be, its existence
then merging into that of the _Railway Gazette_. I am sad and sorry for
I knew it well. For forty years it was my week-end companion; for ten
years or more, in the April of life, I contributed regularly to its
pages; and never, during all the years, have its columns been closed to
my pen. One of its editors, F. McDermott, has long been my friend, and
its first editor, Edward McDermott, his father, a grand old man, was kind
to me in my salad days and encouraged my budding scribbling proclivities.
He and Samuel Smiles, the author of _Self Help_ (then Secretary of the
South Eastern Railway), were, in 1864, its joint founders.

"Death," the Psalmist saith, "is certain to all." In 1893, the railway
world lost one whom it could ill spare. In the month of March, after a
short illness, Sir George Findlay died at the early age of 63. Gifted of
the gods, in the midst of his work, young in mind and spirit, his
faculties in full vigour, he was suddenly called away. His funeral, I
need not say, was attended by railway men from all parts of the kingdom.
I was one of those who travelled to London to follow his remains to their
resting place.

Further public railway legislation was enacted in 1893 and 1894, and four
important Acts were passed. The first was the _Railway Regulation Act_,
1893. It dealt with the hours of labour of railway servants, a subject
which for some time previously had been enjoying the attention of the
Press. It culminated in the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee. In
February, 1891, a Select Committee, consisting of 24 members, with Sir
Michael Hicks Beach as chairman, was formed, "To inquire whether, and if
so, in what way, the hours of railway servants should be restricted by
legislation." The Committee examined numerous railway servants and
officials, and reported to Parliament, in June, 1892. I was summoned by
the Committee to give evidence and appeared before them in London on 24th
March of that year. My business was to furnish facts concerning the
hours of duty of the employees on my own railway and the conditions of
their work. This I did pretty fully and embraced the opportunity of
showing how different were the circumstances of Irish railways compared
with English, and how legislation suitable to one country might be very
unsuitable to the other. It scarcely needed saying that England was an
industrial country whilst Ireland was agricultural; that England, with
6