The average cost of those already completed scarcely exceeds £8,500 a mile,[8] including carriages and buildings. The most expensive line was that from Louvain to Tirlemont, which, including the tunnel I have mentioned, cost £11,661 a mile, and the cheapest, that from Dendermonde to Mechlin, which, as the level surface of the ground had barely to be disturbed for laying down the rails, cost only £4,583. This, however, is for single lines of rails; that alone from Brussels to Antwerp being yet laid with double, though all have been constructed with a view to their ultimate adoption. The line now in progress from Liege to Verviers, passing, as it does, through a most unequal and hilly country in the vicinity of the Vesdre, will, I imagine, from the numerous embankments and cuttings through rocks, be the most costly yet attempted. The natural facility of the ground, and the consequent simplicity of the work, led to one result very different from our experience in England;--the actual costs of the works, even on the most difficult sections, have not exceeded the estimates by more than eight per cent. In England, the least expensive line yet opened has cost £10,000 a mile, (in Ireland one has been completed, from Belfast to Lisburn, for less than £7000), but others have cost upwards of £40,000; and the average of forty-five lines, for which bills were passed in 1836 and 1837, was upwards of £17,500 a mile _on the estimate_, which may have fallen much below the actual outlay subsequently. But, besides the mere facilities of the country; other causes have contributed to render the expenses in Belgium infinitely lower than those of Great Britain; in the former, there were no committees of the House of Commons to enable the solicitors’ bills to mount to 70 and £80,000 for expenses of obtaining an act, as was the case on the instances of the London and Birmingham line, and that of the Great Western; nor were there rich demesnes and parks to be preserved, whose proprietors were to receive the _prætium affectionis_ in compensation for the damages; nor towns to be entered in search of termini, where whole streets of houses and acres of building ground were to be purchased up, at an expense that would prove ruinous to any but the joint-stock capital of a railroad. Their engineers too were enabled to avoid the expense, whilst they profited by the success of the experiments in every stage which were making in England--experiments which were even more costly when they failed.