The age-herald., 1901-10-08

see the Texas oil used In the passenger locomotives of our eastern railroads" said Edward w. Parker the fuel statis- tican of the geological survey, to your correspondent today. Great economic results will follow the Beaumont discov- cries. unless I am mistaken. Thus far smoke-consuming devices on locomotives are not wholly successful; the limited space and the necessity of @ forced draft complicate the problem. But oil makes an admirable locomotive fuel, as those who have ridden on some of the roads of Southern California have long realized. The Southern Pacific and Santa Fe and other railroads are now changing over their locomotives so as to use this fuel oil, and I believe the movement will spread. This Texas product in It's crude form is much heavier than the Pennsyl- vania, Ohio and eastern oils but it does not carry the same quantity of illumi- nants. While. 1t could be refined for H. luminating purposes, doubt whether it would pay to do so in the present com petition for a wide market. But 1t Is an ideal fuel oil, better than we have ever had before, and will make its market there.
 "The Santa Fe Railroad has long used oil for quite stretch of country. in fact from California till it hears the coal fields of New Mexico. On the line of the South ern Pacific, whose tracks already run within four miles of Beaumont, there is not a coal field from New Orleans to San Francisco; the road has had to import its coal from Alabama, the Inu-an Territory, New Mexico and Colorado. This has been one of it's heaviest items of expense, and I should say that the cost of fuel for running trains on that railroad ought now to be reduced 50 per cent. To show how eagerly it's managers took advantage of the opportunity 1t will be recalled that oil was struck at Beaumont on the 10th of January. In March, when I was in New Mexico, plans had already been made for putting up tanks for the storage and distribution of oil for locomotives, and this was less than two months after its discovery. They spray it under the boilers on the atomizer principle, some times using steam power, and sometimes compressed air, but as the locomotive is supplied with both. one for the pistons, and the other for the brakes, either plan works well. Whether oil is used for fuel. either on locomotives or steamboats, 1t can be carried some distance away from the boilers, and be conveyed to them in pipes This is sometimes an advantage. Steamers will often have their boiler ca pacity in the stearn and their fuel in the bow oil fuel also avoids all expense of stoking. W hile I do not think that the Texas oil will get into our freight locomo- lives right away, I look 10 see it on the passenger trains, particularly where the roads appreciate the advantages to the passengers of freedom from the smoke and coal dust which are now the unpleas- ant part of railroad riding.
 Another place where Texas oil is go- ing to invade the coal market Is in the congresses of the South. They use a great deal of coal there for pressing cot ton as well as in sugar factories. These are now changing over to oil burners. This Is already the case with most of the plants in Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston and Houston. This obviously affects the bituminous and not the anthracite mar ket, since little anthracite coal gets south for any purpose.
 "The problem of smoke consumption Is one that ought to attract systematic at tention of our large cities as well as on our locomotives. With the growing use of bituminous coal and the increase in the size of the factory plants, hotels and apartment houses In our larger towns,the discomforts attending the unrestrained use of soft coal are becoming serious From a technical and mechanical point of view smoke consumption is entirely feasible; the smoke problem may be said to be solved A number of entirely prac- tical devices are on the market, and their effectiveness has been fully demonstrate ed. The trouble seems to be in overcom- ing the inertia of people and in getting manufacturers to go to the expense of euuipping their boilers with smoke con sumers A number of cities in the west have passed laws to compel the use of some improved plan of this sort, but those | persons who have been so long free to use fuel as they saw fit regard 1t as a natural right,and contest any restrictions bitterly. St. Louis made heroic strug- gle few years ago and finally succeeded In accomplishing great deal. I was there in 1893 studying the question, and I found they had surprisingly clean city. But the Supreme Court of the State de- cided that the ordinance by which this had been done was defective, and so the city reverted gradually to something like Its old condition They have since suc- l-ceedcd in passing another ordinance,