The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-08-11
improvements at Fort Wayne.

A half-million of that one hundred mil
lions which Mr.. Curtis said President Cas-
satt intends to spend on the betterment Of
the Pennsylvania Railroad is now being
disbursed in Fort Wayne in extensive i'm
provements of divisional facilities. A Pitts
burg firm has just completed the transfer
of the four-story brick, which served for
thirty years as the office building, 10 the
northwest instead of the southwest corner
of square in order to permit the enlarge
ment of the shops for the repair work that
is done at Fort Wayne. Great interest is
taken in the Improvements under way be-
cause they remove the last doubt of the
permanency of the shops in that city and
also because the enlarged facilities mean
large increase of the number of men en-
ployed. The Pennsylvania Company has
always been the largest single employer
OF labor in that city, and when the i'm
provenlents are completed will be in class
by itself The present pay roll outside of
the trainmen, includes 1,500 names The
new facilities will pretty nearly double the
number. The machine shops when COM
pleted will be equipped with immense trav-
cling cranes capable of handling the
heaviest engines. The lathes and planners
will be of the latest and largest pattern
and will each have it's electric motor This
form of transmission of power relieves the
need of shafting and pulleys and makes
room for the travelling crane runway, high
The new roundhouse is located in the
east yards and will be a mammoth affair,
having a diameter OF 375 feet and covering
three acres of ground. For this John
Suelzer, a local contractor, was the lowest
bidder 1t is now in course of construction,
rising in parts to the top of the windows.
1t will, when completed. accommodate
forty-four engines, each with a pit and
modern arrangements for cleaning them.
In the center will be a seventy -five-fOot
turntable operated by electricity The
roundhouse will have a boiler plant of its
own and will be kept at even summer tenn
peratur4 The coaling station is of new
construction. being a bridge of the main
tracks and side track. with a link belt
dumped Immediately over the tenders, and
the largest engines can thus be coaled in
three minutes without leaving the main
track. This system also is operated by
electricity, and by the same power the ash
pits will be cleaned out, the ashes being
loaded on gondola cars for removal out of
the way.
The company is double tracking the road
from Crestline to Chicago, a distance OF
$50 miles. OF this 160 miles is already COM
pleted and of the 120 miles of single track
construction work on fifty-seven and one
half miles of new track is under way. That
portion of the track is first receiving at
tention which has high grades, the new
track near Plymouth being cut down four
teen feet. In many places twenty feet to
the mile is being cut out. The fast sched-
ules of the new twenty-hour trains from
Chicago TO New York demand track as
level possible.
The improvements now under way do not
include a new passenger station in place
of the present one, which is palpably made
ouate and unsightly, but the Improvements
for the industrial betterment, with its ma
terial benefits, reconcile the people of Fort
Wayne 10 an attitude of patience in the
conviction that self-respect will sooner or
later compel a new station. The differ
ences between the Pennsylvania and the
Wabash the latter Gould interest, serve
-, -ff~
the contiguous stations here of the two
roads.