THE POSSIBILITIES OF ELECTRIFICATION
The immediate needs of our railroads of the United States divide
themselves into three great classes: human, physical, financial. I shall
not assume to say which of these three classes is most vital or most
important. In my own mind I frankly do not know. Already we have dipped
into the human phases. Now for mere convenience in the telling, we shall
give consideration to their physical needs.
Here again there is further division. A railroad in its physical aspect
consists of the track that things run upon and the things that run upon
the track. The track, in the broad sense in which we are now considering
it, consists of far more than two steel rails set upon wooden ties or
sleepers which, in turn, are set in a graded roadway. It means bridges,
tunnels, switches, signals, terminal and intermediate stations, buildings,
passenger and freight-houses, engine-houses, shops, and all the rest of
it. And upon track, in this and every other sense the things that run, are
to be translated as locomotives, of a variety of forms, and cars, of an
infinite number.
And because cars are, as a rule, quite helpless without locomotives to
push or to pull them here and there, let us begin with the locomotive. For
the moment, we are going to pass by the steam locomotive, and the large
possibilities of its development far beyond the present point, and come
direct to the form of tractive power which has at least the most popular
appeal to the modern imagination--electricity.
The use of electricity as a motive-power upon this country's so-called
standard railroads (the electrical engineers like to call these heavy
traction railroads) is no novelty. It began nearly thirty years ago when
the Baltimore and Ohio railroad completed the electrification of its then
new tunnels under the City of Baltimore. The move was made primarily to
remove offensive smoke conditions, particularly in the main tunnel
connecting Mount Royal and Camden stations, nearly two miles apart. In
fact to-day trains going from Mount Royal toward Camden, a steady
down-grade, are operated without the trouble of attaching electric
locomotives to them; it is an easy gravity run for the two miles. For the
up-trip the electric locomotive is attached at Camden Station in front of
the through steam locomotive of the train and finally detached about two
miles east of Mount Royal, by the simple process of running ahead and upon
a facing-point switch--an adaptation of the old-time "flying switch."
The obvious success of this early installation slowly led to its imitation
elsewhere among the railroads of the land--a third-rail suburban plan on
the New Haven from Bristol through New Britain to Hartford, Connecticut,
and a branch of the same system down to Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts.
Yet the process was slow indeed. Your typical railroader is particularly
averse to novelties. It was not until about fifteen years ago that
electric installation of any considerable size came into being: the large
suburban services that were created by the New York Central, the New
Haven, and the Pennsylvania, coincident with the similar suburban services
in Oakland, California, and in Portland, Oregon, and in some of the longer
tunnels of the land; the Hoosac tunnel of the old Fitchburg, the tunnel of
the Michigan Central under the Detroit River, and that of the Great
Northern through the Cascades in Washington being notable instances of
this last sort of installation. After these came the large installations
of the Norfolk and Western through the Alleghanies and of the Chicago,
Milwaukee, and St. Paul--of which much more in a moment. And after this a
great hiatus, the huge rise in material and construction costs of every
sort, the war, and the present paralysis of our railroad development.
Recently there has come a demand, from the laity of the railroad world at
least, that there be a revival of progress in this extension of electrical
power upon our standard railroads. McAdoo sensed this well before he left
his high office and said that at least one-fifth of the railroad mileage
should be operated electrically at the earliest possible opportunity. And
more recently there has come a larger realization to the land of its
wholesale waste in potential water-power, as well as a gradual closing and
increasing expense of its coal-supply.
The big builders and designers of our steam locomotives have not been
asleep to this movement. They have met it in very recent years by a real
improvement in the quality of that machine. For many years the steam
locomotive grew in quantity--in mere size and bulk, if you please--rather
than in quality. Once again we were captivated by the use of the word
"big." When we read not many years ago of the coming of the first 200-ton
locomotive we drew in our breath a little. Four hundred thousand pounds!
And without its great load of coal and water at that. What a monster!
Here, indeed, was Frankenstein. But what old Frank could do in smashing
down bridges and rail levels we wotted not of. Yet what was the 200-ton
locomotive compared with the 300-ton and the 400-ton monsters that the
Santa Fe and the Delaware and Hudson began installing about a dozen years
ago? It seemed as if no limit could be reached.
Yet the fact that a size limit could be reached and apparently was
reached, was still no sign that the limits of steam locomotive efficiency
had even been approached. Because the methods by which these limits may be
extended, apparently almost indefinitely, are so complex and withal so
fascinating, I am taking them up in a separate chapter of this book. This
chapter and the one that follows it are the record of the achievements and
the possibilities of the electric locomotive, whether as a separate unit
or merely as a compact bundle of energy stowed away in the trucks of a
passenger or freight-car. That locomotive shall receive our first
consideration.
Now despite all the improvements that we shall see have been made upon
him, the American steam locomotive of to-day seemingly remains a laggard.
