rried
out his commands will be evident from the following statement with which
they have been kind enough to supply me.

The country, if I may so term it, within which the railway runs, is a
great, oblong, single-storied building, consisting of one chamber,
ninety feet in length by thirty feet in breadth. It has been added on to
Mr. Leigh's residence, and was specially constructed with a view to
giving the line a sufficient range for its successful operation, and
also to afford it protection from damp and other undesirable effects of
the weather. The room is provided with a double floor--a wooden one, on
which stand the trestles supporting the track itself, and, two or three
feet below it, another of concrete. An even temperature all the year
round is secured by means of two rows of hot-water pipes. When these
precautions are considered, it will be seen that this railway system
probably enjoys the most perfect climate in existence.

The line has not yet been given any comprehensive name. Perhaps it is
almost too soon for that, for it is hardly more than finished; indeed,
the goods-engine remains to be delivered by the builders. But it might
be christened, from the names of the two stations on it, the Oakgreen
and Beechvale Railway.

First of all, to describe the track. The road-bed is made of pitch pine,
mounted on sixty-five trestles, three feet from the floor, and the track
extends to 276 feet, of a double line of rails. Of the rails all
together there are 1,200 feet; and some idea of what this means may be
understood from the fact that when they came from Sheffield, where they
were specially rolled for Mr. Leigh, they formed two solid heaps of
metal, each as high as a man. The rails are of mild steel; they are
double-headed, and about an inch in height; some of them are nearly
twelve feet long. They are fastened down to 2,000 pitch pine sleepers by
4,000 malleable cast-iron chairs, held in place with hard-wood wedges
and 16,000 screws. All the fish plates, bolts, and nuts used in joining
the rails together are exact miniatures of those to be seen on an
ordinary railway. The track is ballasted with nine hundredweight of
limestone chips, and the gauge is six inches.

Details which involve a large number of figures are apt to be rather dry
and tiresome; but in the present case, if frequent reference be made
from the letterpress to the illustrations, it will be seen with what
extreme care, and with what extraordinari