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

thirty or sixty days and no rent IS
paid for them or the room they oc-
cupy. Inland shippers take three to
eight days to load and unload, and
every day thus taken up means one
day from the service Of the car to the
railroad.
Secondly, there is in his opinion
lack of cooperation between the diff
ferent officials A division superin-
tendent aims at getting the cars of
his division, and cares nothing about
his colleagues. Thus a train is made
up in San Francisco to come East.
1t will have forty cars, six of which
are consigned to Omaha. Naturally
they should be placed together, but
that would mean lot of shunting in
San Francisco, and it Is much simpler
for the Western man to make up the
train just as the cars happen along.
Consequently at Omaha each car
has to be cut out separately. The
whole train has to be moved six times,
the cars are exposedpto six times as
much rough handling, six times as
much fuel is used, and the track is
occupied for six times as long as if
the Omaha cars had been grouped to-
gether.
"It's all a question of divided re-
sponsibility," said Mr. Emerson. Sup
pose you take a pack of cards and
tell little girl of ten to arrange
them so as to be able to pick out any
card at moments notice; she'll
stack them in suits and in order at
once. But If you take the pack
around the room and ask twenty per-
sons each to pick one or two cards,
it won't be worth anybodY's while to
arrange them in any order. It's just
the same with the freight cars. It's
nobody's business to group them sys-
tematically, and so it's not done.
Ill-Fitting Locomotives.
Finally, Mr.. Emerson asserted that
in many cases the difficulty in moving
freight cars is because there has been
an uneven development of the rail-
roads. A few years ago the theory
of. large locomotives and lengthy
trains broke as new light upon rail-.
road men. 1t was new gospel to
them, and they were determined to
live up to it at all costs. One of the
most famous roads of the West &C
tually built locomotives which not
one of its roundhouses would accom-
modate and very few of its turntables
could take care Of A locomotive
was forced to run a dozen miles at
times where it could find a place
where it could be turned around.
Then the sidings are not always
large enough for a train, added the
expert. BY the principle of "seesaw-
ing" it is always possible to move
train past one which overfoWs the
siding, but it causes endless delays,
much expense in fuel and great wear
and tear on the rolling stock. More
over, "a harassed dispatcher, knowing
his passengers are late, will be in
clined to treat a heavy freight with
a great lack of consideration. If he
gets heavy freight tucked away in
siding out of danger he will leave it
there for hours at time, until he
can let it go off his division on clear
track. A few delays of this sort will
knock the economy of big load out
in very short time.
To overcome such difficulties as
these Mr.. Emerson urges the higher
officials must take a closer supervis-
ion of the details of their roads, and
must enforce the rule that the good of
the service comes before the good of
the division. They should prevent
such fighting of the division superin-
tendents for their own hands, as oc-
Cured in one case of which Mr.. Emer-
son knew, in, which a locomotive had
to be transferred from one division
to another.
1t was suggested that it should be
employed to draw a train to it's new
quarters. The superintendent, who
was losing it, refused because it
would be burning his coal on another
mans territory. 1t was suggested
that it should run light. This, too,
was refused, and the superintendent
decided that it must be hauled by an
other locomotive, because then it
would go to add to the freight which
he had moved.
But not only would the finances Of
the railroads benefit, in Mr.. Emer-
sons opinion, blythe introduction of
a standardization of repairs, but the
workmen would be much the better
off,
In taking up the study of shop eff
ficiency," he said, Il had a moral as
we'll as an economical motive. saw
that at present the workman is he