These ten years had witnessed the introduction of
breakfast and dining cars on the trains, of parlour cars, long bogie
corridor carriages, the lighting of carriages by electricity, the
building of railway hotels in tourist districts, the establishment of
numerous coach and steamboat tours, the quickening of tourist traffic
generally, the adoption of larger locomotives of greatly increased power,
the acceleration of the train service, the laying of heavier and smoother
permanent way, and a widespread extension of cheap fares--tourist,
excursion, week-end, etc. It was a period of great activity and progress
in the Irish railway world, with which I was proud and happy to be
intimately connected. But what a return for all this effort and
enterprise the Irish railway companies received--3 pounds 17s. 10d. per
cent. on the whole capital expended, plus a liberal amount of abuse from
the Press and politicians, neither of whom ever paused to consider what
Ireland owed to her railways, which, perhaps, all things considered, was
the best conducted business in the country. It, however, became the
vogue to decry Irish lines as inefficient and extortionate, and a fashion
once started, however ridiculous, never lacks supporters.
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