The data below come from the Board of Trade Railway Returns, mainly for fourteen large railway companies from 1888 to 1912, with national totals from the 1913 volume added. Working expenditure as a share of receipts is called the operating ratio. From 1893 to 1896 the median operating ratio lay between 56% and 57%; it rose to 64% in 1901 and stayed between 61% and 64% until 1912, never returning to the level of the mid-1890s. On the cost side, median working expenditure per train mile rose from 31.1d in 1896 to 38.4d in 1901 and 39.4d in 1910. Of the 18 companies with figures for both 1899 and 1900, every one spent more in 1900 than in 1899. On the rate side, receipts per ton of general merchandise fell in 1894 and did not rise in any year up to 1899. Over the same period, goods train miles in the United Kingdom fell from 180 million in 1900 to 157 million in 1908, while the goods carried rose from 425 million tons to 492 million. Tons carried per goods train mile were 2.36 in 1900, 3.13 in 1908 and 3.51 in 1913 (the Returns describe the 1913 train mileage as only “fairly comparable” with earlier years). Apart from the national totals, all figures are medians of the companies’ values for each year.
In my judgement, railway profits thinned around 1900 because of costs: coal and wages rose, and rates could not follow. The Railway and Canal Traffic Act 1894 provided that any rate raised after the end of 1892 must, on complaint, be shown by the company to be reasonable, and the Railway and Canal Commission read this as requiring proof that the cost of the particular branch of traffic had risen. General increases in coal prices and wages could not be assigned to any one branch of traffic, so they could not be turned into higher rates. The companies instead ran fewer trains and loaded them more heavily. Cain and Irving put forward this explanation long ago: after 1900, rising costs and a regulatory freeze on freight charges pushed railway management to take operating efficiency seriously (as summarised by Crafts, Leunig and Mulatu, 2008). The company figures add three points. First, the North Eastern Railway adopted ton-mile accounting from 1901, and its receipts per goods train mile rose from 80d in 1899 to 150d in 1912, against a median rise from 76d to 93d. Second, companies whose operating ratio rose more between 1897 and 1901 increased their loads more between 1901 and 1905, but the relation is not strong (17 companies, rank correlation 0.55; 0.44 for 15 companies if the two small East and West Yorkshire Union and Metropolitan District railways are left out). Third, heavier loading did not improve the operating ratio: between 1900 and 1910 the North Eastern’s rose by one point, much like most companies. The judgement fails if either of two things holds: one, once company tonnage after 1900 is filled in, receipts per ton rise markedly in 1900–1902, showing that rates could in fact go up (part of the tonnage for these years has now been transcribed, but the fourteen large companies still have no usable receipts per ton for 1901 and 1902, so this cannot yet be tested); two, the rise in operating ratios in 1897–1901 comes mainly from changes in accounting practice rather than real cost increases.
The figure below is a Sankey diagram, in which the width of each flow represents a quantity. Each column stands for one company, ordered from left to right by receipts per train mile in the selected year. The width of the flow above each column is proportional to that company’s receipts per train mile. At the dashed line the flow divides into two parts: the grey part is working expenditure and the blue part is net receipts. The two parts join the nodes at the top, total working expenditure and total net receipts. One scale is used for all years and all companies, so widths can be compared directly between companies and between years. The returns for 1888–1895 contain no comparable working-expenditure figures, so those years show receipts only. Select a year with the slider or press play to step through the years; the marks above the slider are the years in which the four Acts took effect, 1893, 1894, 1898 and 1900. Hover over a flow to see its values; click to see its source.
The dashed line is where the receipts flow divides; for a year or company without a working-expenditure figure the flow ends at the line. The width of each total node is the sum of the companies’ values; the sum serves only to join the flows and is not an economic aggregate. Each company’s two figures for each year are the values printed in the Railway Returns as “receipts per train mile, all trains” and “total expenditure per train mile”, in pence; net receipts are their difference, not an estimate from a ratio. From 1899 the South Eastern and the London, Chatham and Dover companies reported jointly through their managing committee; before 1899 the South Eastern reported alone.
