In the former respect the English lines have been built with a solidity and a completeness not to be surpassed by the railways of any other country in the world. Even in sparsely populated districts where, under similar circumstances, the American or the Prussian railway engineer would lay down only such a line as would be adequate to the actual or prospective traffic, would give the passengers no platform, would provide little more than a shed for a railway station, and would expect the public to be content with a level crossing and look out for the trains, a British railway company is obliged to respect State requirements by laying down a line equal to the traffic of a busy urban centre, give the passengers such platforms as will enable them to enter or leave the trains without the slightest inconvenience, erect well-built and more or less commodious station buildings, and, it may be, arrange for bridges, viaducts or underground passages such as in other countries would be found only in centres having a substantial amount of traffic. Apart, in fact, from any question as to expenditure on {292}Parliamentary proceedings and on the acquiring of land, the cost simply of building the railway itself has, generally speaking, been far greater in this country than, under corresponding geographical and traffic conditions, has been the case elsewhere. Judging from the example of the Prussian State Railway administration it is extremely doubtful if, had the British railway system been constructed, owned and operated by the State, instead of being left to private enterprise, any responsible Chancellor of the Exchequer would have authorised so great a degree of expenditure, in the interests of an absolute perfection of construction under all possible conditions, as that which has been forced upon commercial companies dependent for their capital on the money they could raise from investors. Less scope for criticism is offered by the provision of the most complete of safety appliances in regard to signalling and other phases of railway operation. The desirability of reducing the risk of railway accidents to an absolute minimum is beyond the range of all possible dispute. Yet, as a matter of detail, the substantial cost of ensuring this all-important element of safety, no less than the exceptionally heavy outlay on the lines themselves, has helped still further to increase that capital expenditure a return on which is only to be secured by the investors from the revenue the companies can get from the railway users. When we look for the ultimate and combined results of the various conditions touched upon in this and the preceding chapter--excessive cost of land, abnormal expenditure on Parliamentary proceedings and various aspects of State policy and control--we find them in the fact that, whether or not the British railways are really the best in the world, they have certainly been the most costly.