The New York Rapid-transit Subway

66 DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. [Minutes of Col. Yorke, namely, the public. Would the British public consent to travel upon an underground electric line upon which they knew there were no signals? The final decision would rest upon that. If the public refused to travel by the railway which adopted such a system, the railway would be in an uncomfortable position. To those who had not been to America, and especially to the younger members of The Institution, he wished to give the advice to go there as soon as they conveniently could. There was a vast amount to be seen and learnt in that-immense country, and he felt sure that they would find, as he had found, that a trip to America was one of the most enjoyable and instructive experiences of their lives. Mr. Galbraith. Mr. Wm. R. GALBRAITH, Vice-President, wished to make a few remarks on the points raised by Sir John Wolfe Barry with regard to the light the New York subway threw upon the future underground railways of London—for no doubt, after a time, more tubes or under- ground railways would have to be constructed in the metropolis. He wished to contrast the cost of the two systems which were likely to come forward in London, based upon the experience of the cost of the subway in New York. He found that the shallow subway of New York cost, on an average £468,000 per mile of double track, dealing only with the shallow subways and not with the overground portions. The Author gave the total cost at $1,000,000 to $1,250,000 per mile, and he had taken the mean between the two, as a fair figure. Adding the equipment, which cost £136,000 per mile, the cost per mile of double-track line as laid out by the Author was £604,000. Mr. Galbraith had been connected witli the Waterloo and City railway as Engineer, and it was the only one of which he could give the exact cost per mile. The length was a little over 11 mile (1 mile 47 chains), and he had the figures for the whole cost, including construction, equipment, land, and everything up to the opening of the railway, even including engineering, which was not a very heavy amount, and interest on capital during construction. The cost of the Waterloo and City railway, for two lines of rails from Waterloo to the Mansion House, was £439,000 per mile, but as there were only the two terminal stations he had thought it fair to increase that figure by the estimated cost of an intermediate station. There would have been room for only one intermediate station, which probably would have been somewhere near Blackfriars. For that-station he had added €70,000, which increased the cost per mile by £44,000, so that the total cost of the Waterloo and City railway per mile, for comparison with the Author’s £604,000, would be £483,000, showing a saving of about £120,000 per mile in favour of the Waterloo and City line. On that line tlie tubes were a little