Rolling Stock Yesterday and To-day.

Stout permanent-way and efficient maintenance has added enormously to the comfort of the traveller, but the modern rolling-stock designer and builder also deserves praise in this connection. In a corner of the Science Museum at South Kensington, London, there are to be seen enlightening exhibits of the railway pioneering days, when what to us moderns look little better than glorified horse-boxes did duty for first-class passenger carriages. We have certainly progressed somewhat since those roughand-tumble times, and George Stephenson and his enthusiastic fellow-workers would rightly marvel at the comfort, nay luxury, of the presentday railway rolling-stock.

The four group railways of Britain own something like 48,000 passenger carriages, having a seating capacity of 2,670,000, and including 550 restaurant, 250 sleeping, and 300 Pullman cars. Improved passenger stock has increased the weight of trains from 4 cwts. to 12 cwts. per passenger; and while an ordinary local compartment train with a tare weight of 300 tons will seat 800 persons, a luxurious main-line train of the same length will accommodate only about 360 passengers. Almost all British passenger carriages are of bogie design, and in several instances the articulated arrangement is employed with success. Across the Channel, four-wheeled and six-wheeled stock is still being constructed. There is a good deal of argument as to the relative merits of the saloon and the compartment type of vehicle. In the main, saloon travel seems best fitted for long-distance work, and compartment stock for short-distance and suburban operation.