been in the traffic, arising from the West-end line which was opened from the Crystal Palace to Wandsworth-common, on the 1st December, 1856. The average number of passengers for the whole year might taken at 8,000 a week, but during the summer it had been between 11,000 and 12,000. This being the winter season there was, of course, a falling off. Already, however, there had been such a number of passengers as had never been expected from the West-end line, and when that line was completed, and properly worked as a suburban line, the directors anticipated a considerable increase of income from it.—(Hear, hear.) He had next to advert to the necessity—with the sanction of the proprietors—of going again to Parliament to defend their interests against a certain scheme, and also to apply for powers for their own purposes. The scheme he alluded to was a continuation of schemes which had been promoted by certain parties to whom he need not further allude, as they were well known to all present, and its object was, to coerce the company into acts injurious to its own interests. They commenced in 1852, with the line called the Portsmouth Railway from Godalming to Havant, which, when finished, would divert a portion of the London and Portsmouth traffic from its present route. Why the line should ever have been projected he did not know, except on the single ground that it somewhat shortened the distance between London and Portsmouth; but it was not a line constructed for carrying the traffic of such a town asPortsmouth. It was only a single line, with a great number of gradients—many of which were not less than 1 in 80. It began and ended nowhere. It had neither head nor tail; it was a little piece of rail which terminated at their line at Havant. It was not for him (the Chairman) to inquire what motives induced a parliamentary committee to grant power to make such a line; but this was certain, that a single line could never be used for the traffic between Portsmouth and London, and a double line must always present superior facilities for whatever traffic might come upon it. But as the line had been granted, and the parties called themselves an independent company, and the line an independent line, he called upon them to act independently, and work it themselves. They had made the line, and why not work it?—(Hear, hear.) When their traffic came upon the Brighton and South Coast line, the directors would give them every facility they could, and would charge no more than a fair price for the use of their line. But these parties now sought to go farther, and to coerce the London and Brighton Company into a needless and absurd speculative expenditure. Two or three of the parties alluded to had applied for power to construct a line between Horsham and Shoreham; and subscribed 80,000l.out of the 300,000l. required for that line, for the construction of which one of those parties had actually become the contractor.—(Hear, hear.) The same parties, though not at present interfering with our friendly neighbour, the South-Western, have had a line surveyed from Petersfield to Southampton, and intimated that in the event of not succeeding in the attempt upon the London and Brighton line, they would turn upon the South-Western. Those parties, as he had said, asked for a line from Horsham to Shoreham. In the first instance they proposed line from Dorking to Leatherhead, and for another from Dorking viá Horsham to Shoreham, and last year they promoted another line from Epsom to Dorking. When the directors of the London and Brighton found this had been done, they naturally applied to the South-Western Company to know whether they knew anything of the matter, and if the circular announcing the intention to construct it was published with their knowledge. In reply, the South-Western Company said the scheme had neither their sanction nor support. He (the chairman) asked the directors of the South-Western to give him that assurance in writing, which they did, and he then felt it was necessary to undeceive the population resident in the district. With that view he attended a meeting at Henfield, which was a large one for the district, and was presided over by the vicar; and by the leave of the chairman he laid very distinctly before that meeting the real state of the case as regarded the alleged sanction of the South-Western—that he had a letter to show that such was the case—that he had seen a letter from the principal promoters of the line from Godalming to Havant, in which they stated ‟all aggressive measures would be done away with, if you lease or buy us.”—(Hear.) He told the meeting also his opinion, that the line was not intended for the benefit of the district, but that of the promoters themselves; and the result was that the inhabitants of Henfield had turned round upon those parties, resolved that they would support the London and Brighton, and immediately wrote to the solicitor for the new scheme, requesting him to withdraw their names from the petition they had been deceived into signing. The parties referred to had dropped the line from Horsham to Dorking, and at present confined themselves to the line down from Horsham to Shoreham, a distance of about 17 miles, which it was estimated would cost 160,000l. Here, then, they had those parties seeking for powers to construct what called ‟little pieces” of railways, and then applying afterwards for running powers over suburban lines to their central stations. Now, as all were aware, it was not in the construction such “little pieces” as these that the great outlay on railways took place, but upon the terminal lines.—(Hear, hear.) For instance, take the ten miles from the London station, and the cost of land in the vicinity of Brighton, though Brighton was a comparatively small town, and they would see how largely the cost of a line would be increased if parties had to construct their own stations. He did not hesitate to say that if those parties had to do so it would not cost them less than 100,000l. —(Hear.) But such was the course pursued—first of all those parties asked for and obtained powers to make these little pieces of lines, and after awhile came and asked for running powers over great and necessarily expensively-constructed lines. He (the Chairman) could not for a moment believe that the property which there was now invested in the great lines of the country, amounting to 312,000,000l., or 320,000,000l.—he could not for a moment believe that any committee of the House of Commons or the House of Lords would grant such powers for the purpose of perpetrating such a theft of property as he would call it.—(Cheers.) In the October number of the Quarterly Review, which, as they all knew, was a very influential periodical, read by many members of Parliament, and likely to influence their views—a review appeared of that admirable life, by Mr. Smiles, of a man who could not be too much revered or too highly spoken of—he meant George Stephenson.