CHAIRMAN S ADDRESS. XIII. 



embrace such considerations as those of the proportionate 

 costs of alteration to road and rolling stock, and the 

 question of carrying capacity and speed, which come 

 entirely within the sphere of the engineer to decide. The 

 first thing will be to get rid of all extraneous questions of 

 local or State policy by placing the railways under Federal 

 control, and then the engineer can tackle the problem and 

 solve it on the most economical lines. 



The coal trade from our western coalfields has always 

 been very seriously handicapped by the want of trucks, 

 and this is of so serious a nature when wheat and wool are 

 coming forward that the permanent building of an oversea 

 trade has been frequently frustrated ; if the concentration 

 of idle tracks from other States were possible it would 

 mean the development of an industry and the increase of 

 Australian exports. 



The question of the unification of the gauges when 

 regarded through State spectacles has always been 

 declared impossible, but so far as I am aware it has never 

 received unbiassed consideration. 



In addition to the conversion of the gauges of lines 

 already built, there is the question of strategic railways 

 looming close upon the horizon. At present Western 

 Australia is isolated from the rest of the Commonwealth, 

 and is specially liable, in the absence of the British Navy, 

 to attack from a foreign foe. The Northern Territory and 

 northern parts of Queensland, containing about a million 

 square miles of tropical country, are practically unin- 

 habited, so far as the white man is concerned, and is the 

 open door to Asiatic hordes north of Australia. One hears 

 rumours of an incipient invasion of these undesirables 

 having already set in, so the need of strategic railways for 

 the combined purposes of settlement and defence, is a very 

 pressing one. A glance at the map of Australia exhibited 



