The weekly Alaska citizen., 1918-05-06

Construction or the Alaskan railway is being materially delayed by the war, and completion will be deferred indefinitely beyond the 1919 or 1920 date originally projected for it.
 While more than 5000 men were employed in the field during 1917. a force of perhaps 5000 is all that can be maintained through the summer of 1918, and though the $40.0OO.000 un- dertaking stands at stage 65 per cent toward completion, the remaind- CT may take much longer to con- struct than has the two-thirds so far built.
 A linking up of gaps in the coastal section. and the pushing of main rail- heads some 40 or 50 additional miles toward the interior is the limit of construction which the commissioners feel certain that the shortage of men, material and shipping will allow them to. attain.
 That will be Alaska's share of the inevitable sacrifice war entails" said William c. Edes, chairman of the Alaskan Engineering Commission. dis cussing estimates and uncertainties connected with the enterprise. Al though some of the delay would have intervened even under normal condi- tions.
 During the last two seasons we have practically completed the coastal sections of the line, along which we were enabled by transport conditions to work simultaneously at a number of points. In the future we shall be constructing straight up into the In- terior, extending the line at most from only two points"
 Assuming the usual congressional appropriations become available. the commission, which still has some doubts about its ability to secure even half the labor force it had a year ago, will center its effort during the coming summer upon the compile tion of the main line from Seward to Anchorage, both of which are Pa ciic ocean ports on the Alaskan southern seaboard, between which a rail gap of IT miles now exists.
 Main railheads in addition will be pushed some 40 or 50 miles toward the Interior terminal, which is Fair banks, opening the line approximately from Mile 215 to 265, distance esti- mated from the ocean terminus at Seward northward In Alaska, except in certain places and on certain types of work, the commission has found that construction is only practical during the summer after May 15.
 The Alaskan railroad, stretching up 560 miles in trunk and branches to ward the Arctic circle, is literally furthest north in railroad building enterprise, and as it stands today, has 296 miles of rails laid, has grades and cuts completed far ahead of rails, and location engineering entirely completed. It does not quite touch the polar zone, for its northern limit at Fairbanks is 120 odd miles south of the great circle. but its tracks cut across an area where the sun shines for 22 hours day in June and Chair man Edes admits that the daylight saving prescribed in the United States will appear trivial from an Alaskan viewpoint.
 Engineering and transport problems of no mean magnitude have been solved and are being solved in the construction of the line, for it's To- cators and even it's grade crews must hold themselves abreast and ahead of the pioneer settler. With work proceeding from both ends of the line, glance at the maps will show the transport line built up to supply the interior terminus stretching up from the United States through the Pacific and Arctic oceans to the port of St. Michael at the mouth of the Yukon river. Steel. powder, food and equipment must go thousands of miles by sea. be transhipped to river boats, forced upward against the cur rents of the Yukon and Tanana riv. CTS, and then overland by a last painful stage of pack and wagon train to Fairbanks.
 Until last November the commits sion had a steamer. an army trans port borrowed for the work, but then the army took it hastily back for the more important duty of car rying soldiers. The commission will now depend upon commercial trans port facilities, already greatly re- stricted, to deliver 5000 tons of freight this year over the circuit whose magnitude can be comprehend ed from any map. Supplying the southern terminus will present less difficulties, for the sturdy ocean tugs can still put out from Puget Sound and go safely up the inside pas sage" sheltered by islands from the Pacific winds. and bring the clumsy,