4

on less than 5,000 acres of forest. Consequently 5,000 acres offorest must be annually cleared of timber to provide sleepers forour lines of railway.”

A careful examination of the Permanent Way Accounts ofthe Railways of this Kingdom will show that the average expenseof renewal, exclusive of the ordinary maintenance of PermanentWay under its existing form of construction, is fully 100/. permile per annum, or 50/. per mile single, as applied to the totalgross mileage, 800,000/. per annum in the United Kingdom .

Taking the. cost of 100/. per mile for renewal, and sepa-rating it into its various elements, it will be found to be com-posed in about the following proportions : —

RailsSleepers ..ChairsFasteningsLabour ..

37 per cent.

45

6

7

5

55

55

55

55

£100

From this it will be seen that the two great elements ofcost are the wear of the rails and the destruction of the sleepers.It is obvious, therefore, that these are the two points to whichattention must be directed in any endeavour to reduce thisheavy rate of expenditure. Now, it has been shown by theresult of more, than 200 miles of Permanent Way in this country,and a much greater length abroad, that cast iron sleepers maybe substituted for wood with little increase of cost in construc-tion, and none in the labour of maintenance. The breakage ofsleepers, which was considered to be one of the main objectionsto the use of cast iron, is found in practice to be unimportant.The advantages of the use of cast iron have, in fact, been fullyestablished, and the chief question which the Permanent WayCompany considered to remain unsolved was the best form andconstruction of sleeper, so as to obtain the greatest amountof strength with a given weight of material.