The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-07-21

Colon, Republic of Panama, Jiuy 20. The Panama Railroad can give point CTS to any system in the United States on the matter of handling a maximum of business on a minimum length of line. During the fiscal year of 1907 it handled 43.45e trains over it's fifty miles of line. and when the work for the present fiscal year is summed up it will probably show that nearly 100000 trains have been handled. The Isth- milan Canal Commission is now hauling not far from 1000 trainIoads of dirt . month, and the Panama Railroad is probably running 50 per cept. more trains than 1t did a year ago. This would make over 5000 trains a month on q railroad only fifty miles long.
 The acquisition of the Panama Rail- road by the United states represents It's first incursion into the field of Gov ernment ownership of railroads. When French for s40000000, he got. among other things, the Panama Railroad. Under existing laws the road could not have been operated on q conmer- cial basis except as private corpor- ation. the United States merely own ing the stock. while an operating com pany. made up of Government officials. would have conducted it's affairs. If if had been acquired in the usual way every dollar collected for freight and passenger traffic would have had to be turned into the Treasury, and every dollar paid out would have had to be appropriated by Congress. Further more, when the Panama Railroad Com- pany wanted an engine, a car. steel rail or a dozen eggs for its commits sary if would have had to advertise for
 This led to the present plan, which nuts the railroad safely beyond the bundle of red tape that so often flinders economical methods. The railroad IS therefore operated just like any other railroad, and it's fiscal affairs are con ducted the same way, except that the president and the board of directors do not owr, a single share of stock. and that the Isthmian Canal Commission IS allowed to run it's trains on the Fan anna Railroad line.
 One familiar with the Pennsylvania Railroad in the States Is forcibly re- minded of 1t when on the Isthmus. Hsrs is the familiar P. R. R." on every car, and only the keystone is missing from the lettering on the freight cars, else the uninitiated might iun1u at the conclusion that the Penn sylvania had extended its lines to Pan- anna. The coaches are painted the same color, and are of the same modern de- sign as those of the Pennsylvania sys-
 
 but with small tenders.
 No railroad In America ever under went such wonderful changes in so short a time as the Panama Railroad has undergone. When Colonel Goethals first went across the Isthmus four years ago he found the jungle touch ing boughs across the railroad, form ing a tree-arched way almost from Colon to Panama. The roadbed was then as crooked as the Chagres River. and that is the superlatjve degree of oolxedness. The builders had follow Cd the line of least resistance from one side of the Isthmus to the other. and that classic railroad joke about stand ing on the rear platform and lighting a cigar from the headlight of the lo- eomotive might we'll have been perpe- trated by passenger on Panama Railroad train. The rolling stock was antiauated and the whole outfit was at least twenty-five years behind the time. They. did not even have tel- e9raph line, but carried little telephone outfits lik the one trouble man" carries, and would stop the train and ring up the dispatcher whenever they
 When the United States took hold there had to be good railroad. Wal