The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances

For carrying milk, special cars have to be provided, as particular attention has to be given to the matter of ventilation in connection with a small amount of cooling for the proper carrying of the milk. Not only the cars but the train service has to be especially arranged for in particular cases.

As an instance, the Long Island Railroad Company makes a specialty of transporting farmers' truck-wagons to market. For this purpose they have provided long, low, flat cars, each capable of carrying four truck-wagons. The horses are carried in box-cars, and one farmer or driver is carried with each team, a coach being provided for their use. During the fall of the year, they frequently carry from 45 to 50 wagons on one train, charging a small sum for each wagon, and nothing for the horses or men. These trains run three times weekly, and are arranged so as to arrive in the city about midnight, returning the next day at noon. The trains by themselves are not very remunerative, but by furnishing this accommodation, farmers who are thirty or forty miles out on Long Island can have just as good an opportunity for market-gardening as those who live within driving distance of the city. This builds up the country farther out on the island, which in turn gives the road other business.

The movement of freight is not always successfully accomplished. In spite of good organization, every facility, incessant watchfulness, accidents will occur, freight will be delayed, cars will break down, trains will meet with disaster. The consequences sometimes fall heavily on the railway companies. The loss is frequently out of all proportion to the revenue. The following instance is from the writers own experience:

Some carpenters repairing a small low trestle left chips and shavings near one of the bents. A passing train dropped some ashes. The shavings caught fire and burnt one or two posts in one bent. The section-men failed to notice the fire. Toward evening a freight train came to the trestle, the burnt bent gave way, and the train was derailed. Two men were killed, one severely injured, and eighteen freight cars were burned. The resulting loss to the railroad company was $56,113. Of this amount, the loss paid on freight was $39,613.12. As a matter of interest, and to show the disparity between the value of the commodities and the earnings from freight charges received by the railway company, the amount of each is given here in detail, taken from the actual records of the case:

This was during the fall of 1882, when hops sold in New York for over $1 per pound.

The plan of payment for car service by the mile run, without reference to time, has the merit of simplicity and long-established usage. It is, however, in reality, crude and unscientific, and has brought with it, in its train, numerous disadvantages.

The owner of a car is entitled, first, to the proper interest in his investment, that is, on the value of the car; second, to a proper amount for wear and tear or for repairs. The life of a freight car may be reasonably estimated at ten years, so that ten per cent. on its value would be a fair interest-charge. The average amount for repairs varies directly as to the distance the car moves, and may be put at one-half cent per mile run.

It will be seen that by the ordinary method of payment the car-owner is compensated for interest at the rate of ¼ of a cent for the time that the car is in motion, but receives nothing for all the time the car is at rest. If cars could be kept in motion for any considerable portion of each twenty-four hours, this would prove ample. But in practice it is found that few roads succeed in getting an average movement of all cars for more than one hour and a half in each twenty-four. This gives about five per cent. interest on the value of the car, only one-half of what is generally conceded to be a fair return. Still further, there is no inducement to the road on which a foreign car is standing to hasten its return home. On the contrary, there is a direct advantage in holding the car idle until a proper load can be found for it, rather than return it home empty. The most serious abuses of the freight business of the country have grown from this state of affairs. It costs nothing but the use of the track to hold freight in cars; consequently freight is held in cars instead of being put in storehouses, frequently for weeks and months at a time.

There is but little earnest attempt made to urge consignees to remove freight; on the contrary, the consignees consider that they can leave their freight as long as they choose, and that the railroad companies are bound to hold it indefinitely.

One special practice has grown up as a result of this condition, that of shippers sending freight to distant points to their own order. This practice is most prolific of detention to cars, and yet is so strongly rooted in the traffic arrangements of the country that it is most difficult to put an end to it. Cars "to order" will frequently stand for weeks before the contents are sold and the consignee is discovered, during which time the cars accumulate, stand in the way, occupy valuable space, and have to be handled repeatedly by the transportation department of the road, all at the direct cost of handling to the road itself, and loss of interest to the owner of the car.

