A word or two regarding the railway system of Scotland may not be inappropriate. Scotland has eight _working_ railway companies, England and Wales 104, and Ireland 28. These include light railways, but are exclusive of all railways, light or ordinary, that are worked not by themselves but by other companies. Scotland has exhibited her usual good sense, her canny, thrifty way, by keeping the number of _operating_ railway companies within such moderate bounds. Ireland does not show so well, and England relatively is almost as bad as Ireland, yet England might well have shown the path of prudence to her poorer sister by greater adventure herself in the sensible domain of railway amalgamation. Much undeserved censure has been heaped upon the Irish lines; sins have been assumed from which they are free, and their virtues have ever been ignored. John Bright once said that "Railways have rendered more service and received less gratitude than any institution in the land." This is certainly true of Ireland, for nothing has ever conferred such benefit upon that country as its railways, and nothing, except perhaps the Government, has received so much abuse. On this I shall have more to say when I reach the period of the Vice-Regal Commission on Irish Railways, appointed in 1906. 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.