VIII. Cc. O. BURGE. 
thirty-three miles, might be converted ; but there is very heavy 
work below Toowoomba and at the Little Liverpool Range, with 
numerous five chain curves, and the cost would be probably be 
over a million ; moreover, it would only be shifting the break to 
another place. Should this connection ever become worth the 
while on a uniform gauge, a better way would be to connect the 
colonies at Tweed Heads, the present Queensland lines running 
south from Brisbane being in easy country, and the New South 
Wales connections being partly already made, while the missing 
links in both colonies have been approved for their own sake 
independently of the gauge question, so far as to have reached the 
stage of survey and estimate. 
Mr. H. Stanley, Engineer-in-Chief for Queensland Railways, 
told me some years ago that he did all he could to persuade his 
Government to adopt the standard gauge, at all events south of 
Brisbane, in view of ultimate connection with the mother colony, 
but to no purpose. 
Coming to Victoria, the alteration would be much less costly 
per mile, but a complete scheme involves the alteration of no less 
than 3,122 miles, including the conversion of rolling stock, a great 
deal of which mileage, especially the Melbourne suburban system, 
which of course has necessarily a very large rolling stock, would 
gain very little by the change—the amount of this suburban roll- 
ing stock is a very serious factor in the question, and may be 
judged by the fact that in the Sydney suburban system, the rolling 
stock, according to the latest returns in which it is shown apart, 
cost about £30,000 per mile. Even taking a very low mileage 
cost for the conversion, including rolling stock, of the whole 3,122 
miles, it would take a border traffic of dimensions that could hardly 
be realized for many years to come, to save sufficient on tranship- 
ment and demurrage to pay the interest alone. And the same 
would apply to a greater degree if the four hundred and ninety 
miles in South Australia of 5’ 3” gauge were converted, and this 
would still leave the South Australian narrow gauge lines, 1,231 
