Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/162

158 the time occupied in the ran, used eight thousand pounds of soft coal, making steam with difficulty, and filling the atmosphere with smoke. The next day, another fireman, with the same engine, running the same distance, used forty-five hundred pounds of the same coal, with plenty of steam and no smoke. The result was a saving of 43 per cent, of coal, and no annoyance from smoke. As the first condition is pretty nearly universal on roads where soft coal is used, the loss to the roads from ignorance or carelessness must be enormous.

Electrification is another method by which the smoke nuisance is to be abated.

On and after July 1 there are to be no more steam trains run into the Grand Central Station in New York. Electrification of the New York Central terminal, according to the New York papers, has progressed far enough to malce this change practicable, and the order to run only electric trains into the big depot went into effect on July 1. This move does away with the nuisance of smoke, steam and gas in the Park Avenue tunnel. The new order applies also to the New Haven Railroad trains.

The Scientific American quotes some statistics from a paper read by W. S. Murray at a recent meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, which confirm and strengthen the testimony furnished by W. J. Wilgus to the American Society of Civil Engineers. They clearly show that electrification pays when tried.

In Mr. Murray's paper it is shown that to haul the express, local and freight trains of the New York division of the New Haven railroad now involves the consumption of 57,000, 58,000 and 188,000 tons of coal, respectively, whereas when the whole division is operated electrically the amount of coal burned for the respective classes of service will be 30,000, 28,000 and 139,000 tons.

In like manner the figures of cost and repairs of twenty steam freight and passenger locomotives on the New Haven road are given. They show an expense of 8.1 cents per locomotive mile for freight engines and 5.6 cents for passenger ones. The total mileage of the locomotives per year is easily ascertained and therefore the total expense for maintenance and repairs of locomotive service. The figures are placed at $316,962 per annum. Available figures for electric locomotive repairs show two cents per locomotive mile. Counting the same number of miles and the same number of engines, the total expense would show a saving of $196,038 per annum.

In brief, experimentation in the east has proved that electrification pays both in a great saving in the cost of the coal used and in the cost of maintenance and repairs. If it pays in the neighborhood of New York it will pay, as the Chicago Tribune maintains, in Chicago. It is electrification, not improved smoke consuming devices, that Chicago