In the days when his fuel was both plentiful and comparatively cheap one
might merely say that he was extravagant and let it go at that. But now
when coal if not scarcer is far more expensive his extravagance has become
totally unwarranted.
In 1918, the most recent year for which the figures are available, our
steam locomotive consumed 163,000,000 tons of coal in addition to
45,700,000 barrels of oil. Reducing these last to their coal equivalent,
we have a total fuel consumption expressed in terms of coal of
176,000,000. And when we measure that consumption alongside the freight
carried--1918 was one of the record years of our American railroads--it
will be seen that for every thousand tons of freight that they moved one
mile they burned 290 pounds of coal. Through any modern steam-generating
electric station--the figures taken from the modern power-houses of the
few steam railroads that already have been progressive enough to install
electric motive-power--an even hundred pounds of coal may easily move more
than 1600 tons of freight one mile--in the accurate phrasing of the
railroaders themselves, 1600 ton-miles.
In other words the same freight traffic moved by electricity through steam
power houses would have required but a little over fifty million tons of
coal. From 120,000,000 to 130,000,000 tons of coal would have been
saved--a saving roughly expressed in money at between three-quarters of a
billion and a billion dollars, which of itself would be a 4 or 5 per cent.
dividend upon the total capitalization of our American railroads.
In the saving that we have just shown we have presupposed an absolutely
universal substitution of electric for steam power all the way across the
land. This however is not practical to-day; nor is it likely to be
practical in any day to come, for every mile of our 275,000 miles of
American railroad system. On the other hand this huge estimate of national
saving is based entirely upon the coal-consumption basis. The most
impressive savings that you shall see before you are finished with this
chapter are those accomplished by our lines which have bended water-power,
hitherto wasted, to the movement of their trains. I have stood upon the
brink of Niagara Falls and there seen train after train arrive and depart,
each hauled by a steam locomotive. And all the while I knew that the force
and power of that mighty cataract was lighting the homes and driving the
street-cars of Toronto and of Syracuse--by land, respectively one hundred
and 150 miles distant. What a travesty upon efficiency!
For the moment however we are seeing the question, not in fine, but in
large. It is terribly large, terribly wasteful, if you please. For not
only is our steam locomotive a laggard in his over-greed for food but he
is lazy into the bargain. A fearful proportion of his time he spends in
resting or in being refitted for his work. For each hour that he spends
out upon the line he spends another hour in the roundhouse--and this of
course quite outside of the yearly visit to the shops for complete
overhauling and repair. The traffic of Fifth Avenue, New York, or Michigan
Avenue, Chicago, would never move if motor-cars were permitted to park
alongside their busy curbs. One reason why the traffic upon our railroads
has not moved better in times of stress is because there has been too much
parking both of locomotives and of cars, particularly of the first.
An Eastern trunk-line railroad which a dozen years ago was having a
fearful time moving its freight brought in a consulting engineer for an
opinion as to the increase of its facilities. Like most engineers the
outside expert saw the problem as a field-day possibility for contracting
concerns--and engineers. A new classification-yard here, great additions
and rearrangements to others there, at other places a long stretch of
additional main-line trackage--the trick might be done anywhere from sixty
to one hundred millions of dollars there in yester-year.
These figures staggered the president of the road. He was not satisfied
and so turned again for outside consultation, this time with the
hard-headed general manager of a Western line.
"Tell me what you can make of it?" he asked.
The Westerner took a hurried trip over the line and had his report ready
within sixty minutes thereafter; it was short, concise, verbal.
"Give me a couple of million dollars' worth of more locomotives and in a
week I'll have your problem solved. You don't want more yards, to be
clogged up in turn. You want yard shortage--and line movement. If you have
a sufficiency of motive-power you won't need many yards, not as many as
you have to-day. Your stuff will keep moving, not hanging around on
side-tracks."
* * * * *
The problem of that Eastern road of a dozen years ago is to-day that of
virtually every trunk-line of the Northeast. Remember, if you will, that
for more than a decade there has been no main line trackage laid down east
of Pittsburg or Cleveland. Previous to that time a considerable amount of
relief work had been done by a half-dozen or so of the larger roads in
that territory. But the relief that these changes gave has long since been
swallowed up until to-day it is hardly apparent. And the steadily growing
traffic demands fresh relief.
How it can be given is not as easy a problem to the big engineers. The
Pennsylvania can and has planned still more low-grade relief-lines across
and through the Alleghany Mountains, but Pittsburg still remains its
bottle-neck--in there between the high hills and all but defying the
railroad engineers. The New York Central needs more main-line trackage,
but far more does it need relief of its own bottle-necks--at Albany and
again at Buffalo. It is the problem of the cities that counts--not merely
Albany or Buffalo or Pittsburg, but New York and Boston and Philadelphia
and Baltimore and Cleveland and Cincinnati and St. Louis and Chicago.
