The foregoing, with some payments to minor companies, make the total which the English and Welsh Companies receive from the Post Office, £407,512. Some of these minor companies, however, are not over-handsomely paid; for instance, the Colne Valley, 6½ miles long, receives the modest sum of £15 a year; the Tenbury, 5¼ miles long, which nevertheless has a Board of Directors consisting of seven members, and is presided over by a noble Baron, receives only £7. Never having heard of the Pontop and Jarrow Railway, we looked in all the usual sources of information without success, but we perceive by the Post Office estimates that the company earns £5 a-year for the services it renders to the department. If the amounts paid by the Post Office to English Railways be divided by its total mileage, it makes the average payment per mile per annum to them a little less than £58.
The Irish railways receive £84,508 per annum from the Post Office, of which the Great Southern and Western (420 miles), obtains £29,500; the Midland Great Western (261), £14,920; Irish North-Western (145), £1,540; Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford (107), £4,700; Ulster (106), £5,800; Belfast and Northern Counties (100), £2,950; Great Northern and Western (83), £2,349; Waterford and Limerick (77), £3,150; Dublin and Drogheda (75), £4,700; Dublin and Belfast Junction (63), £6,000; Londonderry and Enniskillen (60), £3,150; Belfast and County Down (44), £206; Londonderry and Coleraine (36), £1,300; Cork and Youghal (34), £1,150; Waterford and Kilkenny (31), £486; Cork and Limerick direct (25), £50; Cork and Bandon (20), £757. There are three companies that only receive £30 each, and two have twice as much as the Pontop and Jarrow. They have £10 each. The average Post Office payment per mile (assuming that the Post Office sent mails by all the railways in Ireland, which is not the case) is about £44. 10s.
The Scotch railways receive £78,482, of which the North British and Edinburgh and Glasgow (748) has £8,696; Caledonian (573), £29,101; Scottish Central and Scottish North-Eastern (459), £22,136; Great North of Scotland; (257), £3,830; Glasgow and South-Western (249), £3,436; the Highland Railway (245), £10,454. The average per mile per annum paid to Scotch railways by the Post Office, assuming that it availed itself of the whole of them, is £36.