At this stage the financial difficulties of the Dominican government induced the Belgians to sell their rights to American interests, which formed the San Domingo Improvement Company to take them over. American engineers accordingly finished the road to Santiago. The rack-rail feature being undesirable, plans were made for the construction of the road as an adhesion road. No further rack-rail was built and one of the portions constructed was converted, but two short stretches of rack-rail remained near Puerto Plata, one of one mile and another of three miles. The Central Dominican Railway Company was incorporated for the operation of the road. During the controversy later carried on between the Dominican government and the San Domingo Improvement Company the Company contended that the road had cost in the neighborhood of $3,000,000, or about $600,000 in excess of the sums realized by the sale of the bonds assigned by the government to defray the cost of construction. The dispute found its settlement in the protocol of January 31, 1903, by which the Dominican government agreed to purchase all the holdings of the Improvement Company. In the negotiations of which this convention was an incident, the value of the railroad was generally estimated at $1,500,000. Upon the delivery by the Dominican government of the cash and bonds agreed upon by the settlement of 1907 as the price of the Improvement Company's interests, the Company, in February, 1908, turned over the railroad to the government. It has since been operated by the Dominican government with satisfactory results, though it has suffered serious injury from revolutions. The insurgents destroyed bridges and the rack-rail; the latter has not been replaced, and the four and ten per cent grades are now laboriously overcome by means of Shay geared engines. Surveys show that the troublesome grades can be avoided by the construction of curves which will increase the length of the road by not more than three or four miles.