There is no use in laying down additional main tracks when the terminals
in the hearts of these great cities are so sadly congested as to take a
freight-car as long to move through a single one of them as from three
hundred to five hundred miles on open line.
The smooth and shiny steel rails that slip through each of these congested
traffic-hubs are their Fifth Avenues and their Michigan Avenues too. We do
not permit the gasolene locomotive to park and obstruct these highways of
asphaltum. But the laggard steam locomotive is permitted to loaf in great
roundhouses along the steel highway. He is to-day not merely a laggard but
an actual obstructionist. I hinted but a moment ago at the time he must
spend between runs resting and being more or less overhauled--fires
cleaned, machinery overhauled, flues calked and the like, twelve hours out
of each twenty-four. Moreover he requires water each seventy-five miles
and a fresh supply of coal each 150.
On the other hand, take the electric locomotive. Not only does he save
weight by carrying no coal or water and so put that weight into motive
machinery--his strength to-day is 7000 horse-power as against but about
3000 of our largest steam locomotives--but he actually goes 5000 miles
without having to receive the inspection attention that his old-fashioned
steam brother apparently has to have at the end of 150. Which means that
for days at a time--and even a week or a fortnight, if the necessity
arises--he can remain in steady service, going from one train to another,
and only changing crews. The locomotive is always ready.
And what is true in this comparison of the "front shop" light repairs and
overhauling, which the steam locomotive must undergo at the end of each
division, is still more true of that fortnight in the "back shop"--the
heavier repairs and more thorough overhauling that it must have each
twelvemonth, if it is to be kept in anything like a decent condition of
efficiency. The steam locomotive must go to the "back shop" at the end of
75,000 miles. Barring accidents the electric locomotive need never go
there. Its only ordinary repairs are the removing of worn bearings or the
occasional rewinding of an armature, which can be easily accomplished in
any small shop of a division-point. The elaborate plants of roundhouses,
coal and water stations, turntables, cinder-pits, and sizable shops
required every hundred or hundred and fifty miles along the lines of a
steam railroad disappear, while with the facility of the electric
locomotive for long-continued running the division-points themselves may
well disappear.
The New York Central railroad in its 440 miles between New York and
Buffalo, using steam locomotives for 410 miles of this distance, for many
years made three engine-changes upon the one-way run; recently it has done
somewhat better than this. The Erie and the Lackawanna between these same
cities make the same number of engine-changes. So do the Baltimore and
Ohio and the Pennsylvania between New York and Pittsburg, only a slightly
longer distance. This is standard steam railroad practice. It is only
recently being changed. If these lines used electric locomotives the
engines could easily make this entire stretch--with a possible change or
two of engine-crews but not of locomotives--and at a vast saving of time,
trouble, and money.
These statements are not made idly. This particular one is made upon the
authority of the president of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul
railway, which has successfully undertaken the longest and most scientific
electrification yet introduced in the United States. His name is H. E.
Byram, and the main line of his road is to-day completely equipped for
electric operation for 649 miles--from Harlowton, Montana, to Avery,
Idaho, 438 miles (or about the same mileage as the New York Central's
between New York and Buffalo or the Pennsylvania's between New York and
Pittsburg) and again from Othello to Tacoma, Washington, 211 miles.
"We regularly run our electric locomotive the entire 438 miles between
Harlowton and Avery on the same passenger-train," says Mr. Byram, "and if
the track were electrified for that distance could just as well run it
four thousand miles. In fact, counting in attendance, wear and tear, shop
capacity, and the like, we figure that one of our electric locomotives is
equal to three of the heaviest steam type."
The forty-five electric locomotives now in service on the Harlowton-Avery
section--the first to be installed--actually have replaced the 120 steam
locomotives that formerly were needed for it. The power for this section,
crossing the high ranges of the Rockies, as well as for the newer section
further to the west, which crosses the Cascades, is supplied entirely by
water. The fuel saving in 650 miles of just an ordinary busy
single-tracked main-line railroad in a twelvemonth--259,000 tons of coal
and 31,700,000 gallons of fuel-oil, according to its careful estimates for
a single typical year--is considerable. When you come to project these to
the busy double-tracked and triple-tracked and four-tracked railroads of
our Eastern territory you begin to have the great savings which I outlined
toward the beginning of this chapter. And these were only predicated upon
the use of coal in the power-houses which becomes quite naturally part and
parcel of any scheme of electrification.
Consider the Milwaukee's important experiment in somewhat greater detail.
It has been loath to give out exact figures as to its savings in dollars
and cents by its electric installation until a number of years of
operation should determine these beyond a point of quibbling or of
argument. Some of its economies are quite obvious however. I am not going
into the remarkable system of "regenerative braking" under which in the
course of a year some 60 per cent. of the current taken from the overhead
trolley-wire by the road's electric locomotives is returned to that thread
of copper by the seemingly simple expedient of turning the locomotive's
motor into a dynamo momentarily and so utilizing the ancient force of
gravity upon a descending mountain grade as to actually turn out electric
current and return it to the unseen treasury through that connecting
medium of a copper wire. It is enough to say that a 60 per cent. return of
current is an appreciable amount. If you do not believe this, ask the
next trolleyman that you meet what it would mean to his road if 60 per
cent. of the coal which his power-houses have reduced to ashes could be
returned to good coal again--and an infinite saving made upon brake-shoes
into the bargain.
