Philip S. Bagwell

Fascinating history of a vital but stupendously unglamorous institution, the body that tried to put a bit of order into the chaos that made up the British railway industry in the days of "unfettered" private enterprise.

The Railway Clearing House was established by nine railway companies in 1842, but soon had dozens of members. Its primary role was to handle the division of receipts from passengers, goods and parcels that travelled over the lines of more than one railway company, but it also acquired a role as a de facto industry association, hosting discussions between companies about standardisation of equipment and acting as neutral arbiter of pooling and rate-fixing agreements. By the end of the 19th century it was employing about 2500 clerks to handle all the paperwork, as well as 500 "number-takers" whose unenviable task was to prowl around sidings in the middle of the night and record the destinations and serial numbers of wagons travelling from one company's area to another.

In Bagwell's account, the RCH appears as a typical British compromise arrangement, a loose association with only very limited powers to impose its authority on member companies, set up as a desperate last-ditch attempt to protect the industry from the terrible threat that haunted the nightmares of every Victorian industrialist: government interference. Whenever the press started moaning about the railway companies, the industry had to be seen to be doing something. Holding conferences at the RCH was a very good substitute for action to improve safety, efficiency, or service to the public. The result of the conferences was usually to devise unenforcable agreements that could be sabotaged by one bolshie Chairman like Captain Mark Huish of the LNWR. Or simply to come to the conclusion that innovation would be dangerous in the present conditions: a sentiment that the many railway directors in the House of Commons would generally support.

The one thing the RCH did supremely well was the division of receipts: just about everything else it was involved in (with the possible exception of the compilation of statistics) had effects that were bad for the industry and bad for the public. It supported the companies that were holding out against the obligation to provide trains with third-class accommodation on all lines; it helped to delay the compulsory introduction of vital safety equipment like continuous brakes and block signalling; it failed to do anything about the 600,000 privately-owned coal wagons, most of them shoddily built and poorly maintained, that clogged up the network; it helped to sustain anti-competitive practices and thereby prevented mergers and rationalisation; it held out for decades against the introduction of a cheap parcel post service by the GPO.
(On the plus side, it did solve once and for all the thorny problem of how to charge freight rates for litharge, greaves, and quercitron bark....)

Bagwell's book was written in 1968: it would be interesting to see a new account that compares the complexities of the railway industry in post-Thatcher Britain with those of the Victorian period. Such a book would probably make you think a bit more favourably about the modern "safety culture", but perhaps there are also things in Victorian accounting that our modern railway companies TOCs could learn from.… (plus d'informations)