The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-25
From the Scientific

From the Sc1ent1nc American. N LARGE part of the labor cost of
 P0 excavating the Culebra cut Is
 due to the work of disposins
 of the excavated material on selected
 dumping grounds, onto which the ma
 terial is hauled over railroad tracks.
 After the track is once laid it has to be
 continually shifted over to the edge of
 the dump. This is done by what is
 knownNas a track throwing machine,
 which will throw over a mile of track
 distance of nine feet in eight hours.
 This machine is handled by three men
 and six laborers, who do the same work
 in the same time that would necessi-
 tate the employment of 500 or 500 hand
 laborerS. When the train load of ma
 terial has been hauled out to the dump
 there comes the important question of
 unloading, and this is done by means
 of special machine which has made
 record at Culebra of unloading 5000
 cubic yards from 16 trains in eight
 hours At this rate seven unloaders
 and ploughs would take care of the
 daily output in the month of March
 last and this would mean that 2S white
 men and 42 laborers could unload
 32, 900 cubic yards a day. A man with
 shovel could unload only 12 cubic yards
 a day. upon which basis we find that
 by the old methods of unloading by
 hand would require 2e60 laborers and
 100 white foremen to do as much as
 2S white men and 43 laborers and
 nremen employed on mechanical un-
 loading.
 After the material has been ploughed
 off the cars it Is pushed away from
 the track by mechanical spreaders, whic distribute the material from nine
 to twelve feet out from the track. To accomplish this work by hand would involve the use of 5000 'aborers. as against eight machines, Is white men and 24 laborers and fremen. A com
 parison of the train service of the
 French and used 25 years ago for haul ing the material out to dump and the service now in operation at Panama shows also a remarkable gain in ef
 fciency This comparison is of course no fenection on the French method, as the development in the size and l ca pacity of trains during the last | quarter century has been extraordi- nary. The standard engine used by l the French and rebuilt by us hauls a dozen four yard dump cars, or | train carrying AS cubic yards of ma terial. Our engines haul 20 Western dump cars of 12 yards capacity each, l or 240 cubic yards train: or they will haul F flat cars of IS cubic yards ca | pacity; a total of 3O6 cubic yards output of 32000 cubic yards daily 1t talks 666 French trains against 1S3 trains of Western dumps or 104 trains of fiat cars of our American equipment In a general comparison of results with the work done 25 years ago by the French which were the methods in vogue 20 years ago on similar work in the United States, we find that with total of 1000 men, superintendents. timekeepers. laborers, etc. we took out of the Culebra cut in March last S15.270 cubic yards. At the height of their operations the French took out maximum Of 2S2,52S cubic yards from the Culebra cut in one month. with the employment of from 16000 to lS.000 laborers alone not including superintendents. fore men, etc. Probably of this number of laborers about 90 per cent, or 5000, was the efficient working force. The results a month a laborer work out as