. Electric railway journal . r its ar-rival at the station. As rapidly as shipping orders are checked, they arepassed into the office, where a tariff man assesses thecharges. They are then passed along to the bill manibill system, with regular billing machines hav- ing special characters, is used. The machines have nu-merous keys carrying entire words. For instance, com-modities frequently handled, such as meat, hardware,pipe, potatoes and fish, and articles such as boxes, bar-rels and packages, are written, 1 bbl. fish, 1 boxmeat, 1 bdl. pipe, without the clerk having to touchmore th
. Electric railway journal . r its ar-rival at the station. As rapidly as shipping orders are checked, they arepassed into the office, where a tariff man assesses thecharges. They are then passed along to the bill manibill system, with regular billing machines hav- ing special characters, is used. The machines have nu-merous keys carrying entire words. For instance, com-modities frequently handled, such as meat, hardware,pipe, potatoes and fish, and articles such as boxes, bar-rels and packages, are written, 1 bbl. fish, 1 boxmeat, 1 bdl. pipe, without the clerk having to touchmore than three keys. This facilitates billing, and twooperators turn out from 12,000 to 15,000 bills a copies of bills are made at once, from a continu-ous roll passing through the machine. The first copy ofthis bill serves as a way-bill in transit, and upon ar-rival at destination becomes an expense bill. The sec-ond copy is the station file receipt, and the third copy isretained by the forwarding agent as his HANDLING FREIGHT—FRONT VIEW OF RECEIVING SHEDS AT THEBIRMINGHAM CENTRAL STATION Upon the arrival of a train, the receiving agent hasonly to list the bills on a freight received form, and heis ready to turn them out to the consignees before thecar is even unloaded. This obviates the old method ofexpensing freight from blanket way-bills, as is thepractice on steam lines and a great many electric can be readily seen that through the use of thismethod quick service is assured. Service Attracts Traffic The central station at Birmingham is opened at 5a. m., and remains open continuously until 5 p. m. Theearly hour of opening is to accommodate the movementof fresh meat, produce and bread shipments to suburbanpoints, since the suburban merchants are dependent onthe distributers at Birmingham for their supplies, andthe tonnage of these early trains is made up almost en-tirely of this class of commodity. Owing to the fre-quency and reliability of the serv
Size: 1849px × 1352px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublishernewyorkmcgrawhillp
