Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/398

 Unclogging the Railroads to Get Coal

How New York's coal famine was relieved and how the Government is running the railroads

By Frank Parker Stockbridge

���Heavy, sea-going tugs break their way through ice jams in New York harbor, pulling im- mense coal barges. An example of con- ditions met this winter in coping with coal shortages

��THE taking over by the United States Government of all the rail- roads of the nation, in December, 1917, and their operation as a single system, for the duration of the war, is the most sensational and interesting indus- trial episode of the war to date, so far as the United States is concerned. It will afford an opportunity to test many theo- ries of railroad management and control that the roads under private operating conditions were not in a position to prove. Almost the first action of Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo, in his new official capacity as Director-General of Railroads, was to open up for freight traffic the heretofore unused short-cut between the New Jersey mainland and Manhattan Island, Long Island and the New England states, by directing that coal and other commodities should be hauled through the tunnels of the Penn- sylvania Railroad's New York terminal system. These tunnels, which extend from the Jersey shore under the bed of the Hudson River, beneath Manhattan Island and under the East River to Long Island, were opened for traffic exactly seven years ago. The Pennsylvania spent nearly $100,000,000 on its terminal and

��tunnels, under a franchise that limited their use strictly to passenger traffic. Only the New York Central has ever had free access to New York city for its freight trains. All other freight destined for New York or for New England points can get as far as the New York Harbor terminals of the great trunk lines that converge at tidewater, but to get the cars to New York they had to be loaded on car floats and towed across the Hudson River, or the Bay, to railroad piers where they might be unloaded or whence they might be forwarded over the tracks of the Long Island or the New York, New Haven and Hartford.

Manhattan — A Cork in a Bottle

The new Hell Gate bridge, across the narrow neck of water where the East River joins Long Island Sound, owned jointly by the Pennsylvania and New Haven systems enables passenger trains to be run across to Long Island and so through the tunnels to the Pennsylvania terminal and on south- ward. Freight trains were sent over the new Connecting Railway to piers in Brooklyn, whence the water haul to the New Jersey piers was much shorter and safer than the old route. But the prohibition of freight

��3R2

�� �