Nor is the east coast of England to the north of London and right up to and beyond the old Scottish border difficult to bring into a single region. Three more or less parallel railways--the Great Central, the Great Northern, and the Great Eastern--occupy the eastern counties all the way up to York, 188 miles north of London, where the Northeastern has its real beginning and occupies the extreme northeastern corner of England as an absolute monopoly. This last line reaches within fifty-eight miles of Edinburgh. As a matter of operating convenience, however, its locomotives run all the way through to that ancient Scottish capital, traversing the final fifty-eight miles upon the rails of the North British company. Perhaps no better instance may be shown of the absurdly small typical English railway of to-day than to realize that within the 392 miles that lie between London and Edinburgh--no distance at all upon our American railroad map--the through fast expresses run upon three separate railways. The only condition we have that parallels and exceeds this is the operation of the Baltimore and Ohio's through trains from New York to Philadelphia, which traverse the rails of three roads--the Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley, and the Philadelphia and Reading--in the short ninety miles that intervene between Manhattan Island and the entrance to the B. & O.'s own rails. The British railroaders have long recognized the absurdity of the railway that is too short just as they are able to point the finger of fine scorn at our many railroads that are entirely too long. More than a decade ago these four roads of the eastern counties of England sought to anticipate the present grouping principle of the Railways Act by an amalgamation of their properties into a single, succinct regional railway property. The proposal was bitterly fought in Parliament and then defeated. Great Britain had not then become convinced of the extravagance of the competition principle in transportation. It was necessary to have a war to teach her that important economic lesson. * * * * * Almost as the northeastern corner of England is the undisputed principality of a single system so does a single railway, the Great Western, stretch alone directly west from London and almost completely dominates its territory. To bring it into regional grouping with any of the other important British railway systems has been well-nigh impossible. After a number of futile attempts the professional and amateur railroaders who have been attempting the solution of the regional plan for Great Britain have given up the idea. They have found that they could only combine the Great Western with the Cambrian and some other less important Welsh roads, and now they have let it go at that--a single well-developed region of some 3650 miles, well contained and, with the exception of a single long arm thrust up into Liverpool, fairly compact. * * * * *