Bristol news. [volume] (Bristol, Va. & Tenn.) 1867-189?, 1871-03-17
Narrow-Guagc Railway.

Hon. l.. d. Dibble recently addI essed
a large audience in the State Capitol
of Michigan on the subject of narrow
guage railways. The Detroit Tribune
gives the following summary of his
speech:
d" The Detroit Tribune thus gives the
points of the case: The common
American guagc is four feet eight
inches and half, and the least cost of
construction of any road of such width
is SD, 900 per mile. Roads whose
guages range from two to three and a
half feet, can be constructed, equipped
and operated at One-third of the sum
required for the same purpose by wide
guage lines, and the tributaries to trunk
lines, or for opening up new countries,
are fully as useful as the broader roads.
They have lighter locomotives, smaller
cars, narrow wheels, lighter ties, cheap
er rails, sleeper grades, and sharper
curves and connected with these pc
culiarities are saving in the cost of ex-
cavation, in the material used in
bridges and culveTts, in the valut of
iron, in the amount of dead weight
per passenger or per hundred weight
of freight carried on each train, i'll the
length of the line, and in nearly
every other item of expenditure
Moreover, railways of this class have
been and are practical successes. There
are two now in use in our Upper Pc
ninsular, one of which is eight miles
in length, and transports 459 tons
daily.
In Wales a railway with guage of
but one foot eleven and half inches,
which WAS incorporated in 1882 has
some gradients of one foot in so feet,
has reversed curves Ofsuch a character
that trains sometimes run upon three
of them at a time, and so short that
the locomotive and last car of the train
are often parallel. runs at as l.igh "a
rate of speed as 35 miles an hour, and
pays an annual dividend of 80 per cent.
on its original capital.
Similar roads now exist in Norway
and in Canada, and one is about being
constructed in Pennsylvania from Al
lentown to Harrisburg, which will
have q guage of three feet six inches,
and, it is estimated, will probably
transport freight at the rate of one cent
per ton per mile. Mr.. Dibble also pre-
sentcd a large collection of estimates
showing that in this State railways
with a guage of about three feet could
he built and operated for, at the most,
one-third of the cost of the usual style
of road, and he explained that the
measure introduced in the Senate by
Mr.. Emerson, to provide for the incOr-
poration of narrOw-guage companies
was only substantial adoption Of the
new system of the present general
railroad law, with the omission or cor
rection of some of the many IncOngru-
tiles of the latter. The speaker also
claimed that such roads, which expert
ence has shown, can be very cheaply
constructed and will wOrk-were eX-
actly what is needed for the newer
portions IF the State whose wants they
would relieve fully well as the more
expensive style of railway, while they
would entail far fewer burdens upon
the communities constituting them
He also disclaimed any personal inter
est, direct or indirect, present or pros
pective, in any nOrrow-guage line or
lines, and presented the matter not as
one to be benefited by it, but only a
matter of very great ini portance to the
State Of which he is a citizen.