According to an article in the Jubilee (1914) number of the Railway News, by Mr. Welby Everard, up to the end of the year 1912 (since the outbreak of the war figures are not obtainable) a total of 645 applications (including 111 applications for amending Orders) were made to the Commissioners, the total mileage represented being 4,861 miles.  Of these applications 418 were passed, comprising 2,115 miles, of which, 1,415 miles were in class A, i.e. light railways to be constructed on land acquired or “cross-country” lines, that is to say, lines which legitimately fulfilled the purposes of the Act.  But, up to October, 1913, only 45 of these lines, with a total length of 441 miles, had been constructed and opened for traffic.  The number of applications to the Commissioners seemed to show a considerable demand for greater facilities for transit in rural districts, but capital apparently was slow to respond to that demand.  Perhaps it will be different now, in these days of change and reconstruction.  The Government is pledged to tackle the whole question of Transport, and Light Railways will, of course, not be overlooked, though Motor Traction will run them a close race.

For ten years I had now been manager of the Midland Great Western Railway, and busy and interesting years they were.  In that period Irish railways, considering that the population of the country was diminishing, had made remarkable progress, and effected astonishing improvements.  Whilst the population of England during the decade had increased by 9.13 per cent., and Scotland by 4.69, that of Ireland had decreased by 4.29 per cent!  Yet, notwithstanding this, the railway traffic in Ireland, measured by receipts, had increased by 22 per cent., against England 31 and Scotland 36.  In the number of passengers carried the increase in Ireland was 29 per cent.  In the same period the increase in the number of engines and vehicles in Ireland was 22, in England 30, and Scotland 33 per cent., whilst the number of train miles run (which is the real measure of the usefulness of railways to the public) had advanced 27 per cent. in Ireland, compared with 28 in England, and 30 in Scotland.

These figures indicate what Irish railways had accomplished in the decade ending with December, 1900, and betoken, I venture to affirm, a keen spirit of enterprise.  These ten years had witnessed the introduction of breakfast and dining cars on the trains, of parlour cars, long bogie corridor carriages, the lighting of carriages by electricity, the building of railway hotels in tourist districts, the establishment of numerous coach and steamboat tours, the quickening of tourist traffic generally, the adoption of larger locomotives of greatly increased power, the acceleration of the train service, the laying of heavier and smoother permanent way, and a widespread extension of cheap fares—­tourist, excursion, week-end, etc.  It was a period of great activity and progress in