58 Irish Railways and the State. 



hear those sound principles so clearly and strongly enunciated 

 by Mr. Macassey. 



Mr. Robert Dunwoody thought a change in the heads of 

 departments and the directorate on some of the Irish railways 

 would be one of the very best things that could happen. 

 There had been a great improvement in recent years in the 

 management of some of their local railways, and he instanced 

 the Great Northern in particular. He knew of one industry 

 that had been immensely helped by the generous way in which 

 Mr. Plews, the manager of that line, had helped it. 



Professor Fitzgerald sympathised especially with that part of 

 the paper which pointed out the annoyance caused by applying 

 the same elaborate system of signalling to small lines over 

 which there ran two or three trains per day as was applied to 

 lines which had trains running every two minutes. 



Mr. John Carson said he would have been glad if Mr. Ma- 

 cassey had gone a little further than he had. Ireland was a 

 very poor country, and required Government aid, especially in 

 the important matter of her railways. He thought the manage- 

 ment of some of c ar lines could be very greatly improved, and 

 he suggested that excursion trains at cheap fares should be run, 

 say, two days per week, between Belfast and Dublin and Dublin 

 and Belfast, in order that the people of the metropolis and the 

 people of the Northern capital might become better acquainted 

 with each other. Intercourse between the two cities should 

 certainly be encouraged. Mr. Macassey had not in his paper 

 dealt with the subject of electrical lines. In the Isle of Man 

 the electric system, as far as passenger traffic was concerned, 

 had worked well, and he did not see why it should not be ap- 

 plied to goods traffic as well. He thought the Bangor and 

 Holywood line should be worked by electricity instead of 

 having fifty-ton engines employed. The system on this line 

 should be made more like a tramway system with, say, a ten 

 minutes' service. 



Mr. H. Leslie Thomas was in favour of State-owned railways. 

 They were a success in India, Egypt, and Belgium, and he did 



