Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/549

 What One Railroad Has Done

���Pe,cifif CoAjt

��� ��'^2 5

���By electrically operating but 440 miles of railway, the C. M. & St. P. has effected enormous sav- ings in coal. What it means is shown in the diagrams below

���One of the powerhouses far up among the Montana Rockies

���The figures are for one year's operation. We need coal in war zones badly. This railroad's savings have helped

�� ��Train driven by the cm,it4y uf the restless mountain streams

���Coal saved would send a destroyer on 2,368 trips around Britain

��Or, it would furnish power for sending 90 transports once to France with soldiers

��Forty-five destroyers could be kept steaming around the British Isles an entire year

���Electrification did a- way with 126 engines

����1,756 tank cars would have had to carry fuel if steam had been used

��5,000 coal cars can now serve elsewhere

��will come to pass. So also will they when the powdered coal method of burning is more generally utilized. Both systems can do wonders in the way of getting the good out of poor grades of coal.

Inseparably connected with our present railway muddle, and the fact that archaic methods of distributing and using coals make more demands on transportation facilities than any system should, are the peculiar conditions in the producing

��areas. There are lean years, and there are fat years. There are big operators and there are little operators. Some are lo- cated close to trunkline railroads and centers of consumption, others are at the far end of crooked, hill-dodging, weed- strewn branch lines, up which a rusty locomotive and a string of broken-down cars get once a day perhaps, and then again perhaps not. Some of the opera- tors, because of having obtained their

��533

�� �