Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/923

 Popular Sn'cnrr Moiithhi

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��A New Use for the Little

Tractor: Spotting Freiglit

Cars for Large Plants

A SMALL industrial "creeper" tractor can "spot" a carload of coal having a total weight of 45,000 pounds. The illustration proves it. One of these tractors has taken the place of a switch- engine or a gang of workmen with pinch bars for spotting or switch- ing cars at a large industrial plant in Ohio. As the engine is rail- road property, it is available only for a comparatively short time each day, while the tractor, which is always on the premises, can be utilized at all times.

The tractor does not travel on wheels, but lays its own track, and consequently can pass over obstacles and move material from one department to another without marring the surface over which it travels. The over-all width of the tractor is fifty inches and it is but two inches more in height, so that it can pass through or- dinary sized factory doors easily. The tractor is used for bringing material from the factory to the shipping room or to cars that are ta be loaded and for the unloading of incoming shipments, and it also transports material between the various buildings of the plant.

����This little caterpillar tractor can pull without trouble a loaded car weighing 45,000 pounds, ,and do it easily

��uitTwood aud Underwood

The protective power of the armorplate of the turret is greatly enhanced by a layer of sandbags as shown

Sandbags Used as Protective Cover- ing Even on War Ships

THE use of sandbags or wicker baskets filled with sand as a protection against hostile projectiles in warfare is by no means new, but the present war has probably seen the most extensive use ever known of this means of defence. Against the enormous force of the modern explosives neither steel nor concrete offers adequate protection. It was found that earth or sand, either in a loose state or in bags, formed a more efficient protection against shells, shrapnel or the projectiles of small arm.s or machine guns than barri- cades of other material.

The accompanying picture taken on board of a British monitor preparing to go into action shows that sandbags as a means of protection are by no means confined to the warfare in the trenches. A covering of sandbags is placed on the roof of the turret to give additional protection to the big guns and the gun crew, should they come with- in range of a hostile battle- ship, or be attacked by a hos- tile airplane. Without these sandbags the roof of the tur- ret would offer little protec- tion against missiles dropping upon them almost vertically. This applies to projectiles fired from guns with a high angle of elevation and to bombs dropped from aircraft.

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