Immediately after the passing of the Act of 1888 the railway companies vigorously attacked the work imposed upon them.  A special meeting on the subject was held at the Irish Railway Clearing House in Dublin for the purpose of preparing a revised Classification and Schedule of Rates.  This was a rare opportunity for me and I eagerly availed myself of it.  Before I left Glasgow it will be remembered I had been entrusted with an examination of the statutory charging powers of the Glasgow and South-Western company, and with the drawing up of a suggested scale of maximum rates.  No similar work had yet been done in Ireland, and it was altogether new to the Irish companies.  I produced copies of the statements which I had prepared in Glasgow, and they served as a basis for what had to be done, saved much time and trouble and gained for me no little kudos.  But more than this resulted.  As I have hinted before, and as will hereafter appear, this bit of Glasgow work led to my promotion to a greater charge than the busy little County Down, which though I loved it well, I had begun to feel I was now outgrowing.  Many other meetings at the Clearing House followed in which I took part with increasing confidence, and in which Walter Bailey also prominently figured.  He and I were hand and glove.  Cotton, who soon discovered that Bailey was an authority on the subject, as indeed he was on most railway matters, was not slow to profit by his knowledge and ability.  He brought him to all our meetings, and valuable was the help that Bailey gave.

In 1889 there came into operation the Regulation of Railways Act.  It invested the Board of Trade with power to order any company to adopt block working, to interlock all points and signals, and to use on all trains carrying passengers automatic continuous brakes.  Before issuing the order the Board consented to hear any representations which the railways desired to make.  The smaller companies, upon which the expenditure involved would press very hardly, and the circumstances of whose traffic seemed scarcely to require the same elaborate precautions for safety in working as the bigger and more crowded systems, banded together and waited on the Board of Trade.  Upon me devolved the duty of presenting the case for the smaller Irish companies, and upon Conacher, of the Cambrian, for the smaller English lines.  How finely Conacher spoke I well remember.  He had an excellent voice, possessed in a high degree the gift of concise and forcible expression, and his every word told.  But our eloquence accomplished little—­some small modification regarding mixed trains, and that was all.  Many of the lines in Ireland serving districts where population is scanty, traffic meagre, and trains consequently infrequent, could well have been spared the costly outlay which the Act involved.  Three or four trains each way per day represent the train service on many of these small railways, and some of the sections of the larger