Light Railways. 
663 
their actual cost, will appreciate the necessity for avoiding the 
recurrence of a similar state of affairs. The difficulty is as to 
what public authority should do the work. The State can hardly 
do it direct all over the country ; on the other hand, the local 
authorities have no experience in work of the kind, have no 
trained staff for the purpose, and would be constantly in diffi- 
culties at the point where one jurisdiction ended and another 
began. 
Assuming, then, that the disadvantages of construction by 
public authorities outweigh the advantages, the question arises, 
how best the work can be left in the hands of private enterprise, 
and yet the risk of what may be called “ financing ” avoided. 
In this matter, probably, we should do well to take a leaf out of 
the book of our neighbours in Belgium. In that country, as 
has already been stated, the power to construct a light line is 
almost invariably given to a single company, the Societe 
Nationale des Chemins-de-fer Vicinaux. In this company the 
Government and the local authorities of different parts of the 
kingdom are practically almost the only shareholders. There 
is no need that private persons should be excluded from a 
similar society in England. The point is, that if the thing is 
to be properly done it must be done by a large and responsible 
organisation, which, on the one hand, will possess the public 
confidence, and on the other hand will be able to command the 
services of first-class men, and to treat on terms of equality, 
both of position and knowledge, with great landowners and 
their solicitors, with the existing railway companies, and with 
the great firms of contractors. Of course there would be no 
need to exclude existing railway companies as promoters and 
constructors of light lines. At the same time they would, 
probably, as a rule prefer to stand aside and leave others to do 
the work, and it would, perhaps, be easier for the Board of 
Trade, in the case of light lines which were distinct enterprises 
from ordinary railways, to permit them the ample relaxations 
which we have shown to be necessary if they are to be made at all, 
than if they were in the hands of companies possessing an 
existing system of normal type. 
Turning from construction to working, the arguments 
against the task being undertaken by the State or the local 
authorities apply with tenfold greater strength in the latter 
case than in the former. Even in Prussia and Austria and 
Belgium, where the propriety of the State working the ordinary 
railways is almost an axiom, these light lines are regarded as 
fit only to be worked by private enterprise. But by what form 
of private enterprise is a difficult question. The Belgian National 
