to the throbbing anxiety of
each to share in the duties and responsibilities of Empire Government and
Development.

CHAPTER XXXII.
CONCLUSION

The year 1917 terminated our Dominions' Commission work and brought to a
close the fiftieth year of my railway life. As if to mark the occasion,
Dame Fortune gave me a pleasant surprise, and what it was I will now
relate.

In an earlier chapter I have spoken of the Letterkenny to Burtonport
Railway (in North-West Donegal), with the early stages of which, in 1897,
I had something to do. Now, in 1917, twenty years later, I was to become
still more intimately acquainted with it, and, in an unexpected but
practical way, concerned in its domestic affairs.

Though the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Company, which worked the
Burtonport line, was a railway of only 14.5 miles in extent, it was
entrusted with the working of no less than 85 other miles, 50 of which
consisted of the Burtonport railway--a condition of things quite unique:
the tail wagging the dog!

The total capital expenditure on the whole of the 100 miles of line
worked by the Lough Swilly Company amounted to 727,000 pounds. Of this
sum about 500,000 pounds, or 68 per cent., was money provided out of
Government funds. The ordinary stock of the Lough Swilly Company was the
exceedingly small sum of 50,330 pounds, upon which for twenty years a
dividend of 7 per cent. had been regularly paid.

The Burtonport line was opened for traffic in 1903. From the first, its
management, to say the least, was faulty and illiberal. So early in its
history as 1905 an inquiry into its working was found to be necessary,
and I was asked by the Board of Works to undertake the inquiry. I did
so, and I had to report unfavourably, for "facts are chiels that winna
ding." For some time after my report things went on fairly well, but
only for a time. The Board of Works were, by Act of Parliament,
custodians of the public interest in the matter of this and other similar
railways, and a long-suffering and patient body they were. From time to
time they complained, protested, adjured, threatened; sometimes with
effect, sometimes without. Years rolled on and matters grew worse. Loud
public complaints arose; the patience of the Board of Works exhausted
itself, and a climax was reached.

_The Railways Ireland Act_, 1896, provides that where any railway,
constructed under that Act, or under other Irish Light Railway Act, ha