Supply train

“ The supply cars are only a beginning. The evolution must be a supply and inspection train run exclusively for company business, and to do every practicable kind of company business. It should supply every department and pick up the surplus and scrap in each. It should run over as many divisions as feasible, giving it time to return and restock so as to cover its territory at prescribed intervals, say every thirty or sixty days. This train should be manned by monthly company men, preferably of the semi-official class. ”

“ Roads of dense traffic with much low-class freight, such as coal, coke, ore, pig iron, etc., to move, found it more economical to have large engines and heavy trains. The nature of the business demands a considerable supply always on hand. This permits waiting for full tonnage for every train. A few cars, more or less, at one end or the other of the line make no great difference to the shipper. These roads usually have more than one track and an old solid roadbed. This good thing of economical transportation was pushed along to us of the prairies. ”

“ These elaborate arrangements for ensuring a maintenance of efficiency along the whole line of communication from the interior to the front equally apply to transport of all kinds from the theatre of war to the interior. In principle, evacuations from the army of sick and wounded, prisoners, surplus stores, and so on, are effected from railhead by means of the daily supply-trains returning thence to the regulating station, where the Regulating Commission takes them in charge, and passes them on by the trains going back to the Depôt Stations, or beyond. ”

“ Always there was the track demanding attention,—an endless round of work which would never be completed. Always there were the trains rushing over it in endless procession,—the luxurious Limited, sending every other train headlong into a siding out of the way; the slower “accommodation,” which stops at every station along the road and is very popular with the farmers and dwellers at crossroads; the big through freight, drawn by a mighty giant of an engine, hauling two thousand tons of grain or beef or coal to the great Eastern market. ”

“ In any event, however, the general introduction of the interlocking apparatus into the American railroad system may be regarded as a mere question of the value of land and concentration of traffic. So long as every road terminating in our larger cities [198] indulges, at whatever unnecessary cost to its stockholders, in independent station buildings far removed from business centres, the train movement can most economically be conducted as it now is. ”

“ Between the shifts and modifications of the passenger schedule, the freight trains play a game of their own. They have no right to the track at any given time, but are supposed to be on it when it is free, and to make the best time they can between passenger trains. A freight train, on a single-track road, gets anywhere at all only by stealing bases. ”

“ On shot the locomotive, like an arrow from the bow, the men throwing over the ties until the train was well nigh unloaded, when just as they were close to the curve by which the train arrives at the station, they saw the dreaded cars strike a tie, or something equally of service, and with a desperate plunge rush down the embankment, some fifteen feet, to the little valley, and creek below. ”

“ The railways are entitled to confidence and relief because they have displayed efficiency in the conduct of their business. This is just as marked as their relatively low capitalization. The figures already given show an increase of traffic in a year about five times as great as the increase of equipment and eleven times the increase of mileage. Yet the machine has been hauling its load, because efficiency has been developed. Heavier rails, larger engines, cars of greater capacity, increased train movement and the full utilization of equipment have kept business moving. ”

“ It costs today as much to haul a ton of farm produce ten miles to a railway station as it does to haul it a thousand miles over a heavy-traffic trunk-line railway. It often costs more today to transport a ton of merchandise from its arrival in a long train in the freight yard on the outskirts of a great city to its deposit in the warehouse of a merchant four or five miles away than it has cost to haul it over a thousand miles of railway line. ”

“ This is a difficult problem, but when enough big men give it attention it will be solved. It probably means more elasticity, more inter-changeability between train service and the various kinds of maintenance, between the locomotive and the shop, between the railway and allied contiguous industries. ”

“ This, in the growing, progressive, and expanding states of the West, is a steady and constant complaint, and it requires much time, money, and energy for the railroad-owners and officers to keep the supply of transportation up to the demand. The complaints come in for more freight-cars, for more passenger-trains, for better passenger-stations, for more side-tracks, for more switch-engines, for under-crossings and over-crossings in growing cities, for branch lines into new and undeveloped sections of the country ”

“ Where there are only two lines of rails to serve for the UP and DOWN service of a heavy passenger and goods traffic, it is imperative to restrict those lines as much as possible to the actual transit of trains, and not to block them by unnecessary occupation for shunting purposes. A goods train running a long distance collects waggons from many roadside stations, and at some of them several waggons will be taken on, to be forwarded to various and widely distant destinations. ”

“ Hugh sledges sent the spikes home,—the car rolled on and the operation was repeated; while every few minutes the long heavy train behind sent out a puff of smoke from its locomotive and caught up with its load of material the advancing work. ”

“ There are at the moment of our visit 115 locomotives and 2000 cars in service in the Cut. About 160 loaded trains go out daily, and, of course about 160 return empty. Three hundred and twenty trains in the eight-hour day, with two hours’ intermission at noon, means almost one train a minute speeding through a right of way 300 feet wide and much cluttered up with shovels, drills and other machinery. ”

“ We cut our local freights down to 1500 tons, then to 1200, 900, 600, rather than send them into shelter. We tackle our through freights in a like proportion and while we are cutting off cars, we are adding power. Everything that goes out of this yard will be double-headed as long as there is danger in the air. There will be two engines to a passenger-train and ahead of each a rotary, with two or three locomotives to push [Pg 271] her. You see the value of reserve motive-power, don’t you? Why we have half-a-dozen extra engines trying to gather rust over there in the roundhouse. ”

