Morning journal and courier., 1880-07-17
1 RAILROADS IN THE UNITED STATES

AND EUROPE.
 We may not have as fast trains in this
 country as they do ill England, but we are ahead of that country and every other in much that pertains to railroads and their
 management, as is clearly and interestingly
 shown by MT. O. Chanute, vice president of
 the American Society of Civil Engineers, in
 his annual address, an advance copy of which
 has been sent us.
 Our 4s, ,oO0,G inhabitants have s6, GOO
 miles of railroads, while the 3O6, 900, 900 of
 Europe have 98, 1000 miles, and the 1,050, ,0O0,-
 900 of the rest of the world possess but 25,-
 900 miles, Our railroads have cost less than
 half as much per mile as those of all Europe,
 and less than one-third as much as those of
 England. The cheapness of American rail
 roads is of course in some measure due to
 the comparative smoothness of much of our
 country, and to the absence of heavy land
 damages, but much more is due to the meth
 ods of construction applied, to the cheap and
 efficient expedients which our engineers have
 introduced, and especially to the character of
 the rolling stock which we have adopted.
 The early locomotives were not expected to
 have dragging power greater than one fourteenth of the weight upon their driving wheels Now in other countries one-seventh of the weight is considered 8 standard and satisfactory performance, while American To- comotives regularly work up to one-ffth in winter and do rather better in summer. That is to say, a European locomotive weighing S9,- 900 pounds might be expected to pull a train equal in resistance to lifting 12, ,571 pounds, ! 555 pounds, or 5 per cent. more. The average locomotive of Europe travels 15,720 miles per year, while the American performance is 21, ,OOO miles. The reason assigned is simply that the American machines are better ones, and two chief improvements on the Europe an prototype are mentioned First, the lead ing wheels of locomotives and all car wheels are not rigidly attached to the frames, but are fixed to trucks pivoted at the centre. and 1 secondly equalizing levers are used to dis tribute the weight equally over the driving wheels, thus keeping its apportionment near ly constant, while the wheels are free to adapt themselves to all the irregularities of the 1 track. These and other improvements have reduced the resistance of cars much that recent experiments have developed @ rolling friction of only four five pounds per ton, or, actually, only half that given in engineering notebooks
 The people of the United States have an idea that their railroads make too much well treated compared with the people of European countries. The profit alone on freight is more on the German Union rail 1 roads than the gross receipts of the three American trunk lines, and although it is true that the passenger rates are materially lower l in Germany than they are in the United 1 States, yet if the traffic of the New York roads had been carried at the German rates for 1877, the profit alone would have been 1 $52, 300, GOO more than it was if carried at 1 the Belgian rate, both for passenger and | freight the profit of the New York roads for | 1878 would have been more by $13,00o,- I GOO. In fact, sharp competition and the ln- cessant demands of the public for the past few | years have diminished rates on our railroads | so much that, as a whole, they are now pay | ing smaller returns upon tho entire capital invested in them than those of most | foreign countries. Thus, in 1878 our roads l earned 3.93 per cent, the English A 1 per cent, and the French and German | each 5.1, which is the greatest percentage of | profit. Between 1868 and 1877 the rates of | toll have been reduced in New York 56 per cent, and in Massachusetts 45, per cent, while in Germany they were only reduced 1 224 per cent. The lowest charge per ton per | mile on English traffic is { of a cent on min erals, as against regular rate between New York and Chicago of of cent on grain, and, at times, only 1-5 of 8 cent has been charged.
 From the above it will be seen that the people of the United States have no reason to be dissatisfied with the results accomplished thus far But there are obvious improve ments which the railroads of this country might and probably will soon adopt. In To- comotive practice we are behind the Euro economy of fuel and the proportion of heat ing surfaces European freight cars have iron instead of wooden sills There is larger use in Europe of platform and gondola cars for carrying freight, and the ease and cheap ness with which these are loaded and (with proper appliances) in com parison with our box cars, promises notable of station labor when they are more used here We also continue to handle goods at our depots with hand labor. At all sta tions where traffic is large we might substi ute machinery to advantage for many classes of freight. There is also room for a great advance in introducing signals to control the l