June r, 1895.] THE TROPICAL 
803 
on the character of the motor, the equipment, the 
gauge and gradients, or the road-bed, which shall 
not exclude some installations intended to be 
included, and vice versa. The only distinction 
of any utility is that drawn by the French 
Parliamentary Kail way Commission between 
rail-tracks laid on the common highway with 
trains which set down and take up on call at 
any point, and rail-tracks laid on a separate 
road bed with trains which stop only at fixed 
points ; the former may be distinguished as 
tramways, the latter as railways. 
But the distinction is at the risk of a con- 
fusion of thought which may have, has had, 
foolish and mischievous issues. For example : a 
certain public body invited plans for a light 
railway. Before it could be put in hand an 
election changed the Boaid's personnel and 
policy. The newcomers were red-hot for tram- 
ways, and after a struggle prolonged over two 
years the plans for the light railway were 
rejected in favour of a steam-tramway, and 
plans were again called for. The linn whose de- 
signs were accepted sent in for the tramway what 
they had sent in for the light railway, with very 
little beyond verbal alterations ! 
Premising that in what we have to say the 
term " Railway," unless explicitly used in the 
narrower sense, is to be read as including 
"Tramway," we pass on to the prime question of 
COST. 
A mistake continually made by districts agita- 
ting for a railway is to begin by calling in the 
engineer to advise them as to what it will cost 
before they have ascertained how much they can 
afford to spend. There is no fixed price for a 
railway, any more than there is for an estate or a 
dinner a la ccvrte. You pay according to your order 
—anything from say £1,200 a mile up to £30,000. 
The first and fundamental consideration in 
every railway project (unless the State is to 
carry it out, and then quite other considerations 
come into play) is what can you afford to 
spend. This ascertained, you may then, and not 
until then, invite the Engineers to submit plans 
and estimates for the best railway they can de- 
vise for the money. 
What you can afford to spend is not difficult 
to arrive at. It depends, of course, on the traffic 
"in sight," on the tariff, and on the cost of 
working and maintaining the railway. If, how- 
ever, it is to be built against guarantee or sub- 
sidy, instead of on traffic estimates, the problem 
is altered to this extent, that the forecast of 
-.traffic by which the grant-in-aid is to be justi- 
fied, and to which it will in some measure be 
proportioned; takes into account not only the 
volume "in sight," but also the increment which 
the railway will itself bring. This increment in 
the case of virgin areas is according to a law 
which holds (food the world orcr, i\amcly that a 
railway into a new district susceptible of deve- 
lopment will, within certain limits, double its 
traffic rrrri/ five years, 
Little remark is called for as to the methods 
and means of compiling 
TRAFFIC ESTIMATES. 
There are no lixed rules beyond the obvious 
one that nothing is to be taken into account 
except the avouched incomings and outgoings of 
the district. 
A good business head keeping in view the 
purpose for which the estimates are needed, and 
not given to ".embroidery" is better than a 
hooktul of " hints and cautious," a* witness the 
Report of the Kelani Valley Railway Commission. 
The datum over which there will be most 
difficulty, yet the first required, is the area 
which the projected line will serve — not merely 
its extent, but also its boundaries. It is good 
practice to indicate the beneficiary area on a 
large scale map, tinting in the distribution of 
population according to distance from railway, and 
marking graphically the position and traffic-contri- 
bution of al. factories, estates, and local markets, 
together with the point on the railway at which 
they would connect with it. 
LIGHT HAJLWAYS, — 
And we are concerned only with such — are for 
the most part either ' spurs ' from existing lines 
to which they serve as ' feeders,' or they are 
what the French appropriately "call chemins de 
fcr d'interet local," running in to a large cen- 
tre of population or to a port. In projects of 
this class the existing traffic, being already 
marshalled along lixed routes and subjected to 
some sort of official tally, may lie estimated 
with a close approach to accuracy, at the same 
time that the promoters' statements are secured 
the countenance of official figures. And since 
the English Directors' Liability Act of 1890 the 
most carefully compiled estimates are of no avail 
without disinterested and authoritative confirma- 
tion. 
The preliguration of passenger traffic is more 
difficult and less trustworthy than in the case of 
goods. There are two kinds of passengers : he who 
travels because he must ami he who travels 
because he may ; the one would go by road if 
there were no rail, and the other is induced to 
go when he might stay, because the rail renders 
cheap and pleasant a journey which otherwise 
would be arduous and expensive. Passenger 
traffic "in sight" consists almost exclusively of 
the former kind ; the latter, generally the largre 
in volume, does not come into existence until 
after the railway is built, and is therefore over- 
looked in the preliminary estimates. 
The volume of passenger traffic is doubtless an 
expression of (1) the volume of freight, (2) the 
distribution of the population with regard to the 
line, (3) the itinerancy of the people; and attempts 
have been made to devise some formula by which 
from these factors to calculate it. But arith- 
metic of this kind has only an academic interest, 
and would effectually repel any plain business 
man asked to invest on the strength of it. If how- 
ever in a country in which a "new railway is 
projected, the existing railways have established 
a measure of the coaching value per head of 
population that measure may fairly lie invoked 
by the promoters in drawing up tlieir estimates 
of traffic. Thus in Ceylon the coaching value 
per head of population is 41 cents of a rupee, say 
sixpence, and this notwithstanding that she has 
only 9 miles of railway per H'O.imm) inhabitants 
and a fraction over 10 miles per 1,000 square 
miles of area. Compare with these the corres- 
ponding figures of Cape Colony ■ (in which for 
railway purposes the Orange Free State is in- 
cluded): there, with 12S miles of railwaj per 
100,000 inhabitants and 8 miles per 1,000 square 
miles of area, the coaching value per head of 
population is under live-pence. But to appreciate 
THE VERY HIGH COACHING VALUE OF THE 
SINHALESE 
we must carry theinvestigation alittleforther. In the 
first place, we are to remember that the freer spend- 
ing white man constitute- in Ceylon only 1 -600th 
of the population, but in t 'ape Colony no less than 
\rd. Or put the difference this way : the Ceylon 
Government Railways have 22 whites per mile. 
