Bisbee daily review., 1907-04-17
NEW MACHINE SHOPS
 FOR s. P. AT BOWIE
This Construed to Mean That Florence Will Be on the
 Main Line.

The Arizona Blade publishes the fol loving railroad story:
 (. D. Reppy, right of way agent for 6 P. railroad. arrived in Florence Sat u unCay from Phoenix and the Blade iearned from him that his business in Phoenix was with the land office and consisted of the purchase, with land script. of 250 acres of land adjoining the s. P. yards at Bowie station, the point at which the Globe. Gila Valley and Northern railroad leaves the main line of the Southern Pacific company This land purchase was made for the Southern Pacific company and this company has set aside S150,000 to be used in constructing on this ground new railroad machine shops. They paid SIP per acre for the ground in land script.
 Bowie is now a freight division on the main line, situated about half way between Tucson and Fl Paso. The dis tance between Florence and Bowie is about the same as that between Bowie and Tucson; hence Florence will prob. ably be made freight division station between Bowie and Yuma when the Arizona and Eastern line shall have been completed between San Carlos and Maricopa, or Casa Grande.
 The Globe, Gila Valley and Northern railroad, owned and operated by the Southern Pacific has been reconstruct ed from Bowie to San Carlos. and pro- vided with 90-pound rails, an indication that it is to be made a part of the main through line. From San Carlos d~,. -ka NsIo s, only seventy miles, and only thirty miles from here to Maricopa, or twen- ty-four miles to Casa Grande, by the surveys made for the Arizona and Eastern, a Southern Pacific line It will be seen, from these facts, that by building only about 100 miles of new road between San Carlos and Mari copa, or Casa Grande. via the Gila can yon and Florence, the S. P. railroad company will have a through line from the east to the west 1S0 miles shorter than their present main line and the heaviest grade between Bowie and Maricopa will not exceed .75 of one per cent, while over the present main line between Bowie and Maricopa they have to keep constantly iI service, as ''pushers" over heavy grades, about twenty-five large engines and their crews which adds hundreds of thous- ands of dollars to the company's ope- rating expenses annually.
 But the company would not only make a great saving in through mile age and a great reduction in operating expenses by building this new link in their through line but will also pass through the center of one of the great est mining fields and agricultural belts in the west and develop an amount of local traffic that will increase the roads earning capacity very material ly.
 The purchase of so large a tract of land at Bowie and the construction thereon of mammoth machine shops, would indicate a settled determination on the part of the company to build their cutoff at once and accounts for their engineer corps being at work in the Gila canyon this side of San Car los.
 If the company would begin and push construction work from Maricopa or Casa Grande east at once it would not take them long to reach the Buttes sixteen miles east of Florence, as they would have level, mesa country to build over. The moment they got the road completed to Butte they would have sufficient local traffic to make the line pay a profit as they would have train load of ore per day for Fl Paso beside having an oppor- tunity to haul from Butte down to the prison site stone for the construction of the prison The stone at the Butte is the finest building stone in the ter. ritory.