The average number of miles operated per working railway company in Scotland compared with England and Wales and Ireland, are:—­

Scotland 477
England and Wales 156
Ireland 121

and the mileage, capital, revenue, expenditure, interest and dividends for 1912, the latest year of which the figures, owing to the war, are published by the Board of Trade, are as follows:—­

Average rate
of interest
and dividend. 
Per cent. 
Miles.  Capital.  Revenue.  Expenditure. 
Pounds Pounds Pounds
England and Wales 16,223 1,103,310,000 110,499,000 70,499,000 3-58 Scotland 3,815 186,304,000 13,508,000 7,882,000 3-07 Ireland 3,403 45,349,000 4,545,000 2,842,000 3-83

The General Manager of the Glasgow and South-Western Railway and his office I have described, but I have not spoken, except in a general way, of the other principal officers, with whom, as Mr. Wainwright’s assistant, I came into close and intimate relationship.  They, alas! are no more.  I have outlived them all.  Each has played his part, and made, as we all must do, his exit from the stage of life.

Prominent amongst these officers was John Mathieson, Superintendent of the Line, who was only twenty-nine when appointed to that responsible post.  We became good friends.  He began work at the early age of thirteen, had grown up on the railway and at nineteen was a station master.  He was skilful in out-door railway work, and an adept in managing trains and traffic.  Ambitious and a bit touchy regarding his office, all was not always peace between his and other departments, particularly the goods manager’s.  The goods manager was not aggressive, and it was sometimes thought that Mathieson inclined to encroach upon his territory.  Often angry correspondence and sometimes angry discussion ensued.  Yet, take him for all in all, John Mathieson was a fine man with nothing small in his composition.  Soon his ambition was gratified.  In 1889 he was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Railways of Queensland; and after a few years occupation of that post was invited by the Victorian Government to the same position in connection with the railways of that important State.  In 1900 he left Australia and became General Manager of the Midland Railway; but his health unfortunately soon failed, and at the comparatively early age of sixty he died at Derby in the year 1906.  In his early days, on the Glasgow and South-Western, Mathieson was a hard fighter.  Those were the days when between the Scottish railway companies the keenest rivalry and the bitterest competition existed.  The Clearing House in London, where the railway representatives met periodically to discuss and arrange rates and fares and matters relating to traffic generally, was the scene of many a battle.  Men like James MacLaren