MEAN COST PER TRAIN-MILE OF LABOR AND MATERIALS ON ENGINE AND TENDER, ON No. 10, No. 33, AND No. 34, DURING SIX YEARS, IN CENTS AND FRACTIONS OF A CENT.

These engines were new at the beginning of the period covered by the record here reproduced, and the cost of repairs must increase with increasing age. Indeed, compared with a like statement for the first five years, the mean annual mileage is 1.2 per cent less, and the cost of repairs is 23 per cent greater, while oil and waste are almost exactly the same per train mile, both in quantity and in value.

Some information which was hoped for, to afford a broader basis for estimates of the performance of American locomotives, their durability, and the cost of repairs upon them, cannot now be obtained in season for this occasion. The examples presented are, it is admitted, selected examples, and must be above the mean, taking age into consideration, if nothing more; but so much has been done, and, accident and misfortune apart, can be done generally with engines of like age.

With compound locomotives, little has been done in this country. A few have been constructed, but without any very marked success, so far as the writer has been able to learn. It is certainly very desirable to reduce the consumption of fuel in our locomotives; but if compounding involves of necessity the use of a cranked-axle, as in some examples, it can never be adopted in America, since the wellknown evils of that feature must far outweigh all possible gain from compound cylinders. The locomotive engine is without doubt the