LIGHT RAILWAYS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES. 229 
cheaply constructed lines abroad, engines of English make were 
replaced by the more flexible American type, with the result 
that to this day the American engines have had a preference in 
most new countries. He once blamed an old friend and fellow 
apprentice, who had been for some years engineer and locomotive 
superintendent for a South American railway, for having ordered 
numbers of locomotives from the States, when he had obtained all 
his experience as an engineer in England, and he was assured that 
this was done with the greatest reluctance, because the road was 
so sinuous and had so many sharp curves, that the wear and tear 
upon the English engines was excessive ; that English makers had 
been asked to modify their designs, but without avail, and there. 
fore engines had to be purchased from the United States. This 
occurred about ten years ago, but matters had changed since then, 
as the British engineers had become more alive to the require- 
ments of such railways, and some of the best of them manufactured 
locomotives with bar frames, bogies, and short rigid wheel bases 
to suit any requirements, equally effective upon rough and cheap 
roads, and superior in quality of material and workmanship to 
any that could be made in America. He had looked up some 
information relating to locomotives suitable for a four feet eight 
and a-half inches gauge of railway, and capable of meeting most 
of the requirements suggested in the paper, and tabulated the 
leading points of five such engines, which were capable of passing 
round curves of from three to six chains radius. They weighed 
from twenty-eight and a-half to thirty-nine tons when in working 
order, and the loads upon the axles could be arranged to be from 
five and a-half to eight and a-quarter tons. Theloads they would 
draw upon an incline of one in forty at eight. miles per hour varied 
from one hundred and twenty-two to one hundred and fifty-one 
tons exclusive of the engine. 
