XXII. C. 0. BURGE. 



THE NARROW GAUGE AS APPLIED TO BRANCH 

 RAILWAYS IN NEW SOUTH WALES. 



By C. O. BURGE, M. Inst. C. E. 



[Read before the Engineering Section of the Royal Society of N. S. Wales, 

 June 15, 1898.] 



On December 21st, 1892, the writer read a paper (Vol. XXYII , 

 Journal Royal Society, N.S.W.), on " Light Railways for New 

 South Wales," and in this, and in the discussion it evoked, there 

 were four considerations mentioned as objections to break of 

 gauge at branches, viz. : — 



1 . Transhipment, and demurrage caused thereby. 



2. Closing the branch as an asylum for old rolling stock. 



3. Inability to draw upon the general system for extra rolling 



stock, to suit occasional excess of traffic, and hence 

 the necessity of providing otherwise useless reserves. 



4. Isolation as regards repairs to engines and vehicles. 



It is now proposed to consider the applicability of a narrow 

 gauge to the character of the goods and passenger traffic, to be 

 dealt with, in this colony, by branch lines, independently of the 

 question of the break. 



This gauge question should be approached, not from the stand- 

 point of those who, on the one hand, consider the question 

 settled, from the fact of many important colonies and countries 

 having, with their own requirements in view, adopted a par- 

 ticular gauge, or of those who are interested, financially, in 

 narrow gauge material ; nor, on the other hand, of those holding 

 tnat worst phase of conservatism, which thinks that what it has 

 been accustomed to see working successfully in the past, must 

 necessarily be the best in the future. It should be considered 

 rather by the more cold-blooded method of figures, used by those 

 who have had experience in both systems, and in the application 

 of such figures to the particular case under view. Much of the 

 evidence given before the Victorian Committee on this subject 



