vi. Cc. O. BURGE. 
2. Separation of rolling stock from repairing shops other than 
those situated on lines of its own gauge. 
3. Inconvenience arising from inability to transfer rolling stock 
of one gauge to the lines of another one in case of a temporary 
local pressure of traffic, 
4, Delay in transfer of troops and material in time of war. 
Now in the case of local branches of a main line, which it has 
been occasionally proposed, in Australia, to construct on a smaller 
gauge in view of apparent economy, all of these four evils would 
operate to a greater or less degree, but in the question now under 
consideration, where one large system on one gauge consisting of 
thousands of miles of lines, meets another of similar magnitude 
on another, transhipment and demurrage, as regards goods and live 
stock in time of peace, and delay in transfer of troops and material 
in time of war, would be much more important than the isolation 
of rolling stock. The cost of the latter, though impossible to put 
into figures, would be certainly appreciable, even in large systems, 
as its abolition would enable a temporary extra demand for trucks 
etc., at one locality to be satisfied, without limit as to direction, 
by a possible superfluity in another, but it is not likely that the 
whole area of a colony would be under pressure of this sort at 
one time, and if not, there would be generally sufficient area to 
draw from, without going outside of it. Apart from the military 
question, transhipment and demurrage, therefore, are the main 
evils arising from allowing the present breaks to remain. 
According to the official evidence given before the Victorian 
Committee of 1895 on narrow gauge railways, the average cost 
transhipment in South Australia is about four pence per ton, and 
taking the value of the time of delaying trucks of average loading 
while transhipment is going on, deduced from the evidence of the 
Victorian Locomotive Superintendent and Acting Commissioner 
of Railways, the demurrage will be about another fourpence per 
ton; adding another fourpence for extra shunting, isolation, et¢., 
we cannot be very far wrong in taking one shilling per ton trans 
