Light Railways. 
655 
money for this line on the security of the county rate without 
being one penny out of pocket by the transaction. It is obvious 
also that a landowner whose estate the new line was to develop 
would be wise if, even without a guarantee, he took the price of 
the land required in shares paying at this rate. 
Of course, to assume that a railway ten miles long can be made 
in this country for 5,000L per mile and worked at a cost of 
under 71. per mile per week is a large assumption. It involves, 
let it be frankly confessed, a radical alteration in our existing 
ideas. Broadly speaking, it may be said that no railway can at 
this moment be built in England for less than 10,000Z. a mile, 
that is, double the capital that we are assuming to be sufficient 
for the new lines. But the same might be said in any 
other country of main-line railways, and railways of main-line 
standard are the only lines that hitherto have been recognised 
by Parliament and the Board of Trade as possible in this coun- 
try. In every other country it is admitted that, just as there 
are county roads and parish roads and occupation roads, and 
each of them has a different standard of construction and main- 
tenance, so there should be main-line railways and branch rail- 
ways and light railways, and the standard of construction must 
differ fundamentally for the three classes. Our Board of Trade — - 
and I am far from blaming the Board of Trade, for it has only acted 
as a mouthpiece of a practically unanimous public opinion — has 
hitherto insisted on the same standard of requirements through- 
out, whether it be on the main line of the North Western be- 
tween London and Rugby, or on a petty local branch with four 
or six trains a day in Cornwall, or Caithness, or Cardigan. 
Foreign Governments — and foreign Governments have always 
interfered in the construction and working of railways with a 
minuteness and constancy to which we are quite unaccustomed — 
would as soon think of enforcing block working and interlocking 
of signals and the use of continuous automatic brakes on lines such 
as the Ravenglass and Eskdale, or the Looe and Liskeard, as the 
Little Pedlington Highway Board would think of paving its 
parish roads with jarrah-wood blocks laid on six inches of con- 
crete because this has been found most suitable for the traffic of 
Piccadilly. 
The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society is not the 
place to discuss technical details of railway construction or rail- 
way operation, but it may be well to give in outline a sketch of 
what is meant abroad by a light railway, in order that English 
agriculturists may understand the class of railway which alone 
can be built and worked at a paying price, and which they must 
be content to put up with if they want to have a railway at all. 
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