THE RAILWAY DISCUSSION 1902. 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT IN BRITISH 
SUIANA. 
By L. M. HILL, M. Inst. C. E., President, R.A. & CS. 
At the outset of my paper on the Possibilities of Railway Development in 
British Guiana, I may be excused for expressing regret at the unfortunate 
circumstances that have given us three different gauges on the three short 
railways that the colony boasts of at the present time: the standard gauge 
of 4ft. 85ins. on the Kast Coast line, 3ft. 6ins. on the West Coast, and the metre 
gauge of 3ft. 35 ins. on the Demerara-Essequebo Railway. Indeed I believe 
our colony holds the unique position of possessing a Railway company working 
two different gauges, with the many attendant drawbacks and inconveniences 
in the way of interchange of rolling stock and other appliances. I have heard 
it said—untruly and wickedly no doubt—that the gauge of the West Coast 
line was adopted simply to suit some second-hand condemned locomotives and 
rolling stock from Barbados! It is true the Great Western Railway Coy. of 
England at one time ran two gauges, but that was only during the period that 
the Company was converting its system from the broad to the standard gauge, 
which is now in universal use throughout Great Britain, as well as the United 
States of America and many other foreign countries. 
The Demerara Railway Company was established in 1846, the East Coast 
line opened as far as Plaisance in 1848, and extended to Belfield and Mahaica 
in 1854 and 1864. Here all railway enterprise in the colony seems to have 
stopped until the last decade, when the Kast Coast railway was extended to 
Rosignol on the left bank of the Berbice River, a new railway constructed 
on the West Coast from Vreed-en-Hoop to Greenwich Park, and a narrow-gauge 
light railway from Wismar to Rockstone, forming a sort of portage between 
the Demerara and Essequebo Rivers, constructed—largely through the energy 
and perseverance of Mr. Fred. White, General Manager of Sprostons, Limited, 
—as a ready means of getting over the difficulty of dangerous falls and rapids 
in the Essequebo River on the passage between Bartica and the Potaro gold 
fields. In this way it certainly has served, and is still serving, a useful end, 
although at the expense of well nigh ruining the town of Bartica, which was 
designed by it natural geographical position, to be the “jumping off 
ground,” so to speak, for the Essequebo, Mazaruni and Cuyuni districts. 
The Demerara-Essequebo Railway must, however, rest content with its more 
or less evanescent life of usefulness as an aid in getting to the Potaro district, 
pending the construction of the great Central Trunk Line from Bartica ; as it 
seems to me like the bolstering up of a bad case to attempt to make it a sort 
of cross-country route to the Mazaruni diamond fields through the Potaro 
and Couriebrong rivers with a portage of some miles to the head waters of the 
Semang, and down that stream into the Mazaruni, as has been seriously pro- 
posed. To say nothing of the ever decreasing size of craft capable of navigating 
