72 C. O. BURGE. 
and a-half years old, with consequently little or no renewals. It 
was like asking which is better, an ocean steamer, or a ferry boat, 
without stating whether you want to cross the Atlantic or the 
Thames. 
There was “much throwing about of brains,” as Shakespeare 
says, on that occasion. In fact the solitary fact in the whole of 
the paper, that would be of any use to any controversy on the 
subject, was the uncontradicted statement, which was certainly 
not to be expected, that the proportion of paying to dead load was 
slightly in favour of the broad gauge. But the excellence of any 
particular non-standard gauge is not now in question, unless the 
advantages of it are shewn to over-balance the drawbacks of the 
break, and it will now be briefly stated what such drawbacks are: 
First, there is the cost of transhipment, which perhaps is the 
least important. This amounts to four pence per ton on an aver- 
age on the Irish lines, and taking difference of wages into account, 
would probably be seven pence here, equivalent to about seven 
miles of haulage. Now on every branch railway there is about 
ten miles of it, next. the parent line, which, though it has to be 
constructed, is wholly unprofitable as a feeder, the local traffic 
still going to the main line direct. Should transhipment of goods 
and cattle be necessary at the junction, this unprofitable distance 
is thus practically increased to seventeen miles, a goodly proportion 
of many a branch. © 
Secondly, there is the shutting out of the branch as an asylum 
for old rolling stock. <A serious objection to the present proposals 
of this paper is the closing of the branch lines to old locomotive 
stock, but a break of gauge would increase this objection enormously 
by closing them to all stock. An idea of this may be formed from 
the fact that on June 30, 1892, while there were on the New South 
Wales lines four hundred and eighty-nine engines, there were 
eleven thousand five hundred and nine carriages and waggons. 
Thirdly, everyone knows that traffic on all lines varies with the 
seasons. Not only is the wool traffic intermittent, and at different 
