Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/273

Rh R A I R A I 255 New York and Philadelphia, 90 miles in 112 minutes. The 440 miles from New York to Buffalo are run in lOf hours, and the 960 miles from New York to Chicago in 25 hours. A great obstacle to fast running is the original vice of construction with level highway and railway crossings. Only few lines are provided with the block signals and interlocking apparatus recpaired with numerous fast trains ; but the use of continuous air-brakes is general. There has been more success in designing appliances to mitigate the effect of accidents than in inventions for avoiding them altogether. Acci- dents are very numerous, the casualties being more frequent in proportion to traffic than in the principal European countries. The number of accidents to passengers, however, is insignificant when compared with that of accidents to employes and persons walking over crossing-lines. In 1880 the numbers killed and injured were (Table XXXVIII.): Pass- engers. Em- ployes. Others. Un- known. Total. Killed 143 Q23 1472 3 2541 Injured 544 3617 1451 62 5674 Total. . . 687 4040 2923 65 8215 This gives one passenger killed for every 43,280,000 miles travelled, and one injured to every 11,375,000. In the United Kingdom there were one passenger killed for every 960,000 miles run by passenger trains, and one injured for every 254,000 miles. Though American railways have steeper grades and sharper curves than in Europe, the loads carried in freight trains are some- times exceptionally large : trains of 45 or 50 eight-wheeled cars each loaded with nearly 18 tons are common. The average load on the principal lines has been doubled since 1870, largely by the adoption of heavier and more powerful locomotives and by the better management of trains, and to some extent by a better condition of permanent way. This has had much to do with the great reduction in the rates charged. The cost of working American railways is usually a larger proportion of the earnings than in Europe. An American railway which spends 60, 66|, or 75 per cent, of its earn- ings for working expenses would in England be called costly to work. The expense per ton per mile on several railways in recent years has been, in cents per ton of 2000 R> (Table XXXIX.) : All U.S. New York Central. Erie. Penn- sylvania. Lake Shore. Wabash. Illinois Central. 0-76 0-600 0-529 0-473 0-413 0-694 0-639 The expense per passenger mile, which is larger than in Europe, since the traffic is nearly all first-class, is shown, in cents, in Table work done per man is the number of passenger and ton miles for each man employed (which cannot be given for the United Kingdom) ; this is snown in Table XLI. : All U.S. New York Central. Erie. Penn- sylvania. Lake Shore. Wabash. Illinois Central. 1-710 1-159 1-372 1-733 1-166 1-804 1-075 American railways also contrive to do their work with a very small number of men. In 1880 86,781 miles of railway were worked with a force of 418,957 men, or 4*7 men per mile, against 367,793 in the United Kingdom on 18,681 miles, or 19 '7 per mile, and 316,570 in Germany, or 14'3 per mile. The greater thinness of traffic on American lines accounts for but part of this, for the number of train-miles per year per man employed in different countries is 929 in the United States, 350 in the United Kingdom, 476 in Germany, 395 in Austria-Hungary. A better measure of the Per Employe. United States. Germany. A'wstria- Hungary. Passenger-miles 14,860 14,883 11,111 Ton-miles 70,587 31,050 31,132 The principal statistics of the railways of the United States in recent years are shown in Table XLII. : 1884. 1883. 1882. 1880. Miles of railway 125,152 24,587 17,993 5,911 798,399 120,552 23,823 16,889 5,948 738,660 114,461 ! 22,114 15,551 5,366 710,451 87,801 17,412 12,330 4,475 455,450 Soiling Stock No. of locomotives. . No. of passenger car- riages Luggage, mail, and ex- press cars Freight cars Traffic per mile of railway Train-miles Passenger Goods. . Total .. Passenger-miles 1,825 2,958 1,757 3,274 1,728 3,186 1,575 2,860 4,783 5,031 4,914 4,435 77,568 352,845 79,872 367,904 78,105 366,480 65,3P2 329,027 Ton-miles

1,535,279,811 1,384,910,888

1,495,573,156 1,336,951,209

1,403,350,022 1,085,144,512 1,207,018,029 1,036,489,161 Cost Earnings from Passengers

41,358,140 100,573,982 10,729,200

41,367,451 108,901,966 11,153,139

37,627,492 97,155,664 10,814,306

28,820,342 83,229,152 4,040,625 Goods Other sources Total 152,661,322 161,422,556 145,597,462 116,090,119 Working expenses Per cent, of earnings Net earnings 99,359,540 65-21 103,105,033 63-78 92.633,708 63-61 70,560,024 60-78 53,302,782 58,317,518 52,963,754 45,530,095 Per passenger train-mile Gross earnings s. d. 4 2 3 2| s. d. 4 7i 3 4 s. d. 4 9 3 5i s. d. 4 Hi 3 2 Expenses Net earnings 11J 1 3i 1 3| 1 Pi Per goods train-mile Gross earnings Expenses. . s. d. 6 3 4 2J s. d. 6 6 4 4 s. d. 6 7i 4 5i s. d. 6 10i 4 1 Net earninge 2 0| 2 2 2 2 2 Pi Per passenger mile Receipts d. 1-178 0-912 d. 1-211 0-881 d. 1-257 0-914 d. 1-165 0-839 Profit 0-266 0-330 0-343 0-32(3 Per ton-mile Receipts d. 0-629 0-425 d. 0-692 0-413 d. 0-692 0-441 it 0-722 0-426 Expenditure Profit 0-204 0-279 0-251 0-296 Average No. of miles travelled 26J 27J 110 251' 109 23 112 Goods (A. M. W. D. W. D.) RAIMBACH, ABRAHAM (1776-1843), line-engraver, a Swiss by descent, was born in London in 1776. Educated at Archbishop Tenison's Library School, he was an appren- tice to J. Hall the engraver from 1789 to 1796. For nine years part of his working -time was devoted to the study of drawing in the Royal Academy and to executing occasional engravings for the booksellers, whilst his leisure hours were employed in painting portraits in miniature. Having formed an intimacy with Sir David Wilkie, Raim- bach in 1812 began to engrave some of that master's best pictures. The Village Politicians, the Rent-Day, the Cut Finger, Blind-Man's Buff, the Errand -Boy, Distraining for Rent, the Parish Beadle, and the Spanish Mother and Child raised him in the estimation of connoisseurs, the French especially holding him in great honour. It is said that he never employed any assistants, but executed the whole of his plates with his own hand. At his death, in 1843, he held a gold medal awarded to him for his Village Poli- ticians at the Paris Exhibition of 1814. He was elected corresponding member of the Institute of France in 1835. RAIMONDI, MARCANTOXIO. See MARCA^TONIO. RAIN. See METEOROLOGY, vol. xvi. pp. 128, 150-4, 180, and GEOLOGY, vol. x. p. 267 sq. RAINBAND. Every transparent substance is perfectly opaque to some particular kinds of light. A certain shade of orange light is absorbed by the vapour of water, and, when sunlight which has traversed a stratum containing this vapour is decomposed in a spectroscope, the blank caused by the missing rays appears as a black band or group of fine lines. This is called the rainband, because from its intensity the amount of moisture in the atmo- sphere may be guessed at, and the occurrence of rain predicted with considerable certainty. It has long been known that the spectrum of sunlight shows lines of telluric as well as of solar origin. The former constitute the absorption-spectrum of the atmosphere (see SPECTRO-