Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/425

 Popular Hcicnce Monthly

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��Between Stokes, He Knits for the Red Cross Unashamed

A BIG, burly, railway fireman has adopted knitting as his avocation. Between runs or even between shovels, Jack Ryder can be seen sitting in his cab placidly knitting away at a sock or a sweater for one of the boys "over there."

We see that he wears gloves while about his duties. Thus the article knitted is kept fresh and unsoiled.

This brave pio- neer's example is being followed by other employees of the Burlington Road. So if your train is delayed, be sympathetic. Perhaps the fire- man has dropped a s t i t c h — back along the right-of- way somewhere.

���Burlington fireman knits between times. Never a stitch does Jack Ryder drop

��Wherein a Head and a Little Ingenuity Save Much Work

AN ice manufacturer of Hutchinson, . Kansas, saves time and money in loading ice into refrigerator cars. He has

��built a kind of viaduct over two switch tracks, a street and across the roof of the Rock Island freight wharves.

The viaduct is higher at one end, so that the two-hundred-pound cakes of ice, which are raised by means of an electric elevator, will slide by their own weight down to the car to be iced. At the lower end of the chute is a staging so that cakes coming down can be shunted to either side and dropped into different cars simultaneously. Formerly the ice was hauled on wagons and thrown in by hand.

Castor Oil Is Going Up

THE price of castor oil is advancing rapidly. No more children than usual have eaten forbidden goodies, but air- planes have developed insatiable appetites for this remedy.

The Government has recently been buying enormous quantities of this de- lectable article. So now the airplanes will get it for lubricating their engines.

��,ice storaqe

��At right : By utiUz- ing a chain elevator and chute as shown, the ice maker saves much work

��Chute

��chute

���Below: The chute passes over two switch tracks, a street and the roof of a building

��Freight dock

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