Ais a.) 4 
‘ at 
- 
Fay 
' 
a, « 
66 C. O. BURGE. 
one in this respect. For example, the gauge of the Indian branch 
lines is seventy per cent. greater than that of the Festiniog line, 
but the bearing surface is only twenty-eight per cent. greater. 
The gauge of the New South Wales lines is one hundred and forty- 
four per cent. greater than the Festiniog line, but the bearing 
surface is only ninety-two per cent. more. The Festiniog line of 
two feet gauge carries five tons on an axle, while the Lombardy 
four feet eight and a-half inches gauge light lines carry only four 
and a-half tons per axle, the bearing surface being only slightly 
more. Now reducing the number of the sleepers is the best way 
of lightening the road, as, should the axle weights be increased by 
growth of traffic, or other cause, subsequently, the addition of 
extra sleepers is comparatively easy and cheap. 
Diminishing ballast is also a convenient way of lightening the 
road; ballast serves not only as a means of drainage for the 
sleepers, and as a cushion between the load and the formation, but 
distributes the load through the sleeper, carrying it down toa 
wider base on the formation, as it spreads out; the deeper the 
ballast under sleeper level the wider therefore this base is, of course, | 
under each sleeper. ‘This reduction of ballast also has the advan- 
tage of enabling reversion to a heavier construction being con- 
veniently and cheaply made when a stronger road is required. — ; 
On the other hand, caution should be used in diminishing the 
weight of the rail, the strength of the rail decreasing much more 
rapidly than its weight and cost. Should we find our traffic 
increasing beyond the power of the rail to bear it, we have, 
assuming no, addition to the number of the sleepers, to take up 
what may be comparatively unworn rails and replace them with 
heavier ones, an operation costing, with the extra freights, 
probably quite as much as the difference in original cost between 
light and heavy rails. ‘The difference between the cost of a sixty - 
pound and forty-five pound rail, at present prices, does not 
amount to more than about four to five per cent. on the total cost 
of even the cheapest line, and looking at it in another way, the 
saving in interest, at say four per cent. by adopting the lighter __ 
