The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-03-04
THOSE DAKOTA BLocKADEs.
Man Who Has Been Through Them
 Defends the Railroads.

|
 Defends the Railroads. A man who lived on a Dakota branch line during a winter full of bIizzards rises to remark in tine Boston Transcript that the folks who are bowling against the railroads up there don't know what they are talk l ing about.
 The despatches say" he says, that the present winter is the worst since the one ten years ago. As I was resident of the State that winter may interpret the conditions to-day in tine light of my experiences.
 Even in the eastern part of the State there are sections of main lines where cuts are very necessary. It is in these cuts that the severe trouble from railroad navigation occurs. As no chain is stronger than it's weakest link these cuts when filled with snow block the whole system.
 '"The reader must remember that in North Dakota falls much larger amount of snow in one of taeir snow years than we in the East have, and there are almost no thaws to reduce { the volume of snow lying on the level.
 Tt is not unusual to see ten feet of snow on the level, as now stands all over North Dakota, and ten years ago in the middle of March, when spring was budding in most parts of the 1 United States. now ploughs were buck ling drifts and there was five feet of snow throughout the State,
 Now when this large amount of snow falls, and Keeps on falling, the problem of how to handle 1t on the level on the prairie land is difficult enough But when it falls into one of these cuts of which spoke then it becomes a terrific obstacle to railroad management.
 Take the line that has got into the public despatcies, New Rockford. This is on a branch about one hundred miles long that runs from Jamestown to Leeds. It has only one train each way day
 The line is a north and south one, the worst direction, obviously, for snow bloekading. It has several cuts and is in a valley where snow falls heavily and stays.
 No wonder the Northern Pacific Railroad has been unable to get any trains through, and we are compelled to believe President Elliot when he declared that he has done his best 10 penetrate that awful adamantine mountain of snow
 Ten years ago there was branch line in North Dakota so situated that the Northern Pacific did not try to open up all winter simply because 1t was practically impossible to do so. When blizzard succeeds blizzard and snowstorm succeeds snowstorn1, no amount of snow ploughing can do any thing. Town along this line were fed by wagons from the main line. No one suffered.
 Then take the Hannah line, an- other about which the Interstate Com merce Commission has been exercised, | If you will take up railroad map of North Dakota you will see a curi- ous arrangement of seven branch lines extending north from the main line of the Great Northern to the in- ternational boundary.
 "These lines run one or two trains up and back each day. The Hannah branch begins at Larimore, twenty | five miles west of Grand Forks, and runs 125 miles northwest to Hannah, | in Cavalier county
 T know something about that line, because lived on it for year when it's terminus was Langdon the county steat of Cavalier county. This line runs uphill almost all the way.
 Its terminues lies on top of what l they call the mountain, which is a rise of ground belonging probably to the Turtle Mountains a little further west There is but one passenger train each way and one freight train When a geniune storm occurs and snow for twenty-four or thrty-six hours at a stretch, as it did ten years ago this winter, the possibilities of a snow blockade are immense.
 We were so situated on Thanks giving Day in 1896. The storm 1 struck the little cottage l lived in about o'clock in the morning. When I say struck, I mean struck.
 "There was a bang, as if some pro- jectile had been thrown against the house, and then a roar. Tha roar kept up its roaring all that night all the next day, and nearly all the next night.
 When the people began to dig themselves out they found the snow ! in the middle of the road anywhere from ten feet to twenty feet high. They found 1t in some places crush ing in store fronts and reaching sec ond story windows,
 "They did not attempt to do any, thing more than dig themselves out, and then they began to wonder when the train would come. It took four 5days to repair the wires so that the markets could be got, a vital thing in ] the wheat country.
 l Tt took six more to get a train l through. Men had worked like mad had used up several snowploughs and when they arrived at the town they