Floating Cars, New York Harbor.

Only two methods have so far been suggested to abate or put an end to the evils which have been but slightly indicated above. The first is a change in the method of payment for car service to a compensation based upon time as well as mileage, which is commonly known as the "per diem plan."

This plan consists in paying for the use of all foreign cars a fixed sum per mile run, based on the supposed cost of repairs of the car, and a price per day based upon what is estimated to be a fair return for the interest on its value. This plan was originally suggested by a convention of car accountants, and was brought up and advocated by Mr. Fink, the Chairman of the Trunk Line Commission, in New York, in the fall of 1887. At his suggestion, and largely through his influence, it was tried by a few of the roads (the Trunk Lines and some of their immediate connections) during the early part of the year 1888; the amounts as then fixed being one-half cent per mile run, and fifteen cents per day. The results of this experiment, while they were quite satisfactory to the friends of the proposed change, yet were not sufficiently conclusive to demonstrate the value of the plan to those who were indifferent or hostile to it.

For various reasons, chiefly local to the roads in question, the plan was discontinued after a few months' trial. The experiment resulted, however, in the collection of a large mass of statistics and other data, the study of which has led many to believe that the plan is the proper solution of the difficulties experienced, and, if adjusted so as not to add too much to the burden of those railway companies who are borrowers of cars, that it would meet with the approval of the railway companies throughout the country. It certainly provided a strong inducement to all roads to promptly handle foreign cars, and in that particular it proved a great advance over the existing methods of car service. The charge per day of fifteen cents was found too high in practice. Ten cents per day and a half-cent per mile would produce a net sum to the car-owner very slightly in excess of three-fourths of a cent per mile run. While this appears but small, yet it would be quite sufficient to amount in the aggregate to a considerable sum, and would serve to urge all railway companies to promptly unload and send home foreign cars. This plan would result, if generally adopted, in largely increasing the daily movement or mileage of all cars, or, what would be equivalent, would practically amount to a very considerable increase in the equipment of the country.

The plan has recently been approved by the General Time Convention, and there is strong probability that it will be very extensively adopted and given a trial by all the railways during the year 1890.

The second method of remedying the existing evils of car service is in a uniform and regular charge for demurrage, or car rental, to be collected by all railroad companies with the same regularity and uniformity that they now collect freight charges. This car rental, or demurrage charge, would not be in any sense a revenue to the car-owner; the idea of it being that it is a rental to the delivering company, not only for the use of the car but for the track on which it stands, and the inconvenience and actual cost that the company is put to in repeated handling a car that is held awaiting the pleasure of the consignee to unload. The difficulty in the way of making such a charge has been the unwillingness of any railroad company to put any obstacle in the way of the free movement of freight to its line, and the fear that an equivalent charge would not be made by some one of its competitors. Of late, however, the serious disadvantages resulting from the privileges given to consignees at competing points, by allowing them to hold cars indefinitely, have led the different railway companies to come together and agree upon a uniform system of demurrage charges at certain competing points.

If these two plans could be put into operation simultaneously, a fair and uniform method of charging demurrage, coupled with the per diem and mileage plan for car service, the results would be most satisfactory not only to the railway companies and car-owners, but also to the community.

The matter of freight transportation is a vast one, and whole chapters might be written on any one of the various topics that have been but slightly mentioned in this sketch.

The subject is fraught with difficulties; new complications arise daily which, each in its turn, have to be met and mastered. The publicity recently given to the various phases of the railway problem has done much to enlighten the public mind in regard to these difficulties.

The result has already been evident in the growing spirit of mutual forbearance and good-will between the railway companies and the public. Let us hope that this will continue, and that as time goes on their relations will steadily improve, so that the public, while yielding nothing of their legitimate demand for safe, prompt, and convenient service, will at the same time see that this can only be secured by allowing the railways a fair return for the services rendered; while the railways will learn that their true interest lies in the best service possible at moderate, uniform rates.