Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Railway Magazine - Interview with Mr. Ammon Beasley - TVR - 1898 . . . .

"You have, I think, from time to time gained considerable concessions in the shape of running powers and other facilities for your traffic over the lines of the neighbouring companies ?"

"The working of the traffic is often a very difficult problem to solve owing to its extremely fluctuating character both as to quantity and destination. We have had in the course of one week as few as 300 wagons to carry in a day, and as many as 6,000 - that is, of coal and coke. Thus, while on one day the traffic required, say, twelve trains to carry it - six down and six up - on another 240 were required.

Our train-load of coal traffic is 50 wagons, averaging about 750 tons coming down and 250 to 300 going up. The down wagons are, of course, full, and the up wagons empty. All the wagons carrying coal and coke belong to the collieries, and there are probably from 20,000 to 25,000 of these wagons owned by traders on the Taff Vale.

As it is not the practice at South Wales collieries to 'stack' coal at the pits-mouth, it follows that as soon as the supply of empty wagons gives out the colliery stops. If there were no congestion at the docks, no gales round the coast, no fogs in the Bristol Channel, and always a good number of steamers ready to take the coal as it comes down, nothing would be easier than to feed the collieries with their necessary empties.

As circumstances are, however, nothing is more difficult ; and yet, during the last twelve months I have, I think, had only one complaint that a colliery had to knock off work for an hour or two because wagons had been too long on the way up. And even this complaint was without real foundation.

As we are bound to keep the collieries fully supplied with empty wagons to keep them going, so are we bound for the same reason to promptly clear the colliery sidings of the laden wagons. Few of the collieries can hold a day's output, and some must be cleared every hour or so or the pits will stop.

'What becomes of the wagons,' do you say? Well, there are in the vicinity of the docks at Cardiff, Penarth, and Barry something like forty or fifty miles of sidings, and I have often seen these absolutely full ; and about 300 wagons go to the mile.