Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/402

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��Popular Science Monthly

���A number of these big Russian locomotives of 5-foot gage, built in this country, are now being adapted to our 4 ft. 83^2 inch gage and used on our own roads. Two hundred will be used

��expeditious movement of its particular classes of commodities. The accom- panying map-diagram, showing how the nation's railroads converge at the At- lantic seaboard, indicates how freight and passenger traffic may be divided among the various lines. The Lehigh Valley road, for example, already brings to New York more flour than any other railroad. Its terminals at Buffalo and Jersey City are equipped for the handling of flour on a huge scale. The logical extension of this existing condition will be to divert all the flour traffic from other roads to the Le- high, and if its terminals are insufficient it can use the Lackawanna terminals, which also have equipment for the re- packing and handling at tidewater of flour for export; for under the Government's rulings, every road's terminal facilities are open to the use of every other road that needs them, just as the rolling stock and motive power are interchangeable. Five important railroad systems tap the hard coal region of Pennsylvania. Some haul coal from the eastern part of the field to the West, others haul it from the western part of the field to the East. This cross- ing of coal shipments has been stopped. The Norfolk & Western, for instance, could be diverted entirely to coal traffic, except for a small amount of short-haul local passenger traffic, while all other freight originating on its lines could be well handled by other roads. Plans ten- tatively proposed would make the huge Pennsylvania system exclusively a freight road, mainly for stool and its products.

��except for local passenger traffic between points not well served by other lines.

Car-loads are already nearly twenty per cent heavier than they were, due to the system of intensive loading urged up- on the roads by the Railway War Board before the Government took charge; trains are ten per cent longer. Still there is a great shortage of locomotives. A list of questions sent to the heads of all the railroads late in 1917, asking w^hat their greatest needs were, brought forth the almost unanimous response: "More locomotives." Many of the roads had not been earning enough to buy the loco- motives they needed, especially at the 50 per cent increased cost due to war condi- tions; all the locomotive builders in the country, too, had been busy on huge foreign orders, notably for Russia.

Within a day after the Government took over the roads 100 brand-new locomo- tives, bearing the letters "U. S. A." on the sides of their tenders were placed in ser- vice on several Eastern lines.

These locomotives were not built for American service, however, but are part of an order of 980 locomotives bought by the War Department for use on the Amer- ican roads in France which are being constructed to transport men and sup- plies from French ports and bases to the American sector of the fighting line. These Government locomotives are soon to be supplemented by 200 locomotives built for the Russian government, part of an order of 2,075 all of which will be completed in American shops by July.

��Why You Receive Popular Science Monthly Late

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