These things have been told. But there has not been told publicly before
this time a comparison of operating costs between the Missoula
division--half of the Harlowton-Avery electrified section of the
Milwaukee--and an adjacent mountain division which in 1918 and 1919 was
not electrified, and which moreover is not subjected to the extremely hard
winters of the Missoula range. The cost of locomotive repairs for 1918 and
1919 on this steam division was two and one-third times as great as upon
the electric, owing in no small degree to the fact that the electric
locomotive handles heavier trains and at higher speed than the steam, yet,
notwithstanding this increased capacity, has a much lower maintenance cost
per mile run. The cost of train crews was nearly two and one-half times
greater on the steam division than upon the electric--this also because of
the greater train tonnage and speed under electric operation. The expense
for enginemen for similar reasons was 55 to 60 per cent. greater on the
steam operation.
It is easy enough to talk in generalities, much harder sometimes to come
to the brass tacks of a situation. It is a sort of brass tack, isn't it,
when on this steam division of the Milwaukee, the engine-house expense was
two and one-half times greater than upon the electric--and for reasons
that we have already seen? We do not need the exact dollars and cents of
saving, when these comparisons are placed before us.
Neither do we need exact dollars and cents when we come east to the
important electrification of the coal-carrying Norfolk and Western through
the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia--a tremendously busy thirty-mile
stretch of line over which there constantly moves a vast tonnage of
bituminous coal. Conditions here are considerably different from those
upon the Milwaukee yet the results that are being attained are largely the
same. Upon the N. & W. huge trains of one-hundred-ton steel cars (3250
tons to the train), which formerly required three big steam Mallets, are
now being hauled by two articulated electric locomotives, and at twice the
speed. Focus your attention upon this last statement and then remember
what we were saying about the necessity of keeping the motor-cars moving
constantly and uniformly through the busiest streets of our metropolitan
cities. It is not any more necessary to the understanding of the real
economics of railroad electrification to know that the Norfolk and Western
has made twelve double electric locomotives do the work of thirty-three
steam Mallets than it is to know that those great mountain-climbing trains
are moving at the rate of fourteen miles an hour instead of but seven as
formerly. Here is speed; but speed expressed in a double dimension--speed
compounded if you choose to put it that way.
While there also arises the interesting further proposition that in any
railroad of high traffic density it is intensely important that its trains
be kept moving at a uniform speed. In other days the freight movement at
seven miles an hour through the thirty-mile heavy grade mountain section
of the Norfolk and Western tended to "drag the line" and hold back the
trains behind it, despite the fact that upon these more level sections
their steam power could easily draw them at fourteen miles an hour. But
never without a free clearance. That thirty-mile summit section was indeed
a clog to the efficient operation of the line. Electricity removed the
clog. And, quite incidentally, the soft-coal smoke in a very dirty tunnel
through the crest of the Blue Ridge.
Take such speed, such even traffic flow, and apply it to our overburdened
trunk-lines of the Northeast; to make the most definite instance and the
greatest necessity. Suppose that no more main-line tracks need be laid
upon the railroads east from Chicago and St. Louis, north from Washington
and Cincinnati, no more expensive notchings in the mountains that hem in
Pittsburg or fresh expenditures in Buffalo, if but a far quickened
movement of freight can be obtained over existing rails. Here then is a
double economy effected not alone in the use of fuel (still leaving the
water-power solution in abeyance) but in a greatly bettered use of
existing terminals and trackage. If our railroads can save three quarters
of a billion dollars a year by burning their coal and oil in central
power-stations instead of in locomotive fire-boxes, it may be fair to say
that the terminal economies that might be effected by increasing the
existing facilities from 40 to 50 per cent. without physical enlargement
would equal the first saving. When the shoe begins to pinch there is many
and many a way of relieving the foot.
* * * * *
There are railroaders, and shrewd railroaders too, who will not chime in
rapidly. Here is one of them--in the Far West, a mighty operating
executive schooled years ago by one of the half-dozen of the real captains
of the industry. He feels the need of great relief to the traffic pressure
upon his own great system--the greater need of a smoother movement of the
traffic upon its rails.
"The game," he says, "is simplicity itself. It is to take the friction out
of the pipe and at the same time increase the pressure."
Which in his case means a combination of more freight-cars--or better
loading of the existing equipment--and more second or double tracks across
the long reaches of the West. Yet when I suggest electrification as a
method for the removal of pipe friction, he shakes his head sadly.
