Page:The truth about the railroads (IA truthaboutrailro00elli).pdf/110

Rh large terminals, and even at country stations, beyond the expiration of this time, being used as storage warehouses. This practice is expensive to the railways, because the demurrage payment does not begin to pay for the idleness of the car; and it is expensive for the shipping public, because it reduces the carrying capacity of the railways as a whole.

The owners of freight, therefore, have a responsibility for creating suitable facilities for loading and unloading freight promptly and for warehousing it in structures of their own, rather than in railway-cars, because the railway-car is the most expensive warehouse that can be used. A box- or a coal-car costs from $700 to $1000, and a refrigerator-car costs from $1200 to $1500. When one of these cars is placed upon a team-track in Minneapolis, for example, so that hay or grain or coal or fruit or meat can be unloaded, a piece of land sufficiently large for the car and team must be occupied, or at least 900 square feet. This land is generally in a part of the city where real estate is valuable and is worth from Rh