LIGHT RAILWAYS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES. 255 
that construction character the locomotive must be powerful and 
therefore could not be light. The three feet three inches gauge 
in South Australia was originally laid with forty pound rails, and 
there were some powerful engines running upon them. The 
original Liverpool and Manchester road was laid with a thirty- 
five pound rail, and portions of the English North Eastern between 
York and the north had for many years forty pounds iron rails. 
There was really little advantage gained in making a three feet 
six inches gauge line in point of cost as compared with the four 
feet eight anda-half inch. It has been shown that the seven feet. 
Great Western gauge in England only cost from seven to eight 
per cent. more to construct than the four feet eight and a-half 
inch gauge. The principal saving to be made by adopting the 
smaller gauge was in cuttings and embankments, and even there 
the narrow slice of earthwork saved amounted to very little. It 
has been shown by estimates made that for cuttings or embank- 
ments five feet deep the saving was 8-2 per cent., ten feet deep 
6:2 per cent., fifteen feet 5 per cent., twenty feet 4:2 per cent., 
and so on up to fifty feet when the reduction is little more than 
one per cent. The saving in land required did not exceed one 
quarter of an acre per mile of railway. With regard to the break 
of gauge objections, it was quite possible to transfer without much 
difficulty, the ordinary merchandise and passengers, which could be 
changed readily ; but, of course there was expense incurred in 
doing it. .The greatest difficulty experienced in South Australia 
was with live stock, the bullocks coming from the north were so 
wild that when once taken out of a truck at the break of gauge 
stations it was difficult to get them into another, and that could 
be only effected by damaging their value considerably through 
rough usage. To obviate this evil, bogie trucks with duplicate 
bogies to them, suitable for each gauge were built. At the break 
of gauge stations the bogies were changed and the cattle brought. 
down to Adelaide over the broad gauge without transhipping. 
The great objection often expressed to the three feet six inch. 
gauge arose from the fact that the limit of capacity and utility 
