The General Time Convention led to the formation of the American Railway Association, consisting of the executive and operating officers of the railroads of the United States and Canada. The Association considers problems of railroad operation, construction and equipment, and recommends practices for their solution. Their investigations, conclusions and recommended practices embrace train operation, dispatching, block-signal operation, air-brake operation, physical and educational qualifications of employes, regulations for the transportation of dangerous articles, clearances, rail manufacture, safety appliances, inspection, car construction, track gauge, train heating and lighting, methods of loading, etc. Marked progress has been made in co-ordinating the work of the various organizations of railroad officers with the work of the Association, to secure the benefit of the broadest and most careful consideration of the subjects. Assurance, therefore, exists that the experience and knowledge of railway management and officers will be brought from time to time into the text and fact of standard practices, promoting convenience by close interline relationships and uniformity of regulation, and causing a uniform, systematic and careful regard for safety. BY WAY OF RECAPITULATION. So, to recapitulate: From a few miles of crude tramways the world has in a century built 500,000 miles of steam operated and 100,000 miles of electrically operated roads; instead of spragging the wheels we rely on the automatic high-speed brake; the coupling of cars has become an imitation of the action of human hands instead of risking their destruction; each train finds the condition of road ahead and protects itself by the agency of electric circuits and semaphores, the sequence of whose operation discloses on behalf of safety any obstruction of the route; four-wheel barrows are replaced by steel cars, larger than the miner's cabin, and carrying more than his month's output; instead of traveling on a tramway stage coach, the passenger finds available for his comfort a modern hotel on wheels, with every luxury known to-day--electrically lighted, steam heated, weather-proof; the old strap iron, which became detached and penetrated the car floor, frequently impinging passengers to the roof, is replaced by the bar of steel weighing 100 pounds to the yard, whose manufacture, installation and maintenance is prescribed with every degree of refinement known to the chemist and engineer; we have learned to treat sub-grade, drainage and ballast as an architectural science, and our bridges, from the single-log span, now make continuous roadbed for high-speed operation, even over the continental rivers.