If the tires of all the company's wheels were welded into one ring, they
would form a circle of seventy-two miles.

To keep this rolling stock up in number and efficiency, there are two
establishments, one at Camden Town, and one at Wolverton.

Camden Town is the great coach house of the line, where goods waggons are
built and repaired in one division, where sound locomotives, carriages and
trucks are kept ready for use in another.

The waggon building department of Camden is worth visiting, especially by
railway shareholders.

Every one is interested in railways being worked economically, for economy
gives low rates and increased profits, which both increase trade and multiply
railways. Hitherto the details of carrying, especially as to the
construction of waggons and trucks, have been much neglected.

On one line running north, it is said that the loss in cheese stolen by the
railway servants, amounts to as much as the whole sum paid for carrying
agricultural produce, and on the line on which we are travelling, breakages
have sometimes amounted to 1,200 pounds a-month.

The fact is, that railway carriers have been content to use rude square boxes
on wheels, covered when loaded, if covered at all, with a tarpaulin, without
any precautions for draining off the wet, to which it was constantly exposed
when out of use,--without "buffers" or other protecting springs, so that the
wear and tear of the waggon and its load, from inevitable shocks, was very
great.