Railways Act 1921

75 Facilities.

(1) In order to facilitate the transmission of traffic passing or intended to pass to. or from places on or beyond the railway of any amalgamated company from or to places on or beyond the railway of any other amalgamated company, every amalgamated company shall, at all times, afford to any such other amalgamated company all reasonable facilities for the convenient working, forwarding, and conveyance of such traffic via proper and convenient points of exchange, including through rates and fares, the efficient working of trains at suitable and convenient times so as to satisfy the reasonable requirements of the public for the reception, forwarding, and delivery of such traffic, and shall, so far as circumstances reasonably admit, accommodate, manage, and forward such traffic as effectually, regularly, and expeditiously as if it were its own proper traffic.

(2) Except as hereinafter provided, all facilities for the interchange of traffic and the arrangements as to routes and divisions and invoicing of traffic which on the first day of August, nineteen hundred and fourteen, were in operation between any company and any other company who will not form part of the same group shall, unless otherwise mutually agreed between the companies concerned, be continued by and be binding upon the amalgamated company of which any such company shall form part, as if such amalgamated company had been party to the said facilities and arrangements, but not so as to enlarge or diminish the scope or duration of any such facilities or arrangements :

Provided always that no amalgamated company, except with the consent of the other companies concerned, shall alter or discontinue any point of exchange with any other amalgamated company or companies before the expiration of five years from the date when the amalgamation scheme applicable to such first mentioned amalgamated company came into operation, and then only on giving six calendar months' notice in writing of such intention to the other company or companies, and, if the other amalgamated company or companies shall object to such proposed alteration or discontinuance, the matter shall be referred to the rates tribunal, who shall make such order as they shall think just.

(3) Subject to the provisions of this Act with respect to circuitous routes, in the case of a route competitive with its own by which traffic passes the through rates or fares charged by any amalgamated company shall not, unless the rates tribunal for good cause shown so order, be higher than those charged by its own route.

(4) No constituent or subsidiary company and no amalgamated company shall be at liberty to refuse to receive, forward, or deliver traffic consigned by a through route on the ground that such traffic can be carried by a route which has, through the operation of this Act, become local to such company.