For freight service bituminous coal is decidedly the best, and perhaps might not be out of place on short local passenger trains; but the company that provides hard-coal-burning engines for passenger trains, and soft-coal burners for freight, does about the right thing, and economizes as far as practicable in this particular. In making contracts for this important commodity the necessity of careful tests in advance is very apparent, and such trials are generally left with the best engineers and firemen; otherwise it might be difficult to get at all the qualifications. On some roads inducements offered to firemen have brought the consumption of fuel down to the most economical point, and it is surprising how much depends upon their good judgment in this matter. Now that heating cars direct from the engines is coming into general use, and State legislatures have given the subject their consideration, the consumption of the domestic sizes of coal as fuel in cars is growing less; but this, too, is still a very important matter. Stationery is not only a very significant item, but also an expensive one. This includes all the forms and blanks used in the conduct of the freight and passenger business, and there is an endless variety of them--the inks, pens, pencils, mucilage, sealing-wax, and envelopes, besides many other odds and ends. Perhaps the envelopes represent one of the largest single items of expense in this line. The hundreds of thousands of them used in the course of a year, even at low prices, mean an outlay of many thousands of dollars. Agents must send in daily reports, there must be covers for all the correspondence passing between the different departments, while the daily average amount of outside correspondence is very considerable. It is surprising how many dollars might be saved in this direction, not only by a judicious contract, but by a careful use of the supply. When a railroad company takes up the question of time-tables, it has a matter of importance to handle which on many roads receives very little consideration. When the passenger traffic is heavy, the number of travellers during the year running into the millions, the demand for time-tables is very large. This refers directly to the time-table sheets or folders, which every company must keep on hand at its stations, and in other public places and hotels, for the convenience of the traveller, in addition to the printed schedules which are framed and hung up conspicuously on the walls of its waiting-rooms. A neat and attractive folder for general circulation is very desirable, particularly if competition is very strong. There is more virtue in a neatly made up schedule of trains than one would suppose. One in doubt is apt to reason that the road is kept up in a corresponding condition, and that the trains are made up on the same plan, and consequently would prefer to go by that route rather than by one whose trains were advertised on cheap leaflets.