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Rh would have been unfaithful to the trust reposed in it, if it had not bestowed much attention upon this matter, and it did not hesitate to ground on a recent report of the Secretary of War, this very important change of the plan of the road. This report of the War Department showed that the distance between Columbus and Vandalia was three hundred and thirty-four miles and the estimated cost of completing the road that far would be $4,732,622.83, of which $1,120,320.01 had been expended and $3,547,894.83 remained to be expended in order to finish the road to that extent according to plans then in operation; that after its completion it would require an annual expenditure on the three hundred and thirty-four miles of $392,809.71 to keep it in repair, the engineers computing the annual cost of repairs of the portion of the road between Wheeling and Columbus (one hundred and twenty-seven miles) at $99,430.30.

On the other hand the estimated cost of a railway from Columbus to Vandalia on the route of the Cumberland Road was $4,280,540.37, and the cost of preservation