There is every indication that even what may be termed a fourth-rank type of railway is destined to play a very important part in the industrial enterprises of many countries, and that in the form of little lines, made to any convenient gauge, and laid either along public roads or open country, or both, the produce from isolated manufactories, forests, quarries, and large farms will be conveyed to 350 the nearest railway stations with greater facility and at much less expense than by carting along the public highway. Such little lines are available in places where the most sanguine promoter would hesitate to suggest an ordinary railway, and may be found to supply what is felt to be the missing link in the economical transport of a long list of materials of everyday use. As they would be almost exclusively intended for merchandise purposes, the statutory requirements would be on the most moderate scale, and as they would be generally constructed at the cost of the parties who had to operate them, the outlay would be restricted to the actual works necessary for convenience and efficiency. Similar little lines have been in use for many years in the busy yards of large ironworks, shipbuilders, and many other localities, where weighty masses of materials have to be moved from place to place in the course of manufacture, and it would be merely carrying out the same idea to a more extended range. The principal inducement for their introduction is the great advantage, both in convenience and cost, that is obtained by hauling a ton of materials over a pair of rails as compared with carting the same weight along an ordinary road; and as the fact becomes more and more proved by experience, these little fourth-rank lines will become more general. Numbers of them are in use at the present time, and some of them, even of only 2-feet gauge, are doing good service, the little trucks conveying manufactured goods to the nearest railway station and returning loaded with coals and other materials. By making suitable arrangements for passing places and junctions, the system could be carried out to considerable distances in thinly populated districts, and be made available by means of local sidings, to several places along the route. With a narrow-gauge type there would, of course, always be the time and expense of transhipment to or from the ordinary railway trucks in the same way as with the road carts, but the time and expense may be lessened by so constructing the little narrow-gauge trucks that the bodies may be readily lifted off the frames and wheels, and be placed like packing-cases in the railway waggons.