88 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
"The South Devon Band enlivened the scene with its choicest 
airs ; but unhappily the weather was unfavourable, which drove 
many away ere the departure of the procession through the 
tunnel could be arranged. A long file of cars partly laden with 
granite, and partly with stewards and other individuals, accom- 
panied by the band, and ornamented with flags, after the breakfast 
set off for Plymouth, on their arrival at which place they were 
heartily greeted by the huzzas of a large concourse of people, 
anxiously waiting their arrival, being saluted on their way by 
some petards at Hoo Meavy, and attended throughout the 
progress by a numerous cavalcade on horse and foot. 
" About fifty gentlemen then sat down to a handsome dinner 
at the Eoyal Hotel, who did not separate until a late hour." 
In the same paper are also notices of a last and final call of 
10 per cent, per share, signed by William Burt, clerk to the 
Company, and also a notice of a general meeting of proprietors of 
the Plymouth and Dartmoor Company, signed : Morley, Masseh 
Lopes, Edmund Lockyer, William Elford, and John Pridham. 
The line, as originally laid, consisted of parabolic edge-rails 2 
set in cast-iron chairs, and these fastened down to stones averaging 
2 ft. 6 in. long by 1 ft. 6 in. wide, and of varying depths. Some 
of these rails had lap-joints, and others butt-joints ; two different 
forms of chairs being used to suit the different joints. The gauge 
of the line was 4 ft. 6 in. 
Short sidings, and other portions not subjected to much wear, 
were laid in granite stones, averaging four feet long by one foot 
broad. These stones were arranged differently to those used at 
Heytor. The wheels ran on them precisely as on the iron rails, the 
inner edges of the granite being dressed to take them, and the outer 
portion of the stone being rough-picked to below the level of the 
dressed portion, forming in fact a granite in place of an iron rail. 
The points and crossings were made in cast-iron, and the one 
feature noticeable is that the crossings had a movable tongue 
1 ft. 5 in. long, similar to the points. 
2 With reference to these cast-iron edge-rails, I may mention as a curious 
fact, that in excavating in the fourth cylinder for the new Laira Bridge, on 
the Plymouth and Dartmoor Extension Railway, one of these rails was 
brought up from the bed of the Laira. The depth to which it had sunk 
below the surface of the mud could not be ascertained ; but owing to the 
hard layer of clay and stones which Mr. Rendel placed over that portion 
of the river, it was probably lying very near the surface. 
