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

STATISTICAL RAILWAY STUDIES.[37]

By FLETCHER W. HEWES.

Although the United States was the second nation to open a line of railway, it operates to-day nearly half the mileage of the world, and it has so many miles of double, triple, and quadruple track that, were the data of trackage available, such a comparison would undoubtedly show it to more than equal all the rest of the world combined.

Below is given a chart comparing the mileage of the principal railway countries. The list contains all countries having a mileage of over ten thousand kilometers.

The most prominent fact is impressed by the very long line representing the mileage of the United States. A second impressive fact is that the United States has more than six times the mileage of any other country. A third, that there are but five other countries that have even a tenth as much railway.

RAILWAY MILEAGE OF THE UNITED STATES.

Total Annual Mileage and Increase.—On page 429 is given a chart which, beginning with the 23 miles of 1830 and ending with the 156,082 miles of 1888, delineates our ever-increasing total mileage. It also portrays the fluctuations in the number of miles built annually. This latter study is the more interesting, especially during the last twenty-five years, which cover the periods of extreme activity.

Mileage Compared with Area.—The shaded map on the same page pictures the railway mileage of each State as compared with its total area. The eleven States bearing the deepest shade (5) are those having the larger proportions of mileage to area. Of these, New Jersey stands first, having almost exactly one-fourth of a mile of railroad for each square mile of land. The proportion of total area occupied by this mileage is measured to the eye by the accompanying diagram.

The entire square stands for one square mile of land, and the space at the upper left-hand corner stands for that part of the square mile which the railroad occupies, counting from fence to fence on each side of the road. This comparison is made on the basis of one hundred feet for the "right of way" (the width allowed in government grants), and is useful in connection with the study of the historical maps, especially those of 1880 and 1889, on which the area of some of the States seems to be nearly all taken up with roads, owing to the small scale of the maps. Iowa has the smallest proportion of any in Group 5. The figures show her proportion to be a little over one-seventh of a mile of road to one square mile of area. (Nevada has the smallest proportion of all the States and Territories, viz., a trifle over ¹/₁₁₇ of a mile of line to one square mile.)

That part of the map bearing the deepest shade shows at a glance that an unbroken belt, averaging some two hundred miles wide, stretching from Cape Cod to beyond the Mississippi River, is that part of the country best supplied with railways.

The lighter shades grouped on either side of this belt show how the mileage grades away north and south.

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION OF RAILWAYS.

On pages 430 to 433 is a series of historical maps showing the location of railway lines at each census-year from 1830 to 1880, and in 1889. Charts comparing and ranking the mileage by States accompany the maps of 1870, 1880, and 1889. These maps and charts give a better idea of the location and extent of progress than could be given by a dozen pages of description and a hundred columns of figures.

Centre of Mileage and of Population.—The space for notes on the maps permits the bare mention of the meaning of the series of stars in the 1889 map (page 433), which mark the centres of mileage and of population. It is well to state the manner of determining the centres of mileage, that it may have its proper bearing in any study of the subject into which the showing may enter.

The locations are necessarily approximate. Each centre was determined by selecting, on the proper map, a line running east and west which seemed, to the eye, to nearly divide the mileage into equal parts. The sum of the mileage of the States north, was then compared with that of the States south of the line. By this means the position of the line chosen by the eye was corrected and the right parallel determined. The meridian dividing the total mileage into equal parts was ascertained in like manner. The point of intersection of the parallel and meridian is marked in the map by a star, having the proper date printed to the right of it.

The upper series of stars locates the centres of railway mileage, and the lower series the centres of population, as given by the returns of the census of 1880.

The following table describes the several locations thus ascertained:

Centres of Railway Mileage.

The remarkable movement of the centre of mileage from 1850 to 1860 is easily understood when one turns to the maps of those dates (page 430) and locates the fields of activity. The wonderful increase in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa gave the Western impulse, while the growth in Tennessee and the States south of it furnishes the principal explanation of the southerly motion.

Although the study of this period is the most interesting of the series, in the space passed over, yet each period has its points of special interest, which the reader will easily solve by referring to the proper maps on pages 430 to 433.

Railway Systems.—The consolidation of separate lines under central controlling interests has resulted in several "systems" of great extent. Five such are mapped on pages 434 and 435. The roads controlled by them are printed in broad lines, while all others are printed in narrow lines. It needs but a glance to see whether any of them has so far absorbed the roads of a given region as to be able to control rates. The systems selected are believed to be representative ones, and the mapping of a dozen others would not tell the story any more plainly.

TRUNK LINES COMPARED.

Compared by Mileage.—At present there are twenty-four corporations reporting over one thousand miles of line each. A comparison of these roads by mileage is profitless, as it furnishes no just clew to their importance in point of business transacted. Several of the shorter of these twenty-four lines largely exceed some of the longer ones in the volume of business transacted. As an example of the little value of comparison by mileage, the New York Central & Hudson River Road, with but 1,421 miles of line, reports $63,132,920 receipts, while the Union Pacific, with 6,288 miles, reports but $19,898,817. Two of the twenty-four roads, viz., the Southern Pacific Railroad (5,931 miles) and the Richmond, West Point & Terminal Railroad (6,869 miles) report neither gross or net earnings. The remaining twenty-two report both, and these reports furnish a satisfactory basis for study.