292 History of Inland Transport 



Parliamentary proceedings and on the acquiring of land, the 

 cost simply of building the railway itself has, generally speak- 

 ing, been far greater in this country than, under corresponding 

 geographical and traffic conditions, has been the case else- 

 where. Judging from the example of the Prussian State 

 Railway administration it is extremely doubtful if, had the 

 British railway system been constructed, owned and operated 

 by the State, instead of being left to private enterprise, any 

 responsible Chancellor of the Exchequer would have authorised 

 so great a degree of expenditure, in the interests of an absolute 

 perfection of construction under all possible conditions, as that 

 which has been forced upon commercial companies dependent 

 for their capital on the money they could raise from investors. 



Less scope for criticism is offered by the provision of the 

 most complete of safety appliances in regard to signalling and 

 other phases of railway operation. The desirability of reducing 

 the risk of railway accidents to an absolute minimum is beyond 

 the range of all possible dispute. Yet, as a matter of detail, 

 the substantial cost of ensuring this all-important element of 

 safety, no less than the exceptionally heavy outlay on the lines 

 themselves, has helped still further to increase that capital 

 expenditure a return on which is only to be secured by the 

 investors from the revenue the companies can get from the 

 railway users. 



When we look for the ultimate and combined results of the 

 various conditions touched upon in this and the preceding 

 chapter excessive cost of land, abnormal expenditure on 

 Parliamentary proceedings and various aspects of State 

 policy and control we find them in the fact that, whether or 

 not the British railways are really the best in the world, they 

 have certainly been the most costly. 



Comparisons with other countries may be misleading unless 

 we remember that published statistics as to the cost of con- 

 struction of the world's railways apply to route mileage 

 or, otherwise, " length of line " and that the English lines 

 have a large proportion of double, treble and other multiple 

 track, while in more sparsely populated countries the rail- 

 ways, except in and around the large towns, consist to a far 

 larger extent of single track. The actual position is not, there- 

 fore, quite so bad as the comparative figures appear to show. 

 But, even allowing for these considerations, the following table 



