The mirror., 1923-05-31
RAILROADS
Continued from page 1

in this country. They consume twenty
five per cent of all the steel and eighteen
FER cent of all the lumber. There are
over 100000 people directly employed
by them in operation and maintenance
departments, and it is said that out of
every eleven persons in the United States
one depends on the railroads for living
That should give US reason for saying:
whatever else may fail the railroad must
continue.
In the forepart of this article | made
some abusive remarks anent the need of
reciprocity between the shipper and the
railroad. ! had in mind prosperous
furniture dealer who buys baby carriages
in carload lots, and who upon receiving
the nsignment, wants to leave the car
riages in the car and take them out only
as his customers call for them. He pays
few cents day for demurrage charges,
but by his actions one would think he
was buying the car On the installment
plan. He does not stop to consider that
this same car which he seems to be keep
ing as a souvenir, could easily be earn
ing from twenty to thirty dollars a day
carrying high grade traffic under pre-
ferred movement. The small sum of fifty
cents a day may look like a lot of money
to be paying for an idle freight car in
dull times, but it pays no profit to the
railroad company nor to the public either
when the whole country is cluttered up
cne cares to find out just how numerous
this type of shipper is, one has only to
look at some incontrovertible figures COM
piled by the Car Service Division of the
American Railway Association, which
show that not more than sixty-tive per
cent of the capacity of freight cars have
ever been utilized. The Car Service Di-
vision will also prove that if all shippers
could be induced to add just one more
ton of cargo in each car every time it
was loaded it would be equivalent to
adding 100000 cars to present equipment.
If that fails to satisfy curiosity regard
ing the why's and wherefores of car
shortage and poor service at times, one
has only to get out pencil again and
place it in the hand of these figure Jug
glers who then, by little simple twist
of the wrist, will show conclusive proof
that if every car was moved one mile
more each day it would be equivalent to
adding another $4,000 cars to present
equipment. The average car spends five
weeks out of every year in the repair
shops and on the rip-tracks. If this could
be cut down to fourteen days it would
yield another $4,000 cars for service. Now
by simple mathematical calculation we
cars added to present equipment:
Looking at the Car Service Divisions
weekly report of car loadings will reveal
that the aggregate orders from shippers
which could not be filled for the week
ending October goth, was 1929, the
greatest ever recorded. If it had been
possible to do everything indicated in the
foregoing paragraph, instead of not being
enough cars to go around there would
really have been 80,761 cars waiting for
work. 1t is hard for one to appreciate the
fact that the average freight car spends
only twenty-seven days of the year in
actual running under load. The rest of
the -thirteen-fourteenths of a cars
year to be exact-is spent in loading and
switched into and out of trains,
repairs, running empty or just
standing idle on some sidetrack awaiting
shippers orders.
There are many instances of economical
ways in which cars can be loaded and an
eucidation of this problem was recently
set forth by Chas. H. Markham, president
of the Illinois Central Ry. In an inter