_Office Inspection as a Check on Field Work._—The office inspection furnished many valuable data for checking the judgment of the field men. For example, the number of cubic yards of excavation and embankment on probably the greater part of the mileage had to be secured by the field inspectors, either because the records had not been kept or the changes of line and grade had been so extensive as to destroy their reliability. Every field inspector, therefore, made his own estimate of the yardage of pay earth. The office inspection reports, however, gave reliable data (from profiles or original contract estimate files) of the actual yardage on possibly 2000 or 3000 miles of line, so widely scattered that it constituted a check on the work of a majority of the field men. This work of office inspection disclosed the following points, which will be practically common to all large valuation jobs: (_a_) There was no uniformity of method in the keeping of records of permanent way and structures; (_b_) There was a vast amount of carelessness in keeping records up to date, even on the larger roads; (_c_) The smaller roads, not only had little or nothing in the way of records, but had in many cases no department with employees qualified to make or keep such records; (_d_) The purchase of new equipment, the construction of new buildings and bridges, and the destruction, sale, or removal of old property, create a condition of continuous change which is seldom recorded by either operating or accounting officials, and makes book inventories derived from the roads of very doubtful value for use in an appraisal. _Field Inspection._—The decision had been reached, after careful discussion, not to permit the field inspectors to place a money value on any structure, but to examine it, make a full description of it in all particulars, and assign to it a percentage which should represent the present value, or the depreciation from a similar new structure rated at 100 per cent.