Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-04-26

to Butte, Mont, has been opened up
for traffic. 1t is estimated that its
cost was $40,000000. The line has paid
all operation expenses, with dividend
OF 8 per cent on the, investment. With
the through line completed 1t is ex-
pected that even better showing will
be made. Furthermore, settlers are
filling up the newly opened country
with a rapidity which exceeds anything
dreamed of by those building the line
1t is expected that the whole extension
will be opened to freight traffic within
about two months, but that the line
will not be allowed to "ripen' for about
six months before passenger traffic is
put on it.
The recent opening of the Virginian
railway marks what railroad men be-
lieve to be a new epoch in railroad con-
struction. 1t Is said that Its builder
looked farther into the future in its
construction than any other builder in
the history of railroading. Completed
at a cost far above the ordinary outlay
for construction work, everything has
been done to make it big enough to not
only care for all traffic now in sight,
but for the possibilities of a half CEN
tury. No other piece of construction,
extending through mountains and
across water courses. has ever offered
so effective protest against grades
and curves as this offers. Someone has
said that the Rogers road is an in
clined plane from the West Virginia
coal fields to the sea, and he did not
miss 1t much. Only at one place in
the whole 443 miles of the road has the
maximum grade of q per cent been
exceeded. The new Clinchfield road
has been built with largely the same
ideas, and has crossed high mountains
with less grade than was made by the
roads of thirty years ago in skirting
q watercourse.
John F. Wallace, former chief engi-
neer of the Panama canal. has figured
out that it will require billion dollars
to meet the southern demand for rail-
road improvements and extensions
during the next ten years, a hundred
million dollars a year. He has found
that at present only 1884 miles of the
southern roads are double tracked and
that the demand of traffic will require
10000 miles of double track before
1920 BY that time he thinks that the
south will have $4,000 miles of rail-
road, and that it will require gross
earnings of $4,000 a mile with 10 per
cent thereof going to operating ex-
penses, to make the investments rep
resented yield per cent.
A new road which will be remarkable
In many respects Is the Western Pa
cific, extending westward as the coast
On the line between Denver and Wen
dover it runs across a bed of pure salt
containing nearly half a billion car
loads of that material. Some enterpris-
ing person has figured out that this
is ten tons to every inhabitant of the
globe, and that if allowance is made
for those who use but littlo salt, at
three pounds a year to the individual,
the supply would last for 1000 years,
thus assuring the Western Pacific a
good income to a time far beyond the
interest of the living generation.
The activities of the geological survey
are felt in many lines of enterprise,
but in none more than in railroad con-
struction. The great topographic map
of the United States, which will take
a quarter of a century in its making.
has proved great boon to the build
ers of railroads. In localities where this
map has been completed the protector
of new line has practically all of the
information as to elevations, character
of soil, ETC., that a preliminary survey
would give. In fact, it is possible TO
estimate with approximate accuracy
the amount of filling and excavation a
projected line would require. With this