"My old chief," he begins, his loyalty showing in his very phrasing, "once
thought as you now think. He was anxious to install electric motive-power
upon the stiff grades of our mountain division. He had reports made upon
the possibility of the thing from three separate sources, the two big
electrical equipment companies and our own fairly expert corp of
engineers. There was little variance between the reports of these
different interests. Almost uniformly they figured the cost of the job at
a little more than ten million dollars, or at that time about $550,000
annual interest. A fuel bill on the volume of traffic that we then had of
about $300,000 would be saved. That sort of saving did not appeal to me. I
told the chief so."
I asked this big railroader how about that mountain division of his
to-day, with its traffic greatly increased and its fuel bill more than
doubled. He replied by saying that not only had the cost of electrical
equipment--locomotives, dynamos, copper wire, all the rest of it--doubled
or more than doubled, but the interest cost of getting money has increased
all the way from 25 to 33 per cent. And so the wide margin of more than a
decade ago has not narrowed perceptibly.
I have introduced this point here because it is most fair and most
germane. Unquestionably that paper saving of all the way from a billion
and a half to two billion dollars a year that we have just seen would be
greatly cut down by the increase in the cost of electrical equipment and
of the interest on the money that would go to buy it, but to-day the
margin upon the electrification side of the argument is growing wider day
by day, while as we go east and the congestion problem upon our railroads
increases the margin in favor of electrical operation also increases.
Granted that the costs of electrification are indeed vast, with dynamo
units running all the way from one million to five million dollars, with
locomotives at $175,000 and upwards apiece, all the other accessories in
proportion, the game _is_ indeed worth the candle.
Nor is it always necessary to buy locomotives at the rate of four or even
five for a million dollars, with interest rates at 8 per cent. or
thereabouts, when a railroad can borrow at all. There is many and many a
short cut toward electrification. Take New England, for instance.
Up in that extreme northeastern corner of this land, as we have seen
already at some length, the railroad shoe already has begun to pinch very
hard indeed. With a few exceptions the railroads there are bankrupt, or
virtually so. And yet their economic need and opportunity in electrical
installation was never greater than it is at this very moment. If you
don't believe this bald statement, imagine yourself the president of that
formerly prosperous little railroad down in Maine and your
purchasing-agent coming in and telling you that he just paid twenty-seven
dollars a ton for tender coal for your locomotives--with Maine richer in
undeveloped water-power than almost any other State in the Union!
New England needs electrification of her steam railroads, and needs it at
once. It is no new story to her. She began her experimentation with this
sort of development more than two decades ago, when the New Haven laid
that third rail alongside its busy Bristol-New Britain-Hartford line and
installed a frequent electric suburban service. It was a beginning; a
beginning that led slowly but surely to overhead wire installations upon
several other branch lines of the New Haven system and eventually to the
elaborate work in connection with the New York Central's electrification
of the Grand Central Station in New York. This last embraced the entire
main line from Forty-second Street through to New Haven. It now ends
there. And when you talk electrification to one of the high officers of
the road he will point to this particularly elaborate installation and
say:
"Not on your life. We had your vision fifteen years ago, and we put in
this pretty job. Where did it get us? Into debt. It is one of the finest
installations in the world, and one of the most expensive. While the
increased capacity of the Grand Central Station from the operation of a
two-level plan--a scheme utterly impossible under the use of steam as a
motive-power--undoubtedly justified the expenditure, the fact remains
that, considered independently, our electric zone to-day does not return
interest on its investment. Of two locomotives of equal capacity, the
steam one will cost $45,000, the electric $150,000. In addition to all of
this investment in overhead there is also the cost of its maintenance, and
that is not small. Wire-trains for immediate repairs as well as for
maintenance must be in readiness day and night with a variety of expert,
and expensive, workers. It all costs."
I know that it costs, Mr. New Haven. But I also know that it takes but one
half the amount of coal to pull a train with an electric locomotive as
compared with a steam locomotive of the same capacity. Remember that the
steam locomotive's voracious appetite for coal apparently is unceasing. He
may stand idle and upon sidings for half or a third of a working day, yet
the fireman's task at the fire-box door is steady. While if that fireman
be lacking in every-day efficiency, the coal waste is increased, not
lessened. The president of a large Eastern railroad has estimated that
even a little better handling of the coal-shovels by his firemen would
save the road 500,000 tons of coal annually. For even if coal must drive a
railroad, if that railroad is driven from a central power-station there is
almost no inefficiency in firing there; the central station operates on
hourly coal-record sheets and waste is quickly detected.
I have not had in mind, however, for immediate use in New England the sort
of elaborate installation which the New Haven has upon the western end of
its main stem. What I meant for that road, as well as for sections of
other lines up there, was the same sort of comparatively simple electric
construction that the New Haven itself has operated for years on some of
its isolated suburban lines in Connecticut and Massachusetts. I mean,
instead of heavy steel passenger-coaches of main-line standards of size
and weight and propelled by expensive electric locomotives, electric
motor-cars of comparatively small size and weight, self-propelled and
self-contained and operated in trains of from one to twelve cars in
accordance with the immediate necessities of the traffic at hand. The New
Haven's field south of Boston, where its suburban service is at its very
worst to-day, is particularly ripe for installation of that sort. There
the once competitive interurban tradition has come to its final slough of
despond.
