The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-07-27
BIG RAILROAD BURDENS.
Not Stocks Nor Bonds, But the Car
 Weights.

Not Stocks Nor Bonds, But the Car
 Weights
 An ordinary passenger car on a steam railroad costs from $4,000 to $5,ooo, ana weighs 38,000 pounds, or nineteen tohs' A mail car, which costs from $2,000 to $2,500. and is shorter by about one quarter than the ordinary passenger coach. weighs S2,000 pounds, or sixteen tons A baggage car, without the bag gage in it, weighs 2S,000 pounds, or fourteen tons, and costs about as much as mail car. A sleeping car is more expensive than any of the others and it weighs a good deal more, too. A plain, simple but durable sleeping car costs anywhere from $6000 to S10000, and an ornate elaborate. luxurious sleeping car, with observation attach ments, literary annex and culinary de- partment, costs anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. The average weight of a sleeping car is from 4o,0O0 to 44,0o0 pounds, or from twenty to twenty-two tons,
 A full train in motion, as little fig- uring will show Is no light affair, says the New York Sun. The ordinary weight of the railroad locomotive for passenger service, inclusive of tender, but not of fuel in the tender, is forty tons. One baggage car weighs four teen tons and one mail car sixteen tons, bringing up the weight of the locomo- tive and the baggage and mail cars to seventy tons. Six passenger ears, at an average of nineteen tons each, weigh IA tons, so that the total weight of a train made up of locomotive and eight cars would be 1S4 tons, or 36S,000 pounds, exclusive of the weight of bag gage, of the fuel carried, passengers and mail matter.
 Pulling 18 tons along rails at the rate of fifty miles an hour, or more is an achievement which has not been easily brought about, and the more clearly it Is understood how far the mechanical work on the railroads has been pushed There were, by the last figures reported, 36, 900 locomotives in use on American railroads, 26,000 passenger cars and s. GOO mail and baggage cars. These fig ures seem large until compared with the number of freight cars on Ameri- can railroads, and then they seem in significant, for the number of freight cars in use is 1.125.000.
 Freight cars. among railroad men, are divided into four classes-fat cars, such as are used for the transportation of stone, machinery and lumber; box cars, such as are used for the trans portation of grain, fruit and ordinary merchandise; stock cars, such as are used for the transportation of grain and oil-those used for oil being SUD- piled with tanks. The average weight of a flat or gondola car is seven tons. The car costs from $500 to $400 Box cars weigh ton more and cost $100 more each.
 1 Stock cars weigh eight tons each on the average; coal cars weigh three tons each. It costs about s2,00O to build coal or oil cars, and they are designed to l carry five tons apiece. The weight of | fifty coal cars is 150 tons, and of their contents, if all filled, 250 tons, which, with locomotive and caboose added, make 420 tons as the weight of a train. It may be said, roughly, that the weight of loaded trains, passenger, coal or freight, ranges from 200 to 500tons. The lighter the train the greater the speed; that's the railroad rule.