The enterprise-recorder. (Madison, Fla.) 1908-1933, 1908-10-15

- AuhuAAb Tue lIelBnL WnlCl
pours in on him cannot be expected to
ask why the turning Of a pair of tires
takes eighteen hours instead of two.
Question Of Efficiency.
Neither perhaps does he realize
that the inefficiency of his employees,
Of his equipment and OF his track Is
costing him as much as 1t does, con-
tnues the expert, An engineer with
an efficiency OF eighty per cent. of the
Ideal would be above the average.
II he now has to run an engine which
is only eighty per cent. as good as It
was when 1t left the shops and must
use coal Of eighty per cent. excellence
over a roadbed which has also the
same relative excellence, the results
attained will not be eighty per cent.
of which might be attained, but forty
per cent.
F. W. Taylor, recently president Of
the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, said that in his experience
railroad shop working as high as
fifty per cent. efficiency is rare, and a
railroad track maintained at fifty per
cent. OF its proper condition is still
rarer That means that If an engi-
neer Of only fifty per cent. efficiency
has to drive a locomotive from shops
of this sort over a track thus poorly
kept up he is only likely to do twelve
and one-half per cent. as much work
as a thoroughly efficient man with a
perfect engine would accomplish on
a first class track.
So far are the railroads from at
tanning the best and most economical
results that, It is asserted, they do not
keep in many instances reliable re-
turns of the coal they burn. Fuel Is
of course one of the chief expenses,
yet when Mr.. Emerson pointed out to
one of the chief railroads Of the West
some extraordinary fluctuations in
their coal records, the only explana-
ton he could get from the highest
official was:
"Oh, the records are wrong. We
never go much by them"
On another important system run
ming into Chicago he was told by the
official in charge that he quite be-
lieyed the company lost at least one
dollars worth of coal on every car
1t brought into its yards. AS it passed
through the suburbs there was endless
petty pilfering, and it was nobody's
business to put a stop to it. Possibly,
too, the coal mines were not particu-
larly accurate in the quantity they
sent out in the first instance and gen.
orally made their errors in their own
favor.
Then, If 1t was cold weather, fires
we're needed to warm the roundhouses
and other Offices, and 1t was easy to
supply the CRATES from the nearest
Yet there was no doubt
that the company received and paid
for a certain quantity of coal, and the
bills were there to show 1t. 1t must
be accounted for somehow, and so 1t
was all credited to one locomotive or
another, and no questions asked.
OtueIbl LthhhBG III II uCAs
"Now, the effect of this is" said
Mr.. Emerson, that no railway to-day
has any statistics which will show
how much coal a locomotive ought to
consume on a trip and how much it
actually does. This leads to all sorts
Of wasteful practices, which could be
easily stopped If they were detected.
A great deal Of coal is used in the
when the locomotives are
actually doing nothing.
81 have seen a fireman, at the very
end of his run, when a locomotive had
a full head of steam and had only to
20 to the roundhouse, keep throwing
more coal on a roaring fire. He did
t automatically almost without
showing what he was doing, but It
was nobodys business to stop him,
and so he went on.
Then a locomotive may be held
'or hours on a siding, waiting for a
clear track. Nobody bothers about
he fuel which is being burned, and
without accurate returns and stand
,rdizations there is no way Of discov-
sring accurately that the delay has
cost the company in coal alone a very
sum. 1t seems TO me that
he coal bill is one of the easiest
.hings to keep a watch over, and that
. very simple system would enable
he companies to cut down their fuel
bills by a large proportion"
Tools are another source OF large
expense to railroads, according to Mr..
Emerson. Their operations are so
complex and they manufacture so
many different things that tools OF
- - ~ An-nrLntLnn are mead ed