The traction systems throughout all New England have not been immune from
the difficulties that have beset their brethren in other sections of the
land. In fact I should not hesitate to say that their troubles have been
greater rather than less than their brethren's. More traction mileage has
probably been abandoned in New England than in any other distinctive
single locality. From Plymouth to Sagamore, Massachusetts, there stretch
twenty miles of track and trolley-wire which, like the Hampden railroad
(once built by one Charles S. Mellen for a dozen miles east of
Springfield), never has been used and probably never will be. Two years
ago the Bay State's lines in and around Gloucester and the Cape Ann
district were all abandoned, while the Connecticut Co. (a New Haven
property) constantly threatened to do the same thing in some of its larger
cities if jitney competition were not withdrawn. A prompt compliance by
the local authorities with this mandate saved these towns their trolley
service, temporarily at least. It is a grave question whether fifteen
years hence we shall have any trolley service in most of our American
towns of less than 100,000 population. But the most important abandonment
of long-distance trolley service which has come to my attention has been
that of the Shore Line Electric, along the north shore of Long Island
Sound, for sixty miles between New Haven and New London.
There have been serious deletions in the passenger transportation machine
of New England. The causes that have led to them are many and too involved
to be discussed here. The main fact is that virtually none of this trolley
mileage, outside of the city systems, is ever likely to come back into use
again. A good deal of it should not have been built but, having been
built, has become both a convenience and a necessity to the territory
which it served and its abandonment a distinct social and commercial blow
to that territory.
It so happens too that there is a vast amount of surplus mileage in the
form of branch lines and even of some of the secondary main lines upon the
steam railroads of New England. And some of this in turn became
unprofitable only when it was paralleled by a trolley-line, which quickly
changed the situation from one wherein a territory sustained a single
thriftily operated line to one where two hotly competing lines could
hardly fail both to lose. Now the opportunity is beginning to show itself
for a change toward old conditions.
It ought to be and is possible for the New Haven, the Boston and Maine,
and some of the other railroads of New England to transform some of their
secondary lines into inexpensive combined freight and passenger roads,
using steam, if need be, for their freight service and electricity for
their passenger.
What I meant for the New Haven, as well as the other New England roads,
was the same sort of simple installation that was operated for many years,
and apparently operated successfully, on some of the suburban lines east
of Hartford, between Middletown and Berlin Junction, Connecticut, between
Providence, Warren, and Fall River, and in the summer months out to
Nantasket Beach beyond Boston. I meant cars of comparatively small size
and weight and self-propelled, depending upon no locomotive whatever. This
field south of Boston, where the New Haven's suburban service is at its
very worst, is ripe for installation of that sort, through as far as
Plymouth at least, and possibly to New Bedford, Newport, and Providence as
well.
To the Boston and Maine the zone of suburban lines of the one-time Eastern
railroad from North Station out to Salem, Gloucester, and up to
Newburyport and Portsmouth offers similar immediate opportunity. Here are
lines on which a minimum of through traffic is being routed to-day and
most of that could, if necessary, be taken off and placed on the more
direct main lines of the original Boston and Maine, just to the west, and
leading direct through to Portland and the north. They thread the
territory where the interurban lines are dying most rapidly and being
totally abandoned, and where a great public inconvenience is arising as a
result.
A further result, and one not to be underestimated, would be the vast
saving in the capacity of the North Station, just as the New Haven and the
Boston and Albany can make a similar vast saving in South Station. A
regular interval service, increased during rush-hours, of multiple-unit
cars means no switching service whatsoever. An incoming train discharges
its passengers upon one side and receives others for the outgoing run on
the other side, while it stands upon a single pair of rails and without an
unnecessary movement of any sort, which means, in effect, the virtual
doubling of a station's capacity.
The New England lines are this very day short--wofully short--of steam
locomotives. Yet the immediate installation of electric overhead wires
upon some of their congested branches would within a short space of time
release dozens of locomotives which, if not efficient for the movement of
long or heavy freights, could move shorter ones; after which could come
the heavier installations.
"All right say for Berkshire County, Massachusetts," you interrupt, "but
how about the southeastern corner of New England? Haven't the rivers down
there in Rhode Island all the load they can carry?"
