CHAPTER XXXI 



THE OUTLOOK 



HAVING now traced the important part that improvements 

 in the conditions of inland transport and communication have 

 played in the economic and social development of this country, 

 and having seen, also, the action taken therein, on the one 

 hand by so-called " private enterprise " (denned by Samuel 

 Smiles as " the liberality, public spirit and commercial enter- 

 prise of merchants, traders and manufacturers "), and on the 

 other hand by State and local authorities, we have now to 

 consider, in this final chapter, what are the prospects of further 

 changes and developments in those transport conditions to 

 which, judging from past experience, it would not be wise to 

 fix finality in the matter of progress. 



Thus far the railway certainly represents the survival of 

 the fittest ; and, curiously enough, although great improve- 

 ments have been made in locomotive construction, in rails, 

 in signalling, in carriage-building and in the various depart- 

 ments of railway working, no absolutely new principle has 

 been developed since the Liverpool and Manchester Railway 

 definitely established the last of the three fundamental 

 principles on which railway construction and operation are 

 really based : (i) that a greater load can be moved, by an 

 equivalent power, in a wheeled vehicle on a pair of rails than 

 in a similar vehicle on an ordinary road ; (2) that flanged 

 wheels and flat rails are preferable for fast traffic to flat wheels 

 and flanged rails ; and (3) that a railway train should be 

 operated by a locomotive rather than by either animal power 

 or a stationary engine. 



It is true that, in regard to the last-mentioned of these 

 three main principles, material changes have been brought 

 about by the resort to electricity as a motive power ; but this, 

 after all, is an improvement in the means of rail transport 

 rather than a complete change in the principle of transport 



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