12 
MAGAZINE OF SCIENCE AND ART. 
Name* of Places 
to and from which 
Traffic tahes place 
Warialda to Malt 
land .. 
Melbourne. to 
•Moulraein 
Wollombito Mait¬ 
land .. 
Maitland to \Vol 
lombi.. 
]\f ns well brook to 
Maitland . 
Maitland to Mas 
well brook ..... 
Bray ton to Ipswich 
I pswich to I) ray ton 
ricton to Sydney 
Svdnov to Pieton 
Liverpool to Syd¬ 
ney ...... 
Sydney to Liver 
pool.. 
1> errim a toSy dney 
Sydney toBerr 
© rj 
«J Zj 
O — 
5 o 
j? rj 
£ 
Cost of 
Transport 
per ton. 
Cost of Trans¬ 
port per ton 
per mile. 
^so. of 
tons 
con¬ 
veyed 
mile 
300 
£12 to £l i 
9£d to 11 Jd 
270 
200 
£18 
Is 5d 
120 
40 
£2 
Is 
40 
£2 Os Gd 
Is Id 
20.9 
TO 
£3 to £7 
1014 to 3* 
70 
£6 
Is 8}il 
5G4 
75 
12s. per hale 
90s per ton 
Is 3d 
£7 
2s 
2500 
£4 
Is 7d 
353 
50 
£4 
Is 7d 
SCO 
20 
£2 
2s 
2200 
20 
£2 
2s 
8000 
84 
£4 to £ 
Is to Is 3d 
560 
84 
£0 
2s Id 
318 
Were the cost of conveyance per ton per mile upon a rail 
road the same as in England, the saving would he at least 
00 per cent. It will be safer, however, to take the actual 
charge upon the Parramatta railroad, which is sixpence 
of the richest description. Take, for instance, a farm of 
100 acres, at 100 miles from a market, and assume the 
produce available for sale to be 800 bushels of grain of 
some sort. This, which would weigh about 20 tons, 
would, at the rate of 2s. per ton per mile, cost for trans¬ 
port onlv, £200, or5s. per bushel ; and the farmer would, 
of course, be utterly unable to compote with the foreign 
producer. Even tbo farmer in Michigan, who lias to 
bring his grain, or the flour produced from it, a distance 
of nearly 2000 miles to New York, and from thence 
12,000 or 14,000 miles by sea to New'South Wales, would 
he’able to undersell a farmer living not more than 100 
miles from Sydney, whose onlv communication is 
by the ordinary roads of die colony. Put, however, 
the farmer within a few miles ot a railway, and 
everything is reversed: his produce is conveyed to 
Sydney for £50 instead of £200, or for Is. 34. per bushel 
instead of 5s. He is therefore in a position to undersell 
the foreign producer, and a market being insured for the 
produce of his farm, the land in the neighbourhood 
assumes a value proportionate to its quality; and a rise in 
the price of land of from 300 to 400 per cent, may fairly 
be expected; * 
With regard, however, to these calculations as to tho 
amount of indirect tenejil ♦ it wild be seen that they are 
based upon the assumption that the cost of transport unon 
tho rail road will be Gd. per ton per mile. It is true that 
this is the charge at present on tho Parramatta Hallway, 
lint it is to be observed that, out of this sum of Gd., the 
Government receives upwards of 2hl. as interest of 
capital. If, then, the charge for transport were reduced 
by this amount, the benefit to the community would he 
enhanced to an equal, it not, to a greater extent, b\ the 
stimulus given to production, and the increase to the 
per ten per mile, as a measure of the probable future value of property. 
