LIGHT RAILWAYS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES. 67 
rail would be between £6 and £7 per annum per mile, but against 
this would be the extra labour in maintaining the lighter road. 
Now looking at the advantages of the heavier rail, in holding up 
the road, and taking the labour of maintenance at £60 to £70 per 
annum per mile, it is certain that more than ten per cent would 
have to be added to the last figures in the case of the lighter rail. 
Then, independently of strength, there is the greater life as regards 
wear of the heavier rail, and, what is not often considered, its 
greater advantage in the carriage of material and ballast’ during 
construction, over unfinished road beds, possibly in this alone 
recovering a considerable portion of its first cost. 
The actual bearing surface of the sleepers per mile should be 
fixed by the maximum weight on an axle, and some actual examples 
may guide us in this. On the Indian narrow gauge lines, seven tons 
on an axle are supported by two thousand sleepers per mile of eight 
thousand square feet bearing surface, forty-one pound rails being 
used. In the Cape, the author worked thirty ton tank engines, 
having nearly eight tons on an axle, on one thousand seven hundred 
and sixty sleepers per mile, having a bearing surface of nine thousand 
two hundred and forty square feet, forty-five pound iron rails 
being used, these latter were then as dear as sixty pound steel 
rails are now. On the Festiniog one foot eleven and a half inch 
gauge, the axle weight is five tons, the bearing surface about six 
thousand five hundred square feet per mile, and the rail forty- 
eight and two-thirds pounds. In New South Wales, if a few 
vehicles, mostly unsuited for light traffic, were excluded, the axle 
weight, exclusive of locomotives, would not exceed eight tons on 
an axle, and is generally much less ; if therefore suitable engines 
could be designed to have no greater axle weight than say eight 
tons, a permanent way equal in bearing power to that of the 
Cape lines would be sufficient. 
Taking the standard gauge eight feet sleepers as against the 
seven feet Cape ones, their other dimensions being the same, it 
will be found that sixty pound rails with one thousand five 