One panel for each of the fourteen companies. The horizontal axis is the year, 1888 to 1912; the vertical axis is pence per train mile, on the same scale in every panel, so values can be compared directly between companies. The three lines are receipts (buff), working expenditure (grey) and net receipts (blue), from the same data as the figure above; years without a value have no point and no connecting line, and single-source values are drawn as hollow points. The four red vertical lines mark the years in which the Acts of 1893, 1894, 1898 and 1900 took effect. The South Eastern and the joint managing committee share one panel, with no line between 1898 and 1899 because the joint returns begin in 1899. Hover over a point to see its value; click to see its source.
Total working expenditure per train mile is the same figure as in sections 2 and 3; the comparative tables of the general report also print five items of it: maintenance of way, locomotive power, repairs of carriages and wagons, general charges, and duty, all in pence per train mile. The printed title of the duty column has not yet been checked against the original page, so its name is provisional. The five items add up to less than the total: in the company-years with all five items and the total, the total minus the five items is to d, median d. This difference is drawn as a layer of its own, the unitemised difference, and is not spread over the five items in proportion. Expenditure before 1896 is not comparable with later years and is not drawn.
Each year uses only the companies with all five items and the total; the median of each of the six layers is taken and the medians are stacked. The dark line is the median total of the same companies. The medians of the layers do not in general add up to the median of the totals; over the two differ by at most d. Years with fewer than five such companies are not drawn; the row of figures below the axis is the number of companies used each year. Hover over a year to see the six values; click to see which companies were used.
One panel per company and one column per year, with the six layers in the same order and colours as above, on the same scale in every panel. Where items are missing only the outline of the total is drawn; a column containing a single-source value has a hollow point on top. The South Eastern has no figures in these columns for 1896 to 1898, so its panel starts with the South Eastern and Chatham managing committee in 1899. Hover over a column to see its values; click to see its source.
Working expenditure as a share of receipts, the operating ratio, is the expenditure-to-receipts column of the ratio table, in per cent; most values are printed in the comparative tables of the general report, the rest are total working expenditure divided by total receipts from Return No. 3. Each of the fourteen principal companies has its own line. The other companies in the table are not drawn one by one: the grey band is their 25th to 75th percentile in each year, the line inside it is their median, and the row of figures below the axis is the number of other companies with a value that year; no band is drawn in years with fewer than five. Before 1893 the fourteen companies have only a few scattered values. Hovering over a line darkens that company and fades the others; click a point on a line to see its source.
Two groups of figures, for the fourteen companies only. The first group is ratios: receipts per passenger by class (first, second, third and all classes), passenger receipts of each class divided by the number of passengers, in pence; receipts per ton for merchandise and for minerals, goods receipts divided by tons, in pence; goods train miles as a percentage of all train miles; and train miles run per route mile in a year. The second group is absolute quantities: passengers, merchandise tons and minerals tons, in millions, taken from the panel cells that enter the analysis. Each chart has its own vertical scale. The period ends in 1899 because company tonnage after 1899 has not yet been transcribed; that is the next task. From 1899 the South Eastern reported jointly with the London, Chatham and Dover through their managing committee, and there is no line between 1898 and 1899. Hovering over a line darkens that company in every chart of the group; the company buttons of section 5 apply here too.
The institutional calendar has entries: Acts, Clearing House classifications, changes of return format and control events, which are not rules. On the time axis each entry is a point at the year it took effect, and the shape of the point shows the result of the test. The results come only from three tables: the main matching table, rows, of which go from a fold to a rule and from a rule to a fold; the table of rules that could not be tested or were not matched, rows, with their reasons copied; and folds with no matching rule, drawn below the axis as a separate group. These three tables were computed in task 010 on the v2 ratio table, while the other sections read the v4 table; the Railway and Canal Traffic Act 1913, added to the calendar on 18 October 2026, is not in the three tables and is neither drawn nor counted. The light background is the panel, 1884 to 1912; there are no data outside it. Click an entry to open its dates, source grade, expected ratio families and the results in the tables.
No rule to match means that no calendar entry takes effect or passes within one year of the fold. Year only means that the year matches a rule but the ratio family of the fold is not in that rule's expectation. Neither counts as a match.
The table sets out where the figures in each section come from and the known gaps, each with the section and figures it affects.
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