The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1908-09-25

pours In on him cannot be expected to
ask why the turning of pair Of tires
takes eighteen hours instead of two.
Question Of Efficiency.
Neither perhaps does he realize
that the ineficiency Of his employees,
OF his equipment and OF his track Is
costing him as much as it does, cbn-
tinues the expert. An engineer with
an efficiency OF eighty per cent. OF the
ideal would be above the average.
If 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 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
r. 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 IL an engi-
neer of only fifty per cent. efficiency
has to drive locomotive from shops
of this sort over 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 OH
a first class track.
So far are the railroads from at
tanning the best and most economical
results that, 1t 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 rum
ming into Chicago he was told by the
official in charge that he quite be-
lieved the company lost at least one
dollars worth of coal on every car
1t brought into its yards. Asst 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 we're not particu-
larly accurate In the quantity they
sent out in the first instance and gem
orally made their errors in their own
favor.
Then, If it was cold weather, fires
were needed to warm the roundhouses
and other offices, and it was easy to
supply the CRATES from the nearest
locomotive. Yet there was no doubt
that the company received and paid
for a certain quantity of coal, and the
bills were there to show It. 1t must
be accounted for somehow, and SO 1t
was all credited to one locomotive or
another, and no questions asked.
General Leakage in Fuel.
"Now, the effect of this is" said
Mr.. Emerson, that no railway to-day
has any statistics which will show
how much coal locomotive ought to
consume on 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
roundhouse when the locomotives are
actually doing nothing.
II have seen a fireman, at the very
end of his run, when locomotive had
full head of steam and had only to
go to the roundhouse, keep throwing
more coal on a roaring FIRE. He did
1t automatically, almost without.
knowing what he was doing, but it
was nobody's business to stop him,
and so he went on.
Then a locomotive may be held
for hours on a siding, waiting for a.
clear track. Nobody bothers about
the fuel which is being burned, and
without accurate returns and stand
ardizations there is no way of discov-
ering accurately that the delay has
cost the company in coal alone very
considerable sum. 1t seems to me that
the coal bill is one of the easiest
things to keep watch over, and that
a very simple system would enable
the companies to cut down their fuel
bills by 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
every sort and description are needed.
But there is very little attempt to see
that workmen get new ones only when
they are wanted, and that then they