RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION. 349 



enlargement of stations, or for constructing additional stations 

 on promising sites. The value of the land may be small in the 

 outset, but will be enhanced enormously as the benefits of 

 the undertaking become appreciated. 



In the third rank may be grouped those branch lines which, 

 starting from a main passenger or goods line, are laid down to 

 some outlying town, seaport, or mining centre, which, although 

 small, is considered of sufficient importance to be brought into 

 railway communication. In general, these lines are laid to the 

 same gauge as the line with which they connect, and the transfer 

 of merchandise waggons is readily effected at the point of 

 junction. Others, from motives of economy, have been laid 

 down to a narrow gauge, involving the transhipment of all 

 goods and cattle at the station where the break of gauge takes 

 place. Most of these branch lines are laid out through the open 

 country, like an ordinary standard railway, but with a minimum 

 of works and appliances. Others are laid down partly on level 

 public roads, and partly through the fields, and are in con- 

 sequence subject to a statutory low rate of speed when travelling 

 over those portions on the public roads. 



In many cases the construction of second and third rank 

 railways, both at home and abroad, has been largely assisted by 

 state or provincial aid. Such assistance must always be valuable 

 to poor or undeveloped districts, but judgment should be exercised 

 so as not to encourage the introduction of any scheme which 

 would interfere or become competitive with any existing under- 

 taking constructed by public enterprise. So long as capitalists 

 invest their money more from commercial motives than from 

 feelings of philanthropy, it would, to say the least, be unjust and 

 impolitic for any country to adopt a course of competition by 

 national funds, and so check the flow of public money into public 

 undertakings. Ordinary public commercial competition may be 

 business, as each party can value and compare their own prospects; 

 but the competition of a scheme enjoying national aid and free 

 money grants is very apt to become one-sided. 



There is every indication that even what may be termed a 

 fourth-rank type of railway is destined to play a very important 

 part in the industrial enterprises of many countries, and that in the 

 form of little lines, made to any convenient gauge, and laid either 

 along public roads or open country, or both, the produce from 

 isolated manufactories, forests, quarries, and large farms will be 



