Note 101 — Chapter IX

In the report of the Directors of the Madras Company for the half-year ending the 30th June, 1867, it is stated, as regards the South-West Line and Bangalore Branch—“The maintenance of a great part of this line and branch is still enhanced in cost by the replacement of wooden sleepers, as they decayed, by iron sleepers and by the greater expense of maintaining the wooden road in the western district, though wooden sleepers were good and cheap there. It has been found impossible to bring down the cost of maintaining a line with wooden sleepers to anything like an equality with the iron sleeper line.” On the North-Western section of the line, where iron sleepers only are used, the cost of maintenance for the past half year had been at the rate of only £66. 18s. per mile per annum, whereas on the South-Western Line and Bangalore Branch it had been at the rate of £159 per mile per annum.