Granted. I indulge in no such wild day-dreams as that of all the railroad
trackage of southern New England being operated by water-generated
electric power. There is a better plan in view. Before me lies the rough
prospectus of the super-power plan of the Northeast Atlantic seaboard, for
the surveys of which Congress has already made generous appropriations. In
a word this plan provides that in a great congested industrial area
consisting of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, southeastern New
York, eastern Pennsylvania, and portions of New Jersey and of Maryland a
present consumption of 17,000,000 horse-power--divided into 10,000,000 for
industrial purposes and 7,000,000 for railroad--shall be fully met by the
consolidation and connection, through high-voltage transmission lines, of
existing steam-electric stations as well as by the establishment of
central power-plants at the mine-heads of Pennsylvania and West Virginia,
these last with a capacity of but 5,500,000 horse-power and yet helping to
meet the present need for 17,000,000.
These are but the coal sources of electrical energy; and I have just
stressed the importance of the steadily decreasing coal supply and a
consequent steady increase in the price of coal itself. Even the vast and
sweeping economies to be gained by the consolidation of steam
power-stations as well as by the burning of coal at the mine-head are
almost as nothing compared with those to be gained by a scientific
grouping and use of the available and little used water-powers of the
territory. It is upon this very phase of the situation that the
super-power plan gains its greatest value. Do you recall how but a moment
ago we saw that the operating economies of the Milwaukee out in the Rocky
Mountains were based largely upon the use of water-power rather than upon
the consumption of coal in its electric power-houses?
The hydro-electric resources of the super-power territory that have not
been developed to their full capacity, if at all, comprise power-sites in
the Adirondacks; along the Hudson, the Raquette, and the Black rivers;
along the upper reaches of the Delaware and the lower ones of the
Susquehanna and last--and greatest--that of the St. Lawrence River itself,
taken just below Ogdensburg, New York. This last part of the project ties
up very closely with the St. Lawrence Ship Canal project, an international
scheme in which the United States and Canada shall share the cost and the
benefits, both in power and in enlarged water traffic possibilities. It is
estimated that more than 1,400,000 horse-power can be generated in this
plan, of which one-half would be available for the use of this country. At
present the whole St. Lawrence River canal scheme is under bitter
political attack, which renders it unlikely that it will come quickly into
effect. That it will not come eventually is hard to believe.
When all is said and done, however, this super-power plan, so sweeping as
to be all but staggering to the imagination, and yet sponsored by the
shrewdest and most far-seeing of American engineers, is based primarily
upon the consumption of coal at the mines rather than in distant factory
engine-rooms, central power-stations, or locomotive boilers. It is
estimated that it can be operated at a saving of at least 30,000,000 tons
of coal each year to the industries and railroads of the district which it
embraces, or, at a modest average of eight dollars a ton of coal,
$240,000,000 a year to commercial America. Shimmery copper wires will
carry silently and continuously what will amount to at least one half of
the coal tonnage not carried by the railroads for power and lighting
purposes. A copper wire knows neither snow, blockade, nor traffic
congestion. And railroad experts estimate the super-power plan as a saving
of another $150,000,000 annually in coal freights. A total of more than a
million dollars a day saved in just one corner of American industry is not
to be sneezed at, even in these days when we talk so easily and carelessly
in billions.
In this great single super-economy the railroads of eastern New York,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, southern New England, and northern New Jersey may
easily share. In fact it is definitely planned that they shall share in
it. The list of feasible users of this concentrated power includes the
Fitchburg division of the Boston and Maine, all the way from Boston to
Rotterdam Junction, New York (oddly enough the western half of this
division, from Greenfield to Rotterdam, through the Hoosac tunnel, 104
miles, has for some time since been marked for electrification by the
road's own engineers); the connecting Delaware and Hudson from
Mechanicsville, New York, to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; the New York, New
Haven, and Hartford from the present terminal of the electric zone at New
Haven through to Boston, both by the Shore line and the Springfield line
(this predicates of course the electrical operation of the Boston and
Albany all the way east of Springfield--and why not west of that point
also is not easily discovered); the main line of the Erie, from Jersey
City to Susquehanna, Pennsylvania; the Lackawanna, from Hoboken to Elmira;
the Lehigh Valley from New York to Wilkes-Barre; the Central Railroad of
New Jersey-Reading-Baltimore and Ohio group to Washington, to Hagerstown,
Maryland, and to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; the Pennsylvania, from New York
to a point just beyond Harrisburg--all of these main lines and a host of
their branches. Such is the railroad portion of this embracing scheme. The
only important road in its territory that is omitted from the electric
program is the New York Central, which has such low grades and hence such
economical use of power that the economy of electricity is least necessary
to it. If ever it should desire to cooperate in the plan, it probably can
gain the power for its main line--west of Albany, at least--from Niagara
Falls, and for its network of busy lines in northern New York from the
abundant water-powers of the Adirondack preserve or the huge St. Lawrence
River international power project.
