Arizona republican., 1898-11-20


 everything fits. The one dsfect is that
 on the eastern sections the rails arc
 too light to permit Of trains being run
 at high speed. The rails gre about fOrty-seyen pounds to the yard, as
 against eighty-pCund rails that are in
 use in England and America and the
 sixty-pound rail which is the custC- mary weight ca the Russian lines. It
 seems obvious that ultimately, and probably soon, these light rails will have to De replaced by something much heavier. Nevertheless, I am not pre- tparad to suggest that any error of judg- ment has been made. Tn a country
 where the spring thaws will lead 10 Q gSeat upEeaval of the track, it is prob able that within a year or two after the opening Of a railway q general re- laying of rails may become necessary. It may, therefore, be quite wise to be- gin with light rails and to replace these by heavier ones when reiaying. The
 metal is net lost, hut can be renelt9G at the local foundries.
 "The works Of the line generally have been carried cut in Q very thor ough fashion. The stations, of which
 there is one every fifteen to tw5rty
 miles, are well built of brick and stone,
 and are well equipped with all neces-
 sary offices, including invariably a wa
 ter tower Everywhere, the station
 buildings are C1 9 siding, allowing the
 main line to be left clear fer through
 traffic That main line, Of course, is a single line, but within the last few months an order has been issued that siding shall be built every seven versts, CT, say, each four milss. As my informant put it: We intend to be able
 to keep the line clear lest we have to send an army over it. Further, sixty new engines and forty old ones stand waiting to be used. They are officially aIIocated to the TraEs-Baikal section the section nct yet laid-but, of course, they are available for any use in emer- gency. These nsW engines, 1 was told, were locally made, at cost of 38,000 roubles each, as against an offer Of g, ,000 from Eng-and. But the order is that the railway shall be built of Rus sian material and by Russians, the sol itary exception being when Armstrong, WhitWOrth & Co. are constructing the Lake Baikal ics-breaker on Lake Bai- kal. That order against foreigners, however, has not been so strictly inter pTeted as to prevent the influx Of con- siderable numbers of Italians, mostly stone cutters, who work on the line chiefly at piecework rates. One result of this refusal to use foreign aid struck me as amusing. At the highest point of the railway, on the section as yet uniaid, about 430 miles east of Baikal, the line is to be carried through a solid rock cutting over 100 feet deep. That, said my informant, proudly, is the deepest railway cutting fl ,he world It was on the tip Of my tongue to an sWer that any people who knew about I9 1NArov h fn but I remem bered Q sharp answer would probably dam the river Of infor- In2tiCn Of which l was gTeedily drink ing
 The line over the whole route that l traversed, presents TO engineering unless We reclzon an alleged quIcksand near the Yenisei. which has taken, and may yet take, a good deal Of filling. The rivers are all bridged, except the Oka and Yenissi, and both of these bridges are in haGd-the lat ter to be a thousand metres long. All the important bridges are 0. iron, but many smaller ones are of weed, and wisely so. Timber exists by the side of the line, and the Russian is an ex- pert worker in wood. To use the ma tefial at hand, even if 1t involve more frequent repair, is probably the better, ar q is certainly the quicker. plan
 In his journey from China first MT. Reid came upon the railway Gn the shores Of Lake B2ikal east of Irkutsk. where the work Of construction was going briskly forward. Not only arat Russian engBn eeTS busy with tho he'~. lce-breaking ferry boat that is to carry the line On hand around the head of the lake so that thsie Vii 0o lno .,--1-.4-- est risk, in stress ct military move ments, Of an Interruption of traaic. From the engineers | learned 2 little Of the impending chang5s in their orig inal plans il consequence CF the Rus sian occupation Of Port Arthur. From Lake BaikaI,' he writes, the line has already been graded so far as Stralinsk, about 800 miles east of Baikal, and the whole Of that 800 miles was intended to be laid next year. But since that was 2 gre3t change has come in the whole plan Of the Trans-Baik2l sec ton Of the line. Pert Arthur and Tal- ienw2n have been acquired, and run ming rights have been obtained through Manchuri2. The earliest objective of the line is no longer VladivCstOk-it is Port Arthur. As a consequence, the original plan, nay, even the second plan, Of l,he line has been reconsidered. It is being proposed to vary a section of the amended scheme in favor of a more direct route to Port Arthur. ThaL more direct Port Arthur routs is now being surveyed, and, substantially, il is proposed that the place Of divergence from the original and from the still later route shall be at or near Chitai, a point some 500 miles east Of Lake Baikal and soms considerable distance short of Sire insl1, to which latter p,aca, as I have said, the line is already grad ed. Speaking broadly, this means something mere than Q saving in dis tance. It means-I quote the talk of Siberian railway ngi1e9rs-that for all practical purposes Of railway ad- and shipping facilities Inc real terminus Of the Russian railway system shall be in the Gulf of Ps-cni- Ii. To put it plainly, the great railway to Vladivostok will cease to be a main line to Vladivostok. |. will become a railway to the China sea, with a bracch 0 VIadivCstok.'