Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/107

Popular Science Monthly

PRACTICAL railroad man has invented a weed cutting machine, which derives its energy from the source that runs the gasoline-driven handcars running up and down sections of every track.

There are a number of advantages in the new weed destroyer. The cost of labor has been cut enormously. A section crew with scythes working all day can cut no more than a mile. The usual price for this work is $1.75 per man per day. Thirty cents is the cost of cutting the same amount of weeds with the motor weed cutter, which mows down heavy weeds and grass at the rate of a mile every twenty minutes, averaging twenty-five miles a day.

Cutter bars are so arranged at the sides of the car that they can be raised by the operator in case of obstruction on the roadbed, but when down follow the angle of the ground perfectly. The blades can be stopped or started without raising, and the little gasoline driven traveler can pull itself along whether it is on or off the track.

Traveling at the rate of three miles per hour the gasoline scythes cut a swath six feet wide on each side of the track. If the lay of the ground varies on either side of the track, as is often the case, the blades can be handled by the operator to conform to this condition.

A regular crew of three men is required, and this number accomplishes the work that formerly required one hundred men.





N the Southwest, where the sun at noontime is extremely warm, all sorts of heaters have been invented to catch and utilize the sun's rays. In the case illustrated here, the coils of pipe, which are connected with the water system in the house, are arranged on a framework in a position where they are exposed to the sun during the hottest part of the day, and so great is the heat that the water becomes warm in a short time.

CCORDING to the International Geological Congress, there is coal enough yet unmined to last the world nearly six thousand years at the present rate of consumption. There is a reserve of unmined coal estimated at 7,398,561,000,000 tons, of which two-thirds are in the eastern United States.