Introduction
Prior to the First World War, unless the customer was the possessor of privately owned wagons, the railway company accepting merchandise, but not necessarily minerals, for conveyance was expected to provide the wagon within which to carry the load. In the event of it being unable to do so, either due to a shortage of suitable wagon stock, especially if a special vehicle was required, it might arrange with a neighbouring company to hire appropriate wagons. Were the destination to be off the forwarding company’s system, then, once unloaded, the receiving company was expected to return the wagon expeditiously (five days) to its owner, failing which it would be charged a fee (demurrage) by the Railway Clearing House (RCH). Only if the second had a return load for a destination on the owning company, én route to, or beyond the owning company, could the wagon be sent ‘back-loaded’, otherwise it would be despatched empty.1 This naturally led to quite a lot of empty mileage.
World War I
The outbreak of World War I, soon led to a significant increase in traffic until by 1918 it had risen by 50%. With a decline in the routine maintenance, repair and renewal of life-expired plant together with the requisitioning of locomotives and rolling stock for use by the military, a crisis soon arose due to a shortage of sufficient wagons to meet ever-increasing demand. As the existing system of returning wagons empty was clearly wasteful of resources, in November 1915, at the request of the Railway Executive Committee, the Railway Clearing House set up ancommon pool between themselves. The Scottish companies – the Caledonian, North British and Glasgow & South Western – followed suit with a local arrangement on 5th June.