“ Then (p. 054) comes the main body of the army, placing the ties, laying the track, spiking down the rails, perfecting the alignment, ballasting and dressing up and completing the road for immediate use. Along the line of the completed road are construction trains pushing 'to the front' with supplies. The advance limit of the rails is occupied by a train of long box-cars with bunks built within them, in which the men sleep at night and take their meals. Close behind this train come train loads of ties, rails, spikes, etc., which are thrown off to the side. ”

“ We have by no means reached our limits in operating economies. That our practical railroaders, under the fearful spur of a terrific demand for great retrenchments, have done much is not to be denied. In some things, notably the creation of the big car, the big locomotive, and the big train, they not only have accomplished marvels but to-day they have probably approached the extreme limits of efficiency, if indeed they have not already actually passed them. Recently they have increased the loading of the average freight-car and have speeded up its movement. ”

“ All the passengers are requested to walk. In single file we march over the bridge, and then await the train. It comes across, lightened of its load, slowly and safely. It is quite likely that in America the engineer would have put on all steam, and dashed across in a second, or, if not, he would have gone down a hundred feet, into a frightful chasm, and the verdict, if any were sought, would have been, “nobody to blame.” Fret as we do about the railroad management in Europe, it is safer and surer than ours. ”

“ Another locomotive whistled, and another train came through at top speed, and another, and another, train after train, train after train, till toward the last the trains were composed of passenger coaches, box-cars, flat-cars, dead engines, cabooses, mail-cars, wrecking appliances, and all the riff-raff of worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects in the yards of great railways. When the yards at Council Bluffs had been completely cleaned, the private car and engine went east, and the tracks died for keeps. ”

“ The modern method of the large central with its immense sphere of influence, necessitates that the railroad be thoroughly equipped and efficiently managed. The old practice of carrying the cane from field to factory in an ox cart has passed into disuse along with the small mill, and has been superseded by the present railroad, with standard gauge roadbeds, heavy rails, steel cars, powerful locomotives, and schedule running, the whole being under the direction of a practical railroad man, as train despatcher. ”

“ Each division of the Construction Corps had at its disposal two locomotives and thirty closed wagons or open trucks, provision thus being made for the transport of, among other things, six light covered carts (for use on the roads in the country to be invaded, horses being requisitioned therein as necessary) ; tools; supplies of blasting powder or gun-cotton; and rails, sleepers, bolts, etc., for 250 yards of railway, reserve materials for a further quarter of a mile of track being left at intermediate depôts, supplemented by an unlimited supply at the base of operations. ”

“ The use of steel passenger cars calls for larger locomotives in that class of service, and the American policy, consistently followed for years, of increasing the freight-train load, required the use of more powerful locomotives in freight service. The average freight-train load, in tons of freight, grew from less than 400 tons in 1910 to more than 700 tons in 1920. Not all of this increase is to be attributed to the heavier locomotive. Reductions in grades and curvature have made heavier trains possible. ”

“ When the engine emerges from the paint-shop it is gorgeous and refulgent—brilliantly new. Unless it is going to foreign lands, when it must be partly dismantled and crated, it will ride its own wheels to the road which has purchased it. A string of new locomotives may be sprinkled through a freight train—never coupled together—in charge of an inspector from the locomotive company, who will bunk in one of the cabs and never leave his charges until they have been receipted for. ”

“ For every hour of the day there swept over it, pounding at it, the monstrous freight locomotives, weighing a hundred tons, marvels of strength and power, pulling long lines of heavy cars, laden with coal and iron and grain, hurrying to give the Old World of the abundance of the New. And every hour, too, there flashed over it, at a speed almost lightning-like, the through passenger trains—the engines slim, supple, panting, thoroughbred; the lumbering mail-cars and day coaches; the luxurious Pullmans far heavier than any freight-car. ”

“ For a railroad is like a chain—it is only as strong as its weakest link, and the tonnage which an engine can handle must be computed, not with reference to the level track, but with reference to the stiffest grade which it will have to pass before reaching its destination—except, of course, in cases where the grade is so stiff, as sometimes happens on a mountain division, that it becomes a matter of economy to keep an extra engine stationed there to help the trains over, rather than trim the trains down to a point where a single engine can handle them. ”

“ If the title from each land owner could be procured only by negotiation and purchase, no railroad could be constructed, for the reason that a direct or continuous line for a road could rarely be secured. Railroads are constructed to aid in the transportation of freight and passengers from one part of the country to another; to promote commerce throughout the whole country; to supply the wants of a people, just as a mill or factory supplies the wants of a particular locality. ”

“ He never hits it an’ he never expects to. So more an’ more they’re gettin’ to move this freight on special orders. They can better regulate it then, ’cordin’ to volume of business. Mos’ of the men carry the schedules of the fas’ an’ th’ way-freights in their domes. Th’ coarse tonnage stuff doesn’t even get special orders. When they get enough of it, down on th’ main line, they get an engine out o’ th’ roundhouse, give the train th’ engine number, and start off. Railroad traffic along the freight end follows business conditions mighty close. ”

“ These trains must work upon the track away from stations, often with a large force of men, and delays to their operations cause expense as well as hindrance to work. At the same time they must not be permitted to interfere with the passage of regular trains, nor of others more than can be avoided. The solving of this problem has been attempted in various ways. Some allow the "work train" to occupy the track by right, except that it must keep out of the way of regular trains. Some permit it to work under flag "until freight trains come in sight." ”