—(Hear, hear.) In that article he (Mr. Schuster) found introduced an attack on the London and Brighton, and a still worse one on the South-Eastern. The attack on the London and Brighton was a very weak one. Some 20 years ago, in the years 1837 and 1838, when the London and Brighton line was brought into Parliament with other lines for the same object, the Government engineer was appointed to report on those various lines, and he gave the preference to what was called Rennie’s line over Stephenson’s. Stephenson took the valley line; Rennie the straight line from Croydon (to which a line had already been made) to Brighton. The article stated that Rennie’s line avoided all the populous towns. Now, he had taken the latest returns of the population of all the towns that might have been touched by the valley line, and taking the census of 1851 as his authority, he found they were as follows;— Epsom, 4,199; Leatherhead, 2,000; Dorking, 5,500; Horsham, 5,700; Henfield, 1,700; and Steyning, 15,000. Those were all the towns that line would have accommodated, while the article referred to stated that all the principal towns were avoided. Now, then, let them see what were the grounds on which the Government engineer based his preference of Rennie’s line twenty years ago. In the first place, a line had been made to Croydon, and beginning at that point, the new line was continued in a straight line, with excellent gradients—none worse than 1 in 264—to Brighton. Since than it had been found, by experience, that nothing could be better than that line and those gradients, which had enabled them to carry on the working of the line with the greatest regularity, efficiency, and despatch.—(Hear, hear.) Next, let them contrast the amount of accommodation to the population of the district by the two lines. If Stephenson’s line had been made, it would have terminated at the back of the Bedford Hotel, and if so, he (the chairman) could not see how they could have got a line from that terminus to accommodate the county town of Lewes, or Hastings and St. Leonard’s, which the present line provided with ample accommodation, and the distance to which had been shortened by the line from Keymer. Then they had a line to East Grinstead, not a place of much importance it was true, but if they would look at the large map on the wall they would see what an enormous district would have been left unprovided by Stephenson’s line; and if that line had been adopted, where would they have been then? In fact, however, the article in question was full of fallacies, but he would not take up more time in exposing them.—(Hear, hear.) Turning again to the point he was adverting to—namely, the Shoreham and Horsham line—he found there were nineteen inclines on that line, with gradients of 1 in 100 to 1 in 112; and that the total length of those inclines was fourteen miles, while the Brighton was a straight line, with gradients never more than 1 in 264. That was the line which it was now proposed to construct in opposition to the London and Brighton. He could not believe that such a line would be granted; and if it were granted,he did not think that anybody with money would be mad enough to invest it in it. The line, in fact, like the Sheffield razors, was made to sell, and not to use.—(Hear, hear, and laughter.) The directors asked the proprietors of the London and Brighton to give their approval for taking steps to make the lines which they proposed. They proposed to construct a line from Steyning to Henfield, and to join their Mid-Sussex scheme with Itchingfield, thus giving the inhabitants of that district a means of getting down to the coast which they had not at present. It was not a very straight line, it was true, but still it was better than the coach. The next subject was one which the directors looked upon as one of the most vital interest. They had an excellent station at London-bridge, but all present knew well the difficulty and loss of time in getting from London-bridge to the West end. The directors had always kept in view the making of a West-end station. They had now an opportunity of crossing the river, which was a great object to achieve, particularly when they found that a toll was to be levied on the Chelsea New Bridge. Every one knew how much those tolls interfered with traffic, and if any one wanted an illustration let him only look at Southwark-bridge, where scarcely a person was ever to be seen. But by the scheme proposed they would at once get into the heart of the West-end, and he fully anticipated it would give them as good a station in the west as they now had at the East-end of London—indeed it would be superior; they would have better and wider approaches, and in such a matter they must look forward to providing facilities for a much larger population than the present. In a few years London would have a population of three millions, and he had no doubt that the London and Brighton would have to accommodate two-thirds of them. If they knew of a population of a million a few miles off, who could be made customers by giving them facilities for travelling, would they not be happy to do so? —(Hear, hear.) He looked upon London as a county, only exceeding all other counties in the world in its population, and he should not hesitate a moment in giving that population every convenience and accommodation. The increase in the value of property and the growth of the population in them, was illustrated by what had taken place at Forest-hill, Sydenham, Anerley, Norwood and Croydon. Within the last six years the revenue had increased at those stations from 110,000l. to 250,000l.—(Hear, hear.) Knowing as they did that facilities for travelling on railways created traffic, the directors had accepted an offer made to them by a company formed for the purpose of constructing a railway commencing at the south side of the river at Battersea, crossing the Thames, and terminating at the Grosvenor Basin, situated at the end of Victoria-street, Westminster. Such a central station to the principal points of the western part the metropolis, could not fail to give fresh impetus to their traffic, not only by rendering more accessible the watering places on the South Coast but also by creating a new suburban outlet in the direction of those healthy districts which are traversed by the West-end and Crystal Palace line. The arrangement made, subject to the sanction of the proprietors, was, that the bridge over the Thames, the line of railway, and the necessary site for the terminus, should be vested in the London and Brighton Company. The promoters reserved a right of way over the bridge and station, for the purpose of constructing a station such a portion of the site as would not be required by the London and Brighton, It was further agreed that the latter should not be called upon to bear any share of the preliminary, engineering, or parliamentary expenses, and that whatever might be the eventual cost of the land and works, the property stipulated for by the London and Brighton was to be vested in them for a payment 450,000l., and an annual sum of 1,000l., without any addition whatever in future. When he looked at these terms, he had no hesitation in saying that the station would in five years pay back its cost. He did not need to look beyond that fact to satisfy him that they would be doing right in embracing this opportunity of making the West-end station. He left it to the meeting to consider how many more passengers they would have from the West-end under such arrangement; and under those circumstances the directors earnestly recommended the proprietors to seriously consider the importance of that scheme.—(Hear, hear.) He had no other remarks to offer, and in moving the adoption of the report he would only beg to assure the meeting of his readiness to give any additional information they might require.— (Cheers.)

     Mr. Scott seconded the motion. 

...