improved the conditions of operation, as the figures indicate. It will be noted that the figures for the American roads above given represent averages. These are compounded from local and through traffic taken together. It is apparent at once that local trains must average far lighter loads than are customary upon long hauls without breaking bulk. Thus New England railroads report for 1906 an average trainload of only 220 tons, while other parts of the country, such as the North Central group, report 426 tons of paying load. Only by separation of local from through business can we adequately appreciate the enormous advances which have taken place in railroad operation in the United States, with corresponding reductions in the cost of transportation. While the New York Central at one time reported an average trainload of 322 tons, the average load of its through trains on the main line rose as high as 750 tons. More than twice this figure is attained upon the Pittsburg, Bessemer & Lake Erie road in hauling ore from the lakes to the furnaces at Pittsburg. The Illinois Central, for its low grade and long haul to the Gulf, has recently built locomotives capable of hauling 2,000 tons of net paying load. A standard grain train on the Lake Shore in 1903 consisted of fifty cars holding forty tons each. Even this figure has recently been surpassed by the New York Central, which, with its monster new "mogul" engines, hauls eighty loaded 30-ton cars, giving 2,400 tons of revenue freight. The Mallet locomotives with a tractive effort of 100,000 lbs., at present seem to have reached the limit of size and weight. Seventy-five grain cars holding 1,000 bushels apiece are equivalent to the production of twenty bushels per acre of an area of six square miles. This is an ordinary trainload. It is not infrequent to transport a fifth more than this. Eighty and even one hundred cars in a train since 1900 often bring the load up to 3,600 and even 4,000 tons of freight. Such a train is over four-fifths of a mile long. From these figures it certainly appears that trainloads for long haul are standardized at not less than 2,000 tons, a figure which would have seemed absolutely impossible to railroad managers of fifteen or twenty years ago. The maximum trainload in Germany on coal traffic, which, of course, greatly exceeds any general average for trains of all classes, is about five hundred tons. It has been regarded as a notable achievement that this represents an increase of about one hundred tons in the last decade.