Then, at no fewer than one hundred and thirty-five railway stations in London and the suburbs thereof, the railway companies have provided coal depôts on such vacant land as may be available close to the local sidings, and here a certain amount of space is allotted to the use of coal merchants. For this accommodation no charge whatever is made in London, though a small rent has to be paid in the provinces. The London coal merchant gets so many feet, or yards, allotted to him on the railway property; he puts up a board with his name, or that of his firm; he stores on the said space the coal for which he has no immediate sale; and he sends his men there to fetch from day to day just such quantities as he wants in order to execute the orders received. With free accommodation such as this at half a dozen, or even a score, of suburban railway stations, all that the coal merchant of to-day requires in addition is a diminutive little office immediately adjoining each railway station, where orders can be received, and whence instructions can be sent. Not only, also, do the railway companies provide him with a local coal depôt which serves his every purpose, but, after allowing him three "free" days on the great coal sidings, to which the waggons first come, they give him, on the local sidings, another seven "free" days in which to arrange his business. He thus gets ten clear days altogether, before any charge is made for demurrage, and, if then he is still awaiting orders, he has only to have the coal removed from the trucks on to the depôt, or "wharf" as it is technically called, so escaping any payment beyond the ordinary railway rate, in which all these privileges and advantages are included. If canal transport were substituted for rail transport, the coal would first have to be taken from the mouth of the pit to the canal, and, inasmuch as comparatively few collieries (except in certain districts) have canals immediately adjoining, the coal would have to go by rail to the canal, unless the expense were incurred of cutting a branch of the canal to the colliery--a much more costly business, especially where locks are necessary, than laying a railway siding. At the canal the coal would be tipped from the railway truck into the canal boat,[8] which would take it to the canal terminus, or to some wharf or basin on the canal banks. There the coal would be thrown up from the boat into the wharf (in itself a more laborious and more expensive operation than that of shovelling it down, or into sacks on the same level, from a railway waggon), and from the wharf it would have to be carted, perhaps several miles, to final destination.