charge throughout the colony, and in this case tho saving | The inference which I am disposed to draw from what 
As an instance of the actual amount 
willmc 75 per cent, 
of benefit conferred upon a particular locality, the returns 
from Campbell town may be taken : — Cainpoelltown is 
about thirty-three miles from Sydney, upon a road to 
which a good deal of attention has been paid. The return 
states the actual amount of traffic backwards and forwards 
to be about 8700 tons per annum, and tho average cost to 
he two shillings per ton per mile, or £28,710 per annum 
as tho whole charge for transport. Now* by railway, at 
sixpence per ton per mile, the whole charge would amount 
to £7177 ; and the difference between tins and ‘the former 
amount of £28J10, or £21,533 per annum, is but a por¬ 
tion of the indirect benefit conferred upon this district by 
the substitution of a railway for a turnpike road— 1 say 
but a portion : for, in tho first place, I have made no al¬ 
lowance for the saving of money and time to the passengers 
on the road: I have not calculated on the increased 
amount of traffic, which will most assuredly he the result 
of the introduction of railway communication ; neither 
have I taken the increased value given to property into 
consideration, 1 have merely taken the present amount 
of goods* traffic, and have shown that the saving in the 
cost of transporting it for a distance of 33 miles amounts 
to upwards of £21,000 per annum— a sum which, at six 
per cent., represents a capital of upw ards of £350,000. 
As, then, tlio present cost of transport in this colony far 
exceeds that by turnpike roads in England, the saving to 
the inhabitants by the introduction of railways will be 
larger in proportion than in England. I am not in pos¬ 
session of any data which Could enable me to form an 
opinion as to the number of passengers, or the probable 
charge for their conveyance; but it is evident that the 
same reasoning wall apply to these as to passengers in 
England, and that the saving of time, owing to the rapi¬ 
dity and certainty of conveyance by railway, wall be 
relatively as great. 
The next question for consideration in forming an esti¬ 
mate of the indirect benefit resulting from railway com¬ 
munication is the increase in the value of property. 
In many parts of tho colony, the land, of which the 
Government is in the possession, thirty-nine fortieths is 
unsaleable. The distance from a market, and the enor¬ 
mous cost of transport, would render land at a distance of 
100 miles from Sydney, almost valueless, even were it 
I have here stated is, that in undertaking the construction 
of railways by the Government upon a large scale, it 
would perhaps be wise to relinquish altogether the idea of 
obtaining anv direct benefit from them in the shape of in¬ 
terest of capital, and to be content with the indirect 
returns accruing from the saving in the cost ot transport, 
and the increase in the values of property. With regard 
to tho former, it would give evidence of its existence in 
the general development of business ot every kind ; but 
the latter would assume a tangible shape, and would pour 
more money into the Treasury than would compensate for 
the capital* sunk in constructing the railway. If, tor in¬ 
stance, the Government, being the owner of 200 millions 
of acres of land, were to sink the value of one-fourth of 
this in the construction of railways, by which the value of 
the remaining three-fourths would he doubled, the actual 
monev “profit to the colony by tlu* transaction would ho 
equivalent to the present value of 150 millions of acres of 
land, irrespective of all other advantages. 
In advocating a large outlay ujKjn the railways as the 
only mode by which this colony can ever be made capable 
of supporting a dense population, and therefore as the 
only means'hy which it can be made prosperous and 
powerful, I must not he understood as pledging myself to 
the adoption of any particular scheme. It is a matter of 
comparative unimportance, whether w e adopt the wide or 
the narrow gauge. I do not think it is necessary, under 
our present circumstances, to insist upon uniformity of 
gauge as a matter of necessity, although it would, I 
admit, he desirable to establish some uniform system. 
What we do require is, the railway or tramway (for in 
principle they arc identical); that is, the hard uniform, 
and comparatively level surface upon which carriages can 
ron without much friction or resistance. The nature ot 
the road is altogether independent of the power which is 
to he used to transport goods and passengers upon it. 
This may either be steam or animal power, the character 
being determined by the nature and amount ot the traffic 
on the road, or bv peculiar consideration which may make 
it more economical to use one kind of power than another. 
It is true that, in the consideration of any particular 
scheme, the description of power to be employed must 
have much influence upon the details, but a railway is 
still a railway, though the carriages are drawn by horses, 
