The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-12-12
JUNK FROM
THE PANAMA CANAL
Machinery That Cost Millions
Goes To 'crap Heap
FINDS IN ODD PLACES
Old Locomotives Cars, Dredges and
Glrders to 30 Brought Out.
Helped Canal Before
Condemned.

from the Omend Bee.
The Isthmian canal commission has
begun the Job OF transporting about 10O, 900
tons Of old French junk from the 18TH
mus to New York city. The junk in
cludes old locomotives. dump cars, trucks,
barges, boilers, Orders, dredges. sheet
iron, parts of old machinery and other
things for which the French canal COM
pany paid millions of dollars and which
It left to go to ruin on the isthmus
The commission is selling on competi-
tive bidding all the old iron and steel
along the canal route except such parts
as may be reserved for canal work
About 700 tons Will be moved to the
states every two weeks by the steam
ships Ancon and Cristobal. 1t will take
three years to transport all Of the junk
The most of It will be scrapped where It
lies on the isthmus. The commission will
ship no pieces of more than 20 tons in
weight. This will permit the shipping of
locoomtive boilers with fire boxes and
fiues.
The most of this old material is of for
eign manufacture and as 1t Is landed in
New York Uncle Sam is confronted with
the proposition of being obliged to pay
himself 81 a short ton on the entry. I'm
der a provision in the sundry civil act of
May. 1908, this duty will be returned by
Uncle Sam to the canal funds, but to ac-
complish this without a special appro-
priation each year It will be necessary to
have the sale contaminated only after
the Junk has passed through the New
York customs house. Each contractor
will be under a bond of $4,000 and pay
ments are to be made to the canal com
mission after each delivery.
The sale Is being made at this time
chiefly for the purpose of getting the old
material that lies in the great basin of
Gatun lake out before the basin is filed
with water. There are large quantities
Of the junk in the lake basin.
What 1t Brings.
Each of the locomotives left bv the
French yields between $500 and 5000 worth
Of copper alone. The commission will
save the old steel rails on the isthmus,
to be used as reinforcement in the con-
crete work and as telephone and tele-
graph poles.
Some of the old French junk has been
found in extraordinary places. Dredges
have been discovered almost buried COM
pletely in sand hundreds Of feet away
from any body of water and overgrown
with dense tropical vegetation. Appar-
emily they have been carried away from
the river bed by high water or the river
itself had shifted its course. Several of
these buried dredges were in a fairly
good state of preservation and are now
doing work on the isthmus
Some of the Junk has been lifted from
the bottom of the Chagres river and from
the bottom of the old French CO lal prism,
whore hundreds of thousands of dollars
worth of equipment sank after the
French abandoned the work. Some OF the
relics In the canal prism near the cross
ing Of the Rio Grande river were dis
lodged only after heavy charges of dyna-
mite had been exploded under them.
Others have been raised from watery
graves and are now helping to link the
Atlantic with the Pacific.
Profits Will Be Small.
The profit from the sale of the French
Junk will be small compared with the
value Of the service that the commission
already has derived from the cast-off
equipment For the first two years of
their work the commission relied abso-
lutely upon the old locomotives left by
the French. In 1906 there were 1O6 of
these weather. beaten locomotives In
service, compared with only ID American
made engines. Since that time the per-