This all seems most logical. In the case of New England it so happens that
the super-power plan--which is now seemingly certain of eventual
execution--embraces just that section of the territory where there is the
least surplus of water-power. The rough, wild rivers of the north of
Maine, of New Hampshire, and of Vermont can and yet will operate almost
all of the mileage of the railroads of those States; the distant mines in
the Pennsylvania and the West Virginia hills will run the lines in the
rest of New England. Power--power to move railroads--will cease to move
across the most congested strip of North Atlantic seaboard in noisy and
overcrowded and inefficient car-loads of coal. Power will come on the
copper wire and will move the silent trains around Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia--and many of them--some of them with big and efficient
locomotives and others by sturdy small individual motors set within the
car-trucks. The steam locomotive in this northeastern territory is nearly
doomed. I think that eventually it will be doomed everywhere within the
United States (our disappearing coal supply will be the chief factor in
this), but first and foremost of all in the great congested areas which,
having no coal of their own, live in constant and deadly fear that an
overworked and overgrown railroad structure may yet fail to bring to them
all that they need for their imminent necessities.
That such a step will bring eventual economies, vast economies, one can
have no doubt. The New Haven for the nonce may be failing to make a profit
on its elaborately electrified main line between New York and New Haven,
to the power-station of which it must haul coal a long way and over
congested rail routes. But with that unseen power stretched further and
further upon its lines I have no doubt that adequate transportation
service, freight and passenger, can again be given to the communities
which it serves. What is true of the New Haven is equally true of the
Albany, the Boston and Maine, and the other railroads of the New England
area--after all, railroads of real inherent strength despite the great
abuses which they have suffered. And what is true of all these railroads
of New England is of course true of the railroads elsewhere within the
nation, and true even if the economy be but the one of coal or oil
consumption in a central power-station; far more true of course if
water-developed electricity be found available. For notwithstanding the
great developments of our water-powers that have been made in the last
fifteen or twenty years, the experts of the geological survey down at
Washington say that the undeveloped water-power of the United States is
still approximately 54,000,000 horse-power. Much of this is of course in
the West and the Far West where there is as yet but little traffic
congestion upon the railroads. In such cases the gasolene-unit cars are
ofttimes the best solution of the problem of the local passenger service.
There are instances too in the Northeast where single units are still the
best solution of this most perplexing transport problem. And in the
Northeast there is a considerable proportion of undeveloped water-power
still remaining. But whether this be drawn upon chiefly, or the coal at
the mine-head, the engineers of the super-power zone plan eventually will
decide; the fact remains that here in a strip beginning at Washington and
ending at Portland, Maine, and stretching from one hundred to one hundred
and fifty miles inland, is the scene of our greatest railroad congestion,
and the scene where in any traffic crisis the possibility of breakdown
becomes most imminent. Yet across this strip and through it the laggard
steam locomotive still continues to draw long trains of coal--with 20 per
cent. of it destined for his fire-box and the fire-boxes of his fellows.
And this in an era which we have been pleased to call the age of
electricity!
No matter from what angle one may view them, the possibilities of a far
wider extension of electric motive-power on our railroads are fascinating
indeed. Nor are they in this day and age to be regarded as particularly
radical or revolutionary, or new and untried. Remember all the while, if
you will, that the first important electrification of a section of
standard steam railroad in this country--the Mount Royal tunnel section of
the Baltimore and Ohio railroad through the heart of Baltimore--was nearly
thirty years ago. Since that day a good many other like experiments, large
and small, have followed in its wake. Other lands have both followed and
preceded us. These other lands are not asleep to-day. Despite the terribly
crippled condition of Europe to-day, elaborate plans are being made over
there--particularly in France, in Switzerland, and in Great Britain, and
even in Spain and in Italy. The British plans are still quite vague. The
French are more definite. It is now planned to electrify at least 6000
miles of the 26,500 miles of French railway; a single system, the
Paris-Orleans, has made definite preparations for bringing this power,
the most of it water-generated, to more than half of its mileage, about
3250 miles all-told. In Switzerland work is already rapidly under way for
transforming the entire Federal system of railways, approximately 1900
miles, from steam to electric power. It is to be a huge job, the cost of
which is roughly estimated at $200,000,000. Little Switzerland shows great
pluck in even tackling it. But when you ask the managers of their railways
why they are undertaking it they shrug their shoulders and smile and
reply:
"Think of the economies that it will bring us."
Think of the economies it will bring us, us Americans. If a thing is good
for a little republic overseas with but 3300 miles of rail trackage all
told, how much better must it be for the big republic with 265,000 miles
of line? Have the French or the Swiss railroaders more vision than we
Americans have? I should hate to say that, particularly in the face of
such a development as that of the Milwaukee, to say nothing of our great
terminals in New York, in Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Have they more
funds with which to tinker and to experiment? Of course not.
We have the vision. We have the money. We simply need the correlating
force that shall join the two in the immediate relief of our sadly
wobbling railroad situation. Such a force would be big business in the
truest and the finest sense of the word. It would be something more; it
would be statesmanship, railroad statesmanship if you please, railroad
statesmanship of the sort that we stand so sorely in need of to-day.