Arizona republican., 1921-09-03

T. & k freight car mileage from 15.7
 to 36.7 in 24 hours. There is no req son why freight car should not
 move 175 miles in that time."
 Ford is only seeing. seven years late, what Henry w. Thornton saw
 in 1914 in England. It is shame 1t Is almost treasonable-to say that
 any foreigner can do anything better than we can. We are the smartest, best-looking, most chivalrous. clean
 est-minded, most industrious. most
 honest and funniest people in the
 world and we admit it and do not ask
 that it be proved. But Thornton saw all these things in England in 1914
 and told about them and the jolly old
 thought did not get through the jolly old American bean. Not until Henry
 Ford operated on 1t with monkey wrench and hammered a hole through
 our bony brain protection through
 which an idea could seep.
 How Thornton Made Good Thornton was the star young man of the Long Island division of the Pennsylvania railroad. One of the great English systems was dying Of
 various sorts of dry rot and too many lords on the directorate, and its own CTS looked through England for a | and make it tick. There was no such young man in England. There were | lots of young men belonging to the best families who really should have been provided with a job, but they | could dance better than they could run a road. So a raiding party or lords crawled through the wires one night and came to the Unlted states and picked up Thornton.
 a CnOd Tallr0a6RT. l but he was big enough to impress an EngIishman. He looked like a pa rficuIarlv well-fed lord, even in those distant days. Everyone knows that he made good. During the war he bossed the whole complicated, | internetted system of English roads for the government. No wonder they made him a knight. If he had been six inches taller they would probably
 have dubbed him duke.
 English Rolling Stock
 I called on Thornton in 1914. just after he had got used to English "a ilroading, and before I had over come my desire to giggle every time
 I saw an English freight car. They I are about 30 feet long, you know, and toddIe along on four little wheels lone at each corner-and are just i the cutest little cars you ever saw | in vour life. One smiles happily at | the sight of an English freight train trotting cordially through the coun- | try. There is something so compan-
 ionable about it. And when station
 is reached some one unlinks a car and a large English cart horse, di- rected by an English workman, who has tied his trousers down below his knees with a string for some obscure reason, tugs that car Or those cars about It is interesting and humor- ous Uninformed Americans, such as myself. furnished forth many an idle hour with tinkIing laughter at the | sight.
 you" said Thornton. when I was able to cease laughing long enough
 to tell of these cars. do not know much about railroading."
 | He followed up this jolt by admit | ting that he had not known much of railroading either, until he went to | England. He knew the American
 sort of course. and. like every Ameri-
 can. he had laughed himself pink at the sight of the cute little freight cars By and by he began to discover l their advantages
 | Didn't Realize Advantages
 'Fwell come to them one of these days said Thornton. We haven l opened our eyes to railroading possi- 1 bilities yet When we began to operate roads the need was for long haul of a big load. So we built our | huge freight cars and attached them Ito enormous engines and yanked them over sturdy steel rails based on great ties and deep roadbeds. We thought in trans continental terms. If we wanted to ship a barrel to the next
 town we had to put it in car that
 could have carried 200 such barrels to Seattle, and it was yanked by an engine that could yank fifty cars loaded to the limit up any grade on the way"
 Thornton said it took him little I time to see it, but he did see 1t. The
 next step in American railroading.
 he said. would be the substitution of l light engines and small cars for the gigantic affairs we now use in our short haul business. He even ex- pected to see switching-shunting they call it in England-done in our small towns by a horse and a man just as it Is done in England. One horse cannot well handle one of the enormous cars now in use. especially
 if 1t is loaded, but 1t can haul little
 English car with no difficulty at all.
 Waste of Shippers Time
 Tn order to economize car use,
 said Thornton, i've have held cars in
 the yard of origin until full loads
 were packed in them for the towns
 to which they were bound. That was
 a slight economy for the railroad possibly. but 1t was an indefensible
 waste of time for the